IT HAD BEEN two weeks since Sajda had killed the warden, extracted a confession from the boy who’d taken Javan’s place, and entered the palace with the true prince. Two weeks of fragrant baths and delicious food. Of silk dresses and maids anxious to comb her hair or fetch her anything she might want.
Two weeks, and she felt like she was coming apart at the seams.
Every eye that watched her, every hand that served her, every whisper that died when she walked into a room were a thousand tiny knives scraping at her until even the calm she borrowed from the palace’s stone floors couldn’t help.
Magic prickled and hummed in her blood, a painful itch that grew worse as she huddled in her soft bed at night, eyes wide open as she stared at the walls.
The air inside the palace didn’t stink of beasts and burned porridge, but the tang of Makan Almalik’s dust still rested bitterly on the back of her tongue. The people who served her smiled and thanked her for saving their prince, but she wondered how many had lit an effigy of a dark elf and cursed her kind with the same mouth that praised her now.
Tossing her bedcover aside, Sajda dressed quickly and then moved to the balcony outside her bedroom that overlooked a tiled courtyard and a grove of lemon trees. Pushing the door open, she leaned against the carved wood railing and looked up at the vast expanse of the night sky.
The stars were shards of burning glass bathing the ground in silver and white. Reaching one hand toward them, she let her fingers tangle in the starlight. Let her magic curl around it, cold and pure, and welcome it inside her.
There was freedom in the starlight. In the distant beauty that couldn’t be captured or contained. There was peace where no eyes could watch her and no voices could whisper. Where there were no cages, be they gilt-painted or carved from stone.
“I am a star,” she whispered, and silvery light drifted off her fingertips like frozen lace. “I am a galaxy.”
The frenetic buzzing of her magic settled, and she tilted her face toward the sky.
It was lonely in the starlight, but loneliness was better than being surrounded by another kind of prison. There was just one thing missing in the starlight.
Javan.
Tears burned her eyes and slid down her cheeks to drip like silver-white diamonds to the balcony below. She couldn’t stay here where the walls closed in and the air still smelled faintly of Maqbara. She couldn’t stay, but leaving was going to carve out a piece of her heart.
A sound cut through the stillness, and she opened her eyes to see Javan standing on his own balcony a short distance to the west. He was watching her, and the pain on his face made part of her want to go to him.
The rest of her longed for the wide-open spaces of the desert where she could be alone with nothing but the stars and her freedom for company.
She held his gaze for a long moment, and then judged the distance between the balconies, gathered her elven strength, and leaped. He raised his arms as if to catch her, but didn’t touch her as she landed in a crouch and then stood in front of him.
For a long moment, they watched each other. Tears gathered in the back of her throat, and she let the starlight slide off her fingertips. Let her magic coil and churn as she reached for his hands.
His skin was warm against hers, and he caught his breath as she stepped closer and laid her head against his chest.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
His shoulders bowed, and for a moment he was still. And then he let go of her hands so that he could wrap his arms around her. She pulled him close, memorizing the heat of his skin and the imprint of his body sheltering hers.
“When are you leaving?” he asked, and the pain in his voice sent her magic thrumming through her blood.
She wanted to take the hurt away. Promise to stay and somehow be the girl who could survive inside a palace like she’d survived inside a prison.
But she swallowed the words and simply held him instead. She wanted more than to just survive. She wanted to heal. To stop being afraid. She wanted to carve the word monster out of her and replace it with something better. Something that fit.
“Javan,” she breathed as she tipped her head back to look at him.
He smiled, though there were tears in his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she said again.
“I’m not.” His voice was steady. “You owe no one an apology, Sajda. Including me.”
“But I’m hurting you.”
He gently touched her cheek with his lips. “Sometimes it hurts to love someone. I wouldn’t change it, though. I wouldn’t change a single thing. I love you.” He met her eyes. “Please remember that no matter how far you go, I’ll always be here if you decide to return.”
His voice shook a little, and she leaned up to kiss him. His lips were rough and a little desperate, his hands fisted in the back of her dress. She tilted his head so she could get a better angle, and her magic surged through her, a thrill of pain and pleasure.
When she stepped back, she held his gaze one last time, and tried to find words for the way he was the one place she knew she was safe. For the way his smile made her cheeks glow or the way his faith in her settled the rough edges of a wound she still hadn’t truly examined.
The words wouldn’t come. Instead, she whispered, “Thank you for freeing me and for letting me go.”
And then before more tears could spill over, before the magic that was hurling itself toward him instead of toward the open sky could tempt her to make a promise she wasn’t sure she could keep, she leaped back to her own balcony, grabbed the pack of supplies she’d assembled earlier in the evening, and left the palace behind.
FORTY-SIX
THE DAY AFTER Sajda left, Javan was crowned the new king of Akram. No one had warned him how heavy the crown would be. He stood in the tiled entrance of the palace and tried to ignore the dull ache in his temples as he greeted the royalty who were visiting Akram to pay their respects to Akram’s new king while also visiting the grave of Javan’s father.
It had been two weeks since he’d won the tournament in Maqbara, lost his father, and then gained his freedom and his throne thanks to Sajda. He hadn’t had a single peaceful night of sleep since. His dreams were filled with the blood he’d shed, and his ears echoed with the screams of those who’d died in the arena. His days hadn’t been much better. He’d spent his time working through the royal council, the palace staff, and the aristocratic families who lived in Makan Almalik, hunting for corruption, assessing his kingdom’s needs, and searching for the right people to take over both Maqbara and the magistrate’s office so that every prisoner’s case could be reviewed.
Javan wasn’t going to allow anyone who’d been sent to Maqbara without evidence to stay in that place of darkness and pain.
The impostor, however, was going to live in Maqbara until a trial could be held. Part of Javan hoped the boy would receive a death sentence for his actions. Part of him couldn’t stomach the thought of more bloodshed, even for someone who deserved it.