long moment.
Then a spark catches. I scuttle back a few steps, my eyes widening. Apparently, I hadn’t believed anything would happen. Yet something is indeed happening. That spark grows, glowing like a single star in this darkness.
I feel the Neverseen King’s gaze on me. And yet I cannot seem to close my gaping mouth. I keep backing up until my heel hits a wall. There I stand, watching that star expand before my very eyes, growing from a pinprick to the size of my hand, then my face, and bigger still. Its light reaches into the room, illuminating the plank floors and the bare whitewashed walls.
It reveals everything except the corner where my sultan stands. The light burns my irises until tears leak out of my eyes, and I’m forced to cover my face. It’s going to swallow us whole—I’m sure of it. And I’m on the opposite side of the room from the door. A thrill of panic races down my spine to my toes.
Then a dot of blue appears in the center of the star. I watch between my parted fingers as it widens, splitting the middle of the star into . . . a thousand more stars.
Into a midnight sky.
I won’t ever breathe again.
There’s a rustle of silk as the Neverseen King takes a step toward me, then another, and despite the blinding light surrounding us, I can make out the subtle glow of his rose tattoo on his wrist, reaching out for me.
I draw back to the wall.
“Nadira,” he says gently.
I don’t think anyone has ever said my name so carefully, so gently. It makes my hands find the hilt of my knives, and a snarl bare my teeth. He stands a few paces away, near the apex of the shimmering portal that is not unlike the one in the Golden Hall. That glowing tattoo reaches out to me. Waiting.
“What?” I demand.
“Come see,” he says. “If you want to.”
“I don’t want to,” I snap back.
And yet . . . my foot takes a step. I don’t want to come close to him. But my neck cranes as I try to get a better glimpse of this thing he brought me to see. I glance over at the Neverseen King again, at the tattoo that is the only visible sign of him . . . and realize with a jolt that his tattoo has changed.
The thorny stem has vanished, leaving behind just the wilted rose on his wrist, glowing softly. I flip my own wrist over, and my heart stutters to see the same lonesome blossom on my skin, its petals on the cusp of falling. The thorns are gone.
“Your part of the bargain is fulfilled,” he says. “You found the door. So our markings changed.”
“What if I hadn’t been able to find the door?” I ask.
“Then your part of the tattoo wouldn’t have vanished, and I wouldn’t have been accountable for my side of the bargain.”
My mind cannot keep up with the implications of this, how it will all spell out. One thing that I’m becoming more and more certain of, is the fact that I can use this to my advantage. If his word is bound by magic when we make a bargain, then I don’t have to trust him. I can simply bargain with him.
This will change everything between us.
I lick my lips, then take another step forward. “Very well. Show me this magic.”
His hand remains outstretched toward me. I hesitate, glancing between him, the door, and the strange glowing portal before me. He doesn’t intend to take me inside, does he? My chest tightens. Perhaps I should bargain with him for my safety.
Safya would take his hand.
The thought is wholly unbidden, and it makes my jaw clench. It also makes me let go of my knife hilt and reach out toward him with my sweat-slicked hand.
The moment my fingers brush his, lightning shoots up through my arm. I flinch but force myself not to draw back. It’s just a hand. He has promised not to hurt me, and he’s given me the power of bargains. I can do this.
My heart racing, I slide my hand into his. It envelopes mine in a shock of warmth and calluses. I’ve felt this hand before. Yet it is an entirely different sensation when his fingers close around mine, encasing them in the heat and roughness of his skin. It’s a hand that is accustomed to weapons—not something I would have expected of our Neverseen King, who has not led our people into war for well over a hundred years.
A hundred years. Three words I might drown in.
He draws me to his side, slowly, carefully. I react by squeezing his hand tighter and slipping my finger onto that tattoo on his wrist. I catch the faintest impression of surprise in the air between us. But I’m not holding on to him—I’m checking his pulse.
It’s racing even faster than mine.
