Shahrzad could not risk her sister’s safety. Not in a camp filled with unknowns. Unknowns who could just as soon as toss her family into the desert for an errant word. Or slit their throats at a misread glance. No. Shahrzad could not put her father’s dubious health in jeopardy. Not for all the world.
She smiled slowly, taking time to subdue her fury. “I think beauty is rarely worth the trouble.” Shahrzad gripped Irsa’s hand tighter in sisterly solidarity. “But I am worth a great deal more than what you see.” Her tone was airy despite the veiled rebuke.
Without hesitation, the old man threw back his head and laughed. “To be sure!” His face shone with merriment. “Welcome to my home, Shahrzad al-Khayzuran. I am Omar al-Sadiq, and you are my guest. While within these borders, you will always be treated as such. But bear in mind: a calipha in silk or a beggar in the street makes no difference to me. Welcome.” He dipped his head and brushed his fingertips along his brow with a broad flourish.
Shahrzad released a pent-up breath. It escaped her in a rush of air, taking with it the tension from her shoulders and stomach. Her grin stretching farther, Shahrzad bowed in return, touching her right hand to her forehead.
Shiva’s father watched their exchange with a blank expression, his elbows folded against the table’s weathered edge. “Shazi-jan,” he began in a somber tone.
He caught her just as Shahrzad reached for a piece of barbari. “Yes, Uncle Reza?” She lifted her brows in question, her hand hovering above the breadbasket.
Reza’s features turned pensive. “I’m very glad you are here—that you are safe.”
“Thank you. I’m very grateful to everyone for keeping my family safe. And for taking such excellent care of Baba.”
He nodded, then leaned forward, steepling his hands beneath his chin. “Of course. Your family has always been my family. As mine has always been yours.”
“Yes,” Shahrzad said quietly. “It has.”
“So,” Reza said, lines of consternation bracketing his mouth, “it pains me greatly to ask you this—as I thought you might have been remiss when you arrived last night—but I have swallowed your insult for as long as I can endure it.”
Shahrzad’s entire body froze, her fingers still poised above the bread. The tension renewed its grip on her body, guilt coiling around her stomach with snakelike savagery.
“Shahrzad . . .” Reza bin-Latief’s voice had lost any hint of kindness; any warmth in the man she’d considered a second father was gone. “Why are you sitting at this table—breaking bread with me—wearing the ring of the boy who murdered my daughter?”
It was a cutting accusation.
It sliced through the crowd like a scythe through a sea of grain.
Shahrzad’s fingers pressed tight over the standard of the two crossed swords. Tight enough to cause pain.
She blinked once. Twice.
Tariq cleared his throat. The sound echoed through the sudden stillness. “Uncle—Uncle Reza—”
No. She could not let Tariq save her. Not again.
Never again.
“I’m . . . I’m sorry,” she said, her mouth dry.
But she wasn’t. Not for this. She was sorry for a hundred things. A thousand things.
An entire city of untendered apologies.
But she would never be sorry for this.
“Don’t be sorry, Shahrzad,” Reza continued in the same cold voice. The voice of a stranger. “Decide.”
Mumbling her regrets, Shahrzad pushed to her feet.
She didn’t stop to think. Clinging to the remains of her dignity, she stumbled away from the table and into the blazing desert sun. Her sandals caught in the hot sand, hefting it behind her, striking her calves with each step.
A large, calloused hand took hold of her shoulder, halting her.
She glanced up, shielding her eyes from the blinding light.
The soldier. The lifelong aggressor.
“Get out of my way,” she whispered, fighting to leash her wrath. “Now.”
His lips curved upward with a leisurely kind of malice. He refused to move.
Shahrzad grabbed his wrist to shove it aside.
The roughspun linen of his rida’ rolled up to his elbow, revealing a brand seared into his inner forearm.
The mark of the scarab.
The mark of the Fida’i assassins who had stolen into her chamber in Rey and tried to kill her.
With a gasp, Shahrzad ran. Clumsily, mindlessly, her only thought, of escape.
Somewhere in the distance, she heard Irsa’s voice calling for her.
Still, she refused to stop.
She ran into their tiny tent, throwing the door fold shut with a resounding slap.
Her shallow breaths rebounded across the three walls. Shahrzad raised her right hand into a shaft of light filtering through a tent seam. She watched it catch on the muted gold of her ring.
I don’t belong here. A guest in a prison of sand and sun.
But I need to keep my family safe; I need to find a way to break the curse.
And return home to Khalid.