His fears.
She bared her teeth as she slowly raised her head to lock eyes with him, his darkest nightmares playing across her mind, one after the other.
Dark, small spaces.
A woman with short hair and a loud voice.
Falling into a lake and sucking water into his lungs.
Snakes.
Magic was an implacable force that owned her, rushing through her veins until all she could hear was its intoxicating thrum of power.
He’d wanted to overpower her.
He’d overpowered other girls before her. Left them broken and bleeding when he was finished. She could see their terrified faces in his mind.
“What are you doing?” His words were slurred, blood leaking from the back of his head where he’d hit the wall.
She held his gaze as she leaned down to the little lake of blood in her palm and began whispering. The nightmare took shape in her thoughts, fused with her magic, and became words that fell from her lips with the power of a lightning strike.
The runes on her cuffs blazed red, but she ignored the pain and let the words rush out, conjuring the images in his mind with every breath.
He saw snakes rising from the stone floor, black and glistening. They coiled and writhed and slithered toward him, while the stone gave birth to more. He shoved himself as close to the wall as he could, and still they came. Golden eyes unblinking. Fangs extended. They rushed across the floor, crawled over his boots, and slid over his skin.
He screamed as her words took a different shape and the walls closed in, skylights turning to hard slabs of black stone. The snakes were churning now, a writhing mass of scaly black, as the room shrank to nothing more than a box.
He wailed, a long, broken sound that startled Sajda out of the story she was weaving. She closed her mouth, letting the rest of the words, the images, dissipate into nothing.
Dabir clawed at his body, searching for snakes that weren’t there, and screamed for someone to turn on the lights.
Horror swept over Sajda.
What had she done?
The magic that had borrowed a shield of calm from the stone wall each day to protect her suddenly felt like a weapon that had used her. Controlled her.
Turned her into a monster.
She scrambled to her feet and turned to find Hashim standing at the end of the corridor watching her with curiosity burning in his eyes. Without looking at him again, she swept past and took the stairs to her room two at a time.
But no matter how fast she ran, she imagined she could still hear the echo of Dabir’s screams as he fought with the nightmare she’d given him.
TWENTY-FOUR
WITH LESS THAN a week before the next tournament round, Javan and the other prisoners from his level worked an extra hour during chore time at the behest of the guards to once again scrub the arena, the warden’s platform, and the spectators’ seats. Sajda hadn’t returned. Tarek had brought Javan a lunch of stale cheese and bruised apples and said he hadn’t seen Sajda either, though the older man thought Javan was safe in his cell until level fifteen’s sparring session, as Hashim and crew were distracted by the inexplicable mental collapse of their friend Dabir.
Javan stayed in his narrow, filthy cell, alternately praying and thinking through what he knew of the other prisoners on his level while he waited for seventh bell and the start of his sparring session. With Sajda’s help, he’d spent the last two weeks assessing their skills during practice, observing their personalities, their strengths and weaknesses, and how they responded to Hashim’s bullying tactics during rec hour. There were four who stood out to him. Four Sajda had agreed could be bribed to become his allies. Tonight during rec hour, he’d make his move and pray for Yl’ Haliq’s blessing.
Tension knotted his shoulders as seventh bell tolled. If these four turned him down, his options were limited, and the next combat round was less than a week away. He left his cell, shaking out his arms, satisfied that the injuries he’d sustained during his first round were little more than distant aches, easily ignored. It was time to spar with Sajda and mend whatever he’d done wrong.
She never showed.
Worry twisted through him, slick and heavy, as he returned to level fifteen after practice, checked in with the pair of guards assigned to his section, and then obediently stayed within the confines of his cell while levels ten through twelve practiced in the arena far below.
There had been something off about Sajda that morning, though he couldn’t put his finger on exactly what it was. Maybe it was that she’d been irritable instead of calm. Jumpy instead of still. She could simply be having a bad day—Yl’ Haliq knew being constantly trapped in the dim cavern of Maqbara was enough to set anyone on edge—but Sajda didn’t show her nerves. She held her body still, kept her expression cold, and maintained eye contact until sometimes he wished she wouldn’t.
But today, she’d been fidgety. Unable or unwilling to meet his gaze for more than a quick glance, her expression haunted. And her fingers had worried the iron cuffs she wore as if somehow today the pain of wearing the constant reminder of her position at Maqbara was too much to bear.
Anger coiled within him, hot and dangerous.
What kind of monster bought a child, kept her inside Akram’s most dangerous prison, and forced her to wear cuffs so that no one could possibly forget that, though many of the prisoners would eventually leave, Sajda never could?
The moment Javan was restored to his rightful place as heir to Akram’s crown, he was going to punish the warden for everything she’d done. On the outside, it would certainly appear that the treasonous act of trying to murder Akram’s prince was her greatest crime, but Javan knew better. He would punish her for Sajda first. It wouldn’t give Sajda back her childhood, and it wouldn’t take away the strange web of scars he’d glimpsed beneath her cuffs, but it would set her free of this despicable place. It was the least he could do for her as her friend.
Her friend.