This makes me blink twice and frown. Why would his heart be beating so quickly? Does he intend to harm me? Is he—
“Don’t be afraid,” he says. Without realizing it, I’d begun withdrawing, but his voice stops me.
I’m not afraid, I want to spit. I’m angry, and I hate you, and I want you to leave me and Eshe alone. But I hold my tongue.
“Look,” he whispers, pulling me back to his side.
I force myself not to resist. Force myself not to think about his hand in mine, how close he is, with all his tallness and . . . and . . . shadowiness. Then I lift my eyes.
And I find myself staring into a sea of stars. Except it looks more like an explosion of stars, of color, of . . . clouds? It’s like I’m in the sky, realizing how much vaster it truly is. From the ground, staring up at the stars, the sky is black with tiny dots of winking lights. But this . . . I had never known how bright and colorful the night was beyond what I could see. The stars are like paint splatters of white and blue and orange, all different sizes. There are clouds the shade of rose and violet, climbing and mingling with those splatters.
It’s magnificent.
“It’s called a nebula,” says the sultan beside me, his voice sounding close like he ducks his head toward mine. “And there are a countless number of them, each different. Each beautiful in its own way.”
I manage to shut my sagging jaw and draw in a sniffling breath. Is my cheek wet? Why would my cheek be wet? Hastily, I reach up with my left hand and rub my face. “It’s a door,” I say, my voice shaky. I swallow and clear my throat, trying again. “It’s a door. Does that mean you step out into . . . this . . . nebula?”
He shakes his head. My traitorous eyes suddenly wish I could see his face and read what he thinks beyond the vague impressions of movement I get from him.
“There’s no air out there,” he says. “We’d die.”
“Would we fall?”
“No. We’d float.”
I frown, then shoot him a glare.
“I’m not lying,” he says, and I think he might be grinning. His hand tightens on mine, and I have the sudden urge to pull it away.
“Can’t you just use magic to breathe?” I ask and give in to the impulse to pull my hand out of his. He doesn’t resist, letting me go.
“Magic cannot solve all problems.”
I frown at him again, but he doesn’t say anything this time. Instead, he steps forward, leaving me against the wall, and approaches the sparkling, white-rimmed portal. For a terrifying moment, I think he’s about to walk into it.
He doesn’t. He starts murmuring something so quietly I cannot discern the words. Even if I could, I’m not sure I would be able to understand them. Perhaps magic has a different language than Arbasa.
He’s a black silhouette against the shining starlight. He’s almost as tall as the portal, with a long cloak hanging from his broad shoulders. I’m surprised to find that, when the light casts him in stark relief, he wears a hood covering his head. He lifts his arms wide, as if to embrace the world beyond him.
I stare, transfixed, waiting for something terrible to happen. Waiting for the white starlight to start crackling, perhaps burning him, or for him to fall straight into the portal and drift away into a world I don’t understand.
He grabs the edges of the portal. Which doesn’t seem possible, but at this point, I’m operating under the assumption that literally anything is possible.
As he speaks, he pulls. He steps one of his legs back, as though bracing with effort. His arms flex as he bows his head, still speaking under his breath, and beneath his grip, the portal starts to shrink. My eyes widen. He grunts, throwing his full weight into what he does.
But he said in the Golden Hall that blood was the way to close that portal. My blood opened it. So why doesn’t he use his blood?
I watch as he forces the portal into the size of a head cushion, then catches it between his hands like a ball of fire and keeps shoving down on it. The smaller it gets, the dimmer its light becomes, and the more the edges crackle, as if it’s trying and failing to resist.
Then it’s the size of my fist. I scurry to the side to see what happens next, since his back is to me. He holds it in his palms now, and I watch with wide eyes as he crushes it between his hands, the light snuffed out.
I only know he opens his hand when I catch the glow of his wrist tattoo, and the faintest diamond of light hovering in his palm.
