turns the knob and pushes the door open. I brace myself, half expecting smoke to billow out or something else terrifying and magical.
Instead, the room seems mostly empty. The dull light from the hallway bleeds into the dark space, illuminating just enough for me to make out where the walls are. I take one step closer, leaning to get a clearer view.
It is empty.
I glance suspiciously at the sultan, who watches me keenly.
“You first,” I say.
“I thought ladies went first,” he replies, and there’s a flash like grinning teeth in his shadow.
I snort. “We both know I’m not a lady. You first, Sultani, or I won’t go.”
There’s an impression of a mocking bow, and then he sweeps past me. Air rushes past me as he moves, and the scent of desert roses drifts into my nostrils. I narrow my eyes and grip my knives tighter.
“Well?” comes his deep voice from the darkness.
I’ve hesitated and delayed long enough. Any longer and I’ll prove myself an irredeemable coward.
I follow him into the dim room.
I don’t realize where he is until the door shuts behind me. I whirl in the sudden darkness, my heart leaping to my throat, raising my knives in defense.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he says quickly.
I don’t believe you, I think, but do not say it aloud. I stay where I am, unmoving, in a guarded crouch.
“There is a door in this room,” he continues. “I want to see if you can find it.”
“You’re standing in front of it,” I growl.
Even in the darkness, I haven’t lost my awareness of him, and don’t miss when he shakes his head.
“There is another door.”
“You want me to find a different door? Not the one we came through?”
“Yes.”
Slowly, I unwind from my crouch, rising to my full height. It’s so dark I can hardly see anything except a little crack of light from beneath the door. That crack is broken by what must be two black ankles—the Neverseen King as he blocks the exit. Does he intend to trap me in here until I find the other door? This other escape, presumably?
“This wasn’t part of our deal,” I say. “I said I would come into this room if you would tell me what you were. I did not say I would agree to be trapped in here.”
“I said I wanted to show you something. I’m showing you something.”
“It sounds like you want me to show you something.”
A frustrated growl bursts from the darkness by the door. “By the mountains of Ildrid,” he says, and it startles me to hear one of Jabir’s curses on his lips. “Would you just . . . work with me for a minute?” He waves a hand at me vaguely. “I promise my intent is not for your harm, in any form.”
I stumble back. Just one step. Then I grit my teeth, clench my fingers tighter around the hilts of my knives, and reclaim that step—and take another. “Does my caution vex you? I used to trust and see how well it turned out for me. Not all of us have the luxury of living in a palace, being attended to by servants for our every need, never having to bow the knee to another. Not all of us—”
The shift in the air is sudden, terrible, almost palpable.
“Do not presume to know anything about me or my life,” the Neverseen King snaps, taking two steps toward me until he’s just close enough that if he reached out, he could strike me. Each of his next words are spat out. “Because you know nothing about me. I know you have no reason to trust me or my words, Nadira al-Risya, but I ask for a small measure of it nonetheless.” He sighs, whether frustrated or exhausted, I cannot tell. His voice softens, pauses, almost like he is considering coming closer to me, but he doesn’t. “I wish to show you something beautiful. Something I think you will like.”
I blink. His words don’t quite compute in my brain. “Why?”
“Because you’ve seen some of the horror of magic already. I want you to see some of its beauty.”
Magic.
“Why?” I demand. I cannot help my questions, my hesitancy, my unwillingness to dive into something unknown. If those things bother him, he ought to let me go. Ought to free me.
But Jabir will catch you.
I shudder involuntarily.
“Because magic will become important for any bride of mine,” he says.
“You want to see how well I acclimate to it?” I ask, my tone dry as parchment.
For a split second, I see a flash—a pair of eyes. Too bright, too sharp. The voice of the Neverseen King follows, low and equally dry as mine.
“You’ve already proved your acclimation to it.”
I frown, unable to deny that I know what he means. All I can come up with to say is, “Is it due to this that I owe your special attentions?”
“You’re not the only one to have acclimated,” he replies, almost defensively, as though denying he has given me any special attention. Perhaps he hasn’t. “Three others also have, remarkably well.”
“Safya,” I say, unable to keep the bitterness out of my voice.
“Safya,” he agrees, “Dabria also has. And after the banister, apparently Eshe too.”
Stillness lands thick and heavy between us. Perhaps he is waiting for me to say something. Perhaps I am waiting for him to continue.
Whatever the case, I feel a sudden something. An upwelling of fierce emotion I don’t recognize. It’s not jealousy, that I’m sure of. It’s something . . . something else . . .
I want to beat Safya.
The realization makes my lips part slightly and my eyelids buzz—though that might just be because of the dark.
I want to beat her. I want to prove that betrayal isn’t the only way to win. And I want to show Dabria that even slaves can have dignity.
Eshe, however, I want to protect.
I never want to be made to feel small ever again. Not by Jabir, not by Safya, not by Dabria. I never want to feel too powerless to protect my friend.
Perhaps the Neverseen King is key.
I’ll just have to discover his weaknesses. Everyone has them. And once I have those, then he cannot overpower me.
I flip my grip on my knives with a twirl and sheathe them at my waist. “Very well,” I say briskly. “I’ll find your door. But if you prove false in your promises, I swear on the grave of my baba that I will make you regret it until your dying day.”
“I would expect nothing else from the Mourner,” he replies archly.
Immediately, I set to work. I drop into a crouch, running my fingers along the unfinished, splintering baseboards of the room, taking care never to fully turn my back to the sultan. There’s no other door like the entrance, but I didn’t expect there to be. After all, where would the challenge be in that? I move swiftly, touching the wall, brushing the lumps and bumps of dried plaster.
