in a dream.
The Neverseen King holds out his hand to me. No remnants of the tattoo from our earlier bargain gleam on his wrist. For a moment, I want to snub him like he has snubbed me. I want to turn the embarrassment on him.
But instead, I place my hand in his. It is both a familiar and alarmingly new sensation to have his large fingers close around my slender ones. The hand that wields magic holding the one that bears a blade.
Then he draws me to his side, to the center of the starlit ballroom.
What if I don’t want to be merely a weapon? What if I want . . . something more?
He guides me until I face him, my hand still in his. Though I cannot see his eyes, we hold each other’s gaze as the music begins—soft, sweet, lilting. Like a gentle frolic through a garden of perfumed roses. His other hand comes to rest on my waist, making my breath hitch.
“I—I don’t know this dance,” I say quickly, my words stumbling over each other. “I’ve never danced with a man before.”
“I will guide you,” comes his oddly gentle response.
With that, he leads me into the dance. I nearly sputter, clutching his hand and his upper arm like I will drown without them. “I don’t know what to do with my feet!”
He pulls me closer, so I’m face to face with his throat. That tingling scent of magic tickles my nostrils, yet beyond it is something richly spiced with a comforting musk. His smell. “Lean into me and relax. Your feet will find their place.”
My hands don’t relinquish their death grip on him, but when I look down, my feet move with his. I’m not tripping over myself or stomping on his toes. In fact, it’s almost as if I’ve danced this before.
Perhaps I am dreaming after all.
After a full turn around the room, I tear my gaze from my feet and look up.
He stares down at me.
I swallow, glancing to the side. “I’m not sure what I did to offend you, but I don’t appreciate you attempting to punish me by making me wait this long before you asked me to dance.”
He pulls me closer, ducking to bring his mouth near my ear. My breath catches. “How my heart beats faster, little assassin, knowing that being deprived of my attention is a punishment for you.”
I jerk my head away from his, scowling. “I don’t need your sarcasm. That is not what I meant and you know it.”
“Do I?” He chuckles, a dark sound that spills down my spine. “I smell your jealousy, Mourner. But it is not nearly as potent as what I felt smelling that human boy’s scent on you. If he had stayed longer in your room, I would have been obliged to rip him limb from limb.”
“Simply for touching me?”
“You are one of mine.”
“I think the ‘one of’ is the problem here,” I say dryly. “I’d prefer if you focused your jealousy on another one of yours and left me alone. I cannot say competing for a man suits my disposition.”
He snorts, and if I didn’t know better, I’d think he was grinning. “No, it certainly doesn’t, because you hate sharing.”
“Do I?” I fix a stern glare at him.
“Tell me, Nadira”—he draws close to me once again, and my heart leaps in response—“if we were the only ones in this ballroom, if there wasn’t a single other soul in the world besides you and me . . . would you be glad I hold you in my arms?”
My lips part, the breath stolen from my lungs. Then I set my jaw firmly and look over his shoulder at a distant hanging star. “Have you asked all the women this?”
“So you would be glad.”
“No!” I sputter, blinking rapidly as if that will bring my composure back under my control.
“Then why is your heart pounding? Why does your hand tremble in mine? Why is your skin flushed? Surely it isn’t because you fear me, O assassin?”
“I do fear you,” I say. It seems the only admission I can make that will redirect him from his alarming observations.
His grip tightens on my hand, his voice pitching lower. “How adept you are at saying truth while avoiding it altogether.”
Why did I ever long for him to ask me to dance? I should have been grateful he spared me from this misery for as long as he did! “And how adept you are at—”
“Making you uncomfortable?”
“That is not what I was—”
He leans forward again, bringing his mouth to my ear and whispering, “Would you like to know why it took me so long to ask you to dance, Nadira al-Risya? Because I fear I am not so heartless as I should like to be, and I confess that the sight of you adorned like the queen sent my own heart racing. But brighter than any of these jewels”—His hand slips from mine to touch my dangling earrings, the back of his knuckles brushing my neck—“are your eyes. Though I live in shadow, I feel the weight of them, like a mountain upon my shoulders, a blade through my heart. You are lovely, Nadira, and I wish for . . .”
He stops. And does not continue.
My pulse thunders in my ears, my feet stumbling just enough to make my belly swoop low in my abdomen. I open my mouth, but my voice won’t come. I try again. “Why do you live in the shadows?”
“Because I am a fae living in a human world.”
The fact that he answered me catches me by surprise. Then, before I can respond, the Neverseen King sends me twirling under his arm. His arm extends, his hand still gripping mine. My eyes lock on a jewel-like glimmer where his eyes are. And then he’s spinning me back, pulling me close once more.
This dance isn’t exhilarating. It is heady, like centuries old wine. I will be drunk before it ends. And suddenly, I do not care that we aren’t alone, that there are five other women watching us. We dance to a song of stars, twirling faster and faster through inky night. My feet move of their own accord, my gown like fluttering wings as I soar higher and higher.
“Lean back,” comes the deep voice of the Neverseen King as he lets go of my hand to hold tightly to my waist. I obey, and he spins us in place together. Then he catches my hand and twirls me before bringing me back into his arms.
I don’t mean to. I truly don’t. But somehow, with the music threading through my blood and the magic of dance . . . a laugh bubbles up out of my throat, a bright golden laugh. When I meet his gaze, he’s smiling. I cannot see it, but I know it deep in my soul, through the strange connection we’ve had since the first moment I heard the sound of his voice. I hear it again now.
“You, my lovely assassin, are the brightest star in all the world.”
Is this . . . what happiness feels like? I give him a teasing grin. “A fitting bride, then, for the King of Night.”