He tilts his fingers, and lets that spark fall to the ground. A small blade appears in his hand, and he slices across his thumb, presses its bleeding pad to the floor. The spark is swallowed up in darkness.
the dark room before the Neverseen King can say anything to me. My mind is spinning, reeling, and I’m suddenly aware of how desperately hungry I am. Was it just this morning that we had the second competition, that Safya murdered Itr?
I need to get back to my own room. Think, plan. Sort through what I’ve learned today. Perhaps Eshe will have found me supplies, and I can start on my floor plan of the palace.
The last thing I want to do is run into any of the women. I don’t want to answer questions, I don’t want to be polite, and I don’t want to be murdered. By Raha or anyone else.
He shuts the door behind us. I don’t turn around.
It’s foolish, really, to turn my back on the Neverseen King, who has just demonstrated some strange magic. Magic that I don’t understand. I don’t trust him, but at the same time, part of me knows he won’t stab me in the back. At least, not yet.
I ought to say something to him. Some deferential pleasantries that show I am a loyal subject who knows her place.
Instead, I flee.
I don’t give him a chance to call out to me. My hand still tingles from his touch, and no amount of clenching and unclenching will make it stop. I need to get away from him so I can clear my head.
Making a beeline for the door in this bare hallway that led to the spiral staircase, it hits me only now how odd it is that such a grand staircase leads to such an unadorned part of the palace. I shove the thought away; there are vastly more important mysteries to work out first.
I reach out, grab the brass doorknob, and swing the door open.
I’m immediately face to face with Mahja. Her nose is only a hand’s breadth away from mine.
I leap backward, my heart nearly flying out of my throat. No sound escapes me except the tiniest gasp. I’ve drawn two knives in a flash.
Instinctively, my gaze rakes over her for any sign of weapons, but she seems unarmed. Her hands are empty, listless at her side. That is when I take in the rest of her. Her swaying form, her twitching fingers, her skin that has drained of all its color. Her eyes that stare wide and unfocused.
Something’s wrong with her.
“Mahja?” comes the Neverseen King’s voice from behind me. His footsteps are heavy, quick, as he reaches my side.
Just in time to watch the girl fall forward.
I jump back. Black spots erupt across my vision. My breathing comes hard and fast.
The Neverseen King catches Mahja before she hits the floor. It is a strange contrast, the girl’s paleness and solidity against his dark coalescing shadow. There is a sweep of cloak as he lifts her up into his arms.
“Emin!” he thunders so loudly I flinch. His voice is nothing like it was when he said my name and told me not to be afraid. “Emin! Mahja, can you hear my voice? Emin!”
I stand frozen against the hall’s wall, my breath shallow, my heart barely beating. The Neverseen King’s voice, loud and powerful enough to shatter glass, goes on shouting, but all I can hear is the panic in his voice. True panic. Panic I know too well. The kind of panic that is contagious.
Someone is running up the stairs. The steward’s face comes into view, with his ramrod straight back and his drooping cheeks. His face is set in hard lines, a contrast to the frantic notes of the sultan’s voice.
What is happening? What is happening? What is happening?
I cannot stop that one question from repeating in a vicious cycle through my mind, like an echo through an empty cavern. It’s a question that will hollow me out, make me shrink into a ball on the ground and hug my knees to my chest, rocking until it’s all over.
“Get all the women to their rooms immediately,” commands the Neverseen King to the steward. “Get meals sent to them and tell the servants to shelter. Don’t let anyone out tonight, House!”
A draft rushing through the hallway, ruffling my hair, is the House’s immediate response.
I cannot move.
“I can take her,” says the steward, reaching out for Mahja.
“No,” snarls the sultan, pulling her closer. “It might not be too late to save her. Just get the rest safe before they fall ill too.”
He cares about her. The realization startles me.
Then his head swivels, and the power of his pulsing, frantic energy fixes on me. “Go with him. Do not leave your rooms until I send someone saying it’s safe.”
