“The warden,” he agreed. And then his chain whistled through the air, directly for her face. She dodged it, but then stumbled as a woman behind her snapped her chain across Sajda’s back. Whirling, she snatched the chain, ignoring the burn of iron against her hands, and yanked the woman forward. A swift kick sent the toe of her boot into the woman’s stomach. She fell, and Sajda turned on the others, but it was too late.
Two chains wrapped around her, pinning her arms to her sides. She hissed as the iron touched her skin. Magic tumbled and churned in her veins, but her hands were pinned, and the iron was slicing through her power, sending it spinning through her in fragments.
Hashim stepped in front of her, his chain swinging as if he might flick it toward her face at any moment. The air felt too thin, her blood too thick as panic roared within her.
She was trapped. No way to use her magic. No way to use her strength and speed. And no help was coming.
“What do you want?” she snapped, her voice shaky at the edges.
“What the warden wants. For me to win. She wants me to kill Javan during the competition.” He smiled at her, and she nearly spit in his face. “But I think you and I can come to an understanding instead, which is why I asked her to let me use the chains. She didn’t seem to think you’d be helpful, but you will.”
“Why should I?”
“Because this is the best outcome for you. I leave, and no one in this hall breathes a word about what you are. You get to keep your favorite prisoner by your side. And the warden stays on the king’s good side. My understanding is that the royal family doesn’t want Javan to even be in the competition. I don’t know what your aristocrat did to land himself in Maqbara, but he made enemies of the wrong people.” He moved closer, the chain swinging. “As long as you help me, Javan will stay in Maqbara with you for the rest of his life.”
She felt a flash of temptation followed instantly by guilt.
Javan would come back for her.
And even if he didn’t, she could never be the reason he was forced to stay.
Hashim took her silence for agreement. “You’re going to tell me where the bow and arrow and the short swords will be located tomorrow. Your boy can still fight, but he won’t have his favorite weapons.”
She laughed, cold and cruel. “Why would I do that? To force Javan to stay imprisoned here?”
“Because if you don’t, I will reveal to the aristocracy that you are a dangerous creature of magic whose iron cuffs no longer restrain her. I’ll show them your handprint on my chest as proof. It’s almost the week of Tu’ Omwahl. The memory of what your people did to ours is fresh. You’re strong, but you can’t take on an entire crowd of people who think the only way to protect themselves and their children from your kind is to kill you.”
He was right. The crowd would devour her. She might take a few of them with her, but with restrained magic she wouldn’t take enough.
Plus tomorrow couldn’t be about her. Not even for a second. Javan needed to win so he could talk to his father and be restored to the throne. It would be harder for him to win without his preferred weapons, but it would also be hard for Hashim to win trying to use weapons that were better suited to someone else. And she could warn Javan. He was good at improvising.
“Do we have an agreement?”
She nodded, sickness moving through her as the iron chafed her skin.
Hashim leaned close and snapped the edge of his chain against her heart. “That’s for burning me. And if you even think about betraying this agreement, I will expose you to the spectators and in the chaos that follows, I’ll kill Javan.”
The chains fell away, and Sajda reached one shaky hand into her pocket. Without another word, she handed over the weapons’ layout and then brushed past him to enter the closet that the warden and Hashim had left unlocked while he was waiting to ambush her. Her hands shook with the need to carve into him, take his blood, and break his will into pieces.
FORTY-ONE
SAJDA CLOSED THE door behind her, her skin still burning from the iron chains, her heart beating a frantic tempo in her chest. Her hands shook as she began putting away the freshly cleaned weapons that had been used in combat practice that day. Tomorrow, she’d be up at dawn placing them in their assigned spots inside the arena while the warden watched.
For tonight, the swords went on the dusty black cloth. The mace hung on a hook beside the short spear and the chain. She picked up the bow and ran her fingers over the place where hours earlier Javan had stood in the center of the arena, and fired arrow after arrow in quick succession around the arena.
His strategy depended on getting the bow and arrow, and she’d just taken that from him. The warden would never agree to a last-minute change in weapons’ placement. She gripped the bow with white knuckles, her heartbeat roaring in her ears, her magic blazing through her blood in desperation to protect Javan.
Oh, how she’d wanted to save him. To leap the wall and run to his side, her magic clawing for the blood of his foes so she could whisper nightmares that would reduce them all to rubble.
Was it wrong to use her magic to hurt those who sought to hurt the boy she loved?
She wasn’t sure she cared. If she had to be a monster, at least she could be a monster who kept the prince of Akram safe and helped restore him to his throne.
Something bumped the wall in the corridor outside the closet, and she froze, magic scraping at her skin. Had Hashim and his friends returned to torture her with their chains again?
“Did anyone see you enter?” The warden’s deep voice filled the air.
Sajda shrank, huddling close to the floor, reaching for a pair of battle-axes as though that could save her if the warden turned her attention to the weapons’ closet and discovered an eavesdropper.
“I was careful.”
She knew that voice—elegance and brute arrogance. It was the false prince. Her fists closed around the ax handle as she considered whether she could get past the warden long enough to kill the boy who’d taken everything from Javan.
“What is it? I have a prison to run.”
“You have a boy to kill. I’ve run out of patience. Javan cannot be allowed to win tomorrow’s competition.”
“I’ll make sure of it. If he doesn’t die in the competition, then the points will add up to another winner.” The warden sounded impatient.
“I don’t have the same kind of faith in your abilities as Fariq. From the start, you have done nothing but create problems. You attacked Javan too early in Loch Talam, and didn’t even manage to kill him then. You failed to report that he was in your prison, and by the time we found out about it, rumors about him were already spreading. And you failed to make sure he died in the last round of combat. You should’ve just killed him in between rounds and been done with it.”
The warden’s voice was a low, throaty snarl that sent a chill over Sajda’s skin. “You’d better be careful how you speak to me. You need me as an ally, not an enemy.”
“And you need me. Fariq is dead. The king will be dead shortly after my coronation. If you’ve made an enemy of me, you will lose this prison, your coin, and if you don’t flee Akram fast enough, your life.”