Nothing.
My next pass of the room, I stomp all over the wood floor, listening for hollows or anything else suspicious. I withdraw a knife to pry up a loose board and find nothing. It’s almost impossible to see, but I think the Neverseen King is leaning against the door, arms crossed, while he watches me. I ignore him, but I’m forever aware of him, of his every move.
Once I’ve been through the room again, I stop. Tilting my head back, I stare up at the pitch-black ceiling. It’s too dark to tell how high it is, but my intuition tells me not very. A room just feels different with a low ceiling rather than a high one.
My hand goes to the length of thin jurbah rope and pronged anchor I keep on my person. But I force myself to let my hand drop, flexing my fingers as I do. There’s nothing to anchor the rope on. It’s useless.
Setting my mouth into a determined line, I turn around and back up against one of the far walls. My heart picks up the pace, and I wish there were more light in here. But the scrap of it from under the door is enough to tell me where the opposite wall is, so I don’t run smack into it.
I sprint across the small space, palms clenched into fists. At the last second, I jump against the wall, planting my toes on the plaster and boosting myself up higher, reaching with my fingers.
They hit the ceiling.
There’s nothing to grab hold of, so gravity pulls me back to the floor. I stand, huffing slightly as I stare at the wall, much too aware of the Neverseen King’s gaze.
There could be a door in the ceiling, but it would be very difficult to find—much less get through in the dark with no proper tools. Perhaps that is the challenge he’s set for me.
My intuition tells me he didn’t bring me here to watch me attempt to defy physics or pry up every floorboard. I’ve already felt along the wall for anything that might serve as a lever or button to activate a turn mechanism.
Magic will become important for any bride of mine.
I suddenly feel foolish. Of course the door isn’t an actual door. It’s magic. He wants me to find a magical door. My eyelids flutter shut for a brief breath of frustration. Then they’re open again, and I’m staring at the Neverseen King’s shadow. That tall, imposing shadow I saw in my dreams.
My mind returns unbidden to the Golden Hall, the flood of sapphire blood and limbs, that border of lightning around that strange portal.
A door.
“Oh no, I’m not doing this,” I say.
I think he grins in response to that.
“If you think you can kill me as easily as telling me to open a portal that is going to be full of things that want to kill me, you’re wrong.” I march toward the door he stands in front of. “Move aside and let me out.”
“I promise it won’t kill you,” he replies, not budging.
“Yes, indeed, I’m sure.”
“Bargain with me then.”
Something about that tone, those words, makes my blood run cold. “Bargain?”
“Your thief friend’s exemption from tomorrow’s competition, in exchange for you finishing this task I’ve set before you.”
“What?” I blurt, unable to help myself.
“Finding the door will not result in your harm,” he says, “but to prove it, I’ll exempt Eshe bint-Kinid from tomorrow’s competition. As long as she follows the rules of the House and doesn’t open her door after dark, and so long as she doesn’t put herself in a position to be harmed by one of the other women, she will be safe for the next day.”
Put herself in a position—as if it would be Eshe’s fault if one of the women murdered her. I glare at him, ready to spout off that we have no bargain. But I stop myself just in time.
What if I can spare her whatever awaits us tomorrow? And if I make the bargain, I’ll find a direct way to test the weight of the Neverseen King’s word. If I agree, and he doesn’t exempt her, it will prove once and for all that he cannot be trusted, and his word is as good as the wild hyena’s. If he does honor it, then I will have spared my friend.
“Deal,” I say.
Something sparks in the air between us, something sharp and searing. I jolt back, snatching my wrist to my chest as the tender inner skin burns.
“What—” I start to demand.
“We made a bargain,” comes the low voice of the sultan. “Magic binds us now to fulfill our word.”
The burning wears off in my wrist. I draw my hand away from my chest and turn it over. There, softly glowing in a shade of violet with pinpricks of gold, is a design tattooed on my inner wrist.
It’s a wilted rose with a thorn-studded stem.
I yelp and jerk away—as if I can run from my own appendage. “What—what did you—”
“I have one too.”
I look up, clamping my palm down over my glowing skin. There, in the darkness before me, is another glow. Coming slowly toward me, as though he’s reaching out his hand. My eyes widen when it’s but a foot from my face, and I see the violet and gold glow of his wilted rose. It barely illuminates the skin surrounding it, but it’s enough that for the first time, I see a scrap of his flesh and three pronounced veins running through his wrist. It’s proof that he’s more than a shadow.
I’m breathing much too hard.
“Part of the design will disappear when one of us has fulfilled our side of the bargain. The rest of it will disappear when it is completed.”
“So I have to find the door to make my obligation vanish?” I ask. My voice comes out too breathy and uncertain. I hate that he’s found yet another way to unnerve me. But even as I’m put off balance, my mind is working, spinning, reeling. As terrifying as this magic is, I think I can use this in my favor.
“Yes. Once you find the door, your obligation will vanish. Once the third competition passes, and I exempt your thief from participation, mine will vanish too.”
I draw a deep breath. “Well, then. I suppose I ought to open this door.” This portal.
My heart is hammering, my gut churning with uncertainty as I draw my knife. I know what I need to do. Or, at least, I think I know.
I take my knife and very, very carefully, nick my lip. I won’t hurt my hands, not unless I want to limit my ability to defend myself. So I make my lip bleed, taste copper in my mouth, and catch several drops on the tip of my blade.
Those fat beads on my blade reflect the scant light. I stare at them for a few minutes, not sure how I’m to go about this. Then I give a tiny shrug, drop into a crouch, and tilt my knife.
My blood falls like glittering rubies to the floor.