I don’t move. I stay against the wall as if I’m a new hallway fixture, grown into the floor. A breathing statue. The steward is at my side in an instant, grabbing hold of my elbow. I snarl like a wild animal, ready to stab him to pieces. But he knocks aside one of my knives and pushes me into motion, stronger than I anticipated. Once I’m moving, however, I don’t fight him. I flee, past the Neverseen King, past Mahja’s collapsed form in his shadow arms, down the stairs, gasping, angry at how slow I am, how tall this staircase is. With a growl, I leap on top of the banister and slide the rest of the way to the bottom, almost falling several times from the curvature.
I slide off the banister, land on my feet, and break into a run.
Eshe. Eshe. Eshe.
“Nadira?”
Her voice makes me spin around, panting. She’s standing just inside the open doorway to the courtyard, the light breeze and sunshine catching the dark strands of her hair, twirling them around her raised eyebrows and puckered lips. Her sirwal hangs differently on her frame than it did earlier, like it’s weighted down. She’s found me supplies, then.
“What’s the matter?” she asks.
“I don’t know!” I cry in return. I reach her side in a flash, grab hold of her sleeve, and drag her after me as I start running again.
“You can’t drag me without telling me what’s going on!”
I ignore her, hurrying faster. “Stars, Eshe, why are you so slow?”
She chooses that very moment to trip and stumble. I catch her upper arm and drag her back to her feet. It’s good that I’m taller and stronger than her; we hardly slow for a second before we’re off again. I drag her up the servants’ staircase I’ve used before—though I suspect the large stairway would get us there too—onto the second floor where our rooms are.
“Nadiiiira,” she whines, panting. “I need answers!”
“You need to run faster!”
“Answers!”
“Faster!”
“Answers!” she shrieks as I fling open my door, practically toss Eshe inside, and shove it closed. With a flick of my wrist, I throw the bolt.
And then I stop. Breathe. Turn around.
Eshe is gaping at me, her eyebrows a tangled mess of furrows and confusion and alarm. “What is going on?” she demands, her voice low and serious.
I step away from the door, my hands running over each of my knives by habit, checking to ensure they’re all in place. “Something’s wrong,” I say, keeping my voice equally low. I grab my leather-bound set of things for my knife care—the Neverseen King had apparently brought it from my room—and set it on the bed. I climb atop it, cross my legs, and pull out my halah stone. I take my smallest knife from my shin sheath beneath the layers of the fabric of my sirwal, and begin swiping the blade against stone.
My hands fall into the familiar strokes. One, two, three. My heart calms, my breathing evens, and my body sinks into the one scrap of safety it finds. It allows my racing thoughts to clear enough for me to address Eshe, who stands scowling at me with her arms crossed over her chest.
“Mahja is sick,” I say. “The sultan and I found her.”
Six, seven, eight.
“How unfortunate,” says Eshe with an unexpected amount of sarcasm. “One less treacherous knife to worry about.”
“The sultan panicked when he saw her.”
“She’s a favorite too, eh? How does it feel to be lumped in with her?” Eshe’s tone makes it clear what she thinks of Mahja. This surprises me, because excluding city guards, Eshe thinks well of people to a fault. Perhaps she feels betrayed by Safya and now doesn’t know what to think about the rest of the women.
“He demanded that we all stay locked in our rooms until someone comes to get us.”
“Oh, so now he’s using paranoia to get us to submit to him?”
“Eshe.”
My hand moves faster. Twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen.
“What?” she snaps, glowering at me. “Don’t Eshe me.”
“I think something is wrong. And I think that because I’ve finally figured out what is going on at this palace.”
She blinks, and the scowl is gone in a flash, replaced by wide, eager eyes. “What? What did you discover?”
My hand stops, my blade hovering over the stone. I lift my gaze from the silver-threaded embroidery on my sirwal contrasted against the bronze skin of my ankles. I meet Eshe’s eyes.
It feels preposterous to say, but after the nebula, the goblins in the Golden Hall, and those dozens upon dozens of strange, magical doors I’ve seen all over the palace, it’s the one thing that makes sense.
“This,” I say slowly, carefully, “is a palace of portals.”