The dance slows, but his grip on my waist only tightens. Is it about to end? My entire being mourns the loss of the music, of his nearness, even while I still possess them.
“I meant what I wrote you,” he says, and the words are nearly a rumble, emotion I cannot place lacing each syllable. “Say the word, and I will end this competition and take you for my wife.”
The music resolves in one last, lingering note that continues in my heart long after the last strain has faded. We stand unmoving on the dance floor, one of his hands still gripping mine, the other wrapped almost possessively around my waist.
I open my mouth to speak, but no sound comes out. It’s like we’re locked up in a court of silence, without so much as an indrawn breath to anchor me to reality.
Be his wife. Be his queen.
“I . . .” Nothing else will leave my lips.
Win the competition. Marry the Neverseen King. Betray him.
You are never safe with me.
A moment ago, I was so weightless I could fly. Now, I am chained to the ground. I take one step backward, giving a tug on my hand. He releases it, but still his arm remains wrapped around my waist.
“Nadira . . .” he whispers.
“I—I . . .” Air knifes in and out of my lungs, squeezing my chest tight. The words come out in a gasp. “I . . . can’t.”
Then I’m twisting out of his arms, all but fleeing the ballroom in a flutter of shimmering silk. Even when Eshe rushes to my side, I shake off her grip on my arm. “I’m fine,” I say, probably too sharply. “I will return shortly.”
Why am I making promises to her I cannot keep?
I will not be returning.
rapid descent toward the horizon. Does the rule of not being out after dark still apply on nights when the Neverseen King holds a dance? Or is that rule suspended?
It might not matter.
I hurry down the long corridors, past strange doors, my feet silent on the cold tiles. A cool breeze chases after me, rustling my skirts and blowing my hair in my face. The setting sun casts the palace in a deep orange, the shadows of marble pillars thrown long against locked doors. One such door is overgrown with climbing roses slowly folding their blossoms closed, and the scent is nearly overwhelming when I pass it. It takes me back to the night the Neverseen King prevented me from leaving my room.
Maybe the Neverseen King will protect me from Jabir while I am here, but I know it as sure as I know my own name: the Neverseen King will be my death.
Now is the time to cut my losses, to give up on this world of magic, to return to my own world of blood and dust. More than ever, I’m glad I slipped that note into Eshe’s knife sheath when I slit her skirts.
At your first chance, escape through the main entrance of the palace. If you’re careful about it, I have reason to believe the sultan will not stop you. Stay safe.
When I reach the banister, my shoulders sag. I extend one hand, then let it drop. Goodbyes are the most bitter things in the world.
Why are you turning your back on him? part of me wants to know.
I clench my jaw, slipping out into the courtyard. The fountain still burbles, but only barely, the water bubbling at the top and languidly dripping to the lower level. Shadows lengthen around me, as though darkness wishes to wrap us all in her cold embrace. Ice fills my belly, reaching freezing tendrils into my limbs, building pressure inside me.
He wants you. No one else does.
I follow the path Kolb took only last night, making my way straight for the gate in a flurry of shimmering magenta silk. My mouth draws in a thin line as I hoist myself onto a window’s ledge, then drop down into another covered portico. I wait, crouched in the shadows. When nothing pricks my senses, I continue moving.
Why do you run from him? the voice demands.
Don’t you know? I say back in my mind. It is better to be unwanted, than to be wanted by the Neverseen King.
It is a terrifying thing to be wanted by a King of Night who has vowed never to love.
Or, if my intuition is correct: who has vowed never to love . . . again.
I reach the gate’s courtyard. I stand in the darkness of the third archway, breathing in through my nose, out between my teeth. The sun’s last rays shine into the courtyard, like liquid gold spilling across the flagstone and dripping into the shrubberies. My eyes snag on the recesses in the wall, and when I stare long enough, I can almost convince myself a tall shadow stands there, watching me.
Why do you go back to Jabir, like a dog to its vomit? The memory of his voice calls to me.
I’m not going back to Jabir. I never will. I will fight with tooth and claw against him if he tries to take me. I’m not the little girl whose family he murdered, the little girl who wept and screamed but could do nothing.
That girl is dead.
But the Mourner lives, and she will be free.
My heart nearly pounds out of my chest when I take the first step out of the shadows, into the light. The next step is easier and easier, until I’m running as fast as I can for that gate. It is open slightly, and a strong gust of wind blows it open further.
When my slipper lands on sand, I stop. I’m out of the gate.
I turn around.
Wind catches my hair, blowing sand into my eyes as I stare through the gate at the courtyard, the hibiscus bushes, the three arches that lead to the rest of the palace complex.
I tilt my head back, sucking in a deep breath and grinning.
Free.
“Not yet,” I growl to myself, refusing to give in to the impulse to throw my arms wide and spin while laughing up at the sky. I’m not free until I’ve fully escaped Jabir. I need to get as far away as I can, as quickly as I can. If that means braving the Great Desert, then so be it. I’ll need supplies; I might have to find a caravan to travel with. One that won’t ask questions.
All this time. Everything that Eshe and I endured here at this palace—we could have left. We could have walked right out that gate unhindered.
My step halts suddenly.
Fathuna.
How many times has she said she only wants to go home? I have my overly cautious nature to thank for my delay in realizing that we were not truly prisoners here. Dabria has apparently been coming and going as she pleases. Gaya and Safya seem to have aims for the queenship and don’t want to leave.
But Fathuna?
She isn’t cautious like me. She’s loud, bold, and demanding. She would have been the type to march out here in broad daylight and open the gates, just testing if anything stopped her.
Fathuna lied.
There is something here that she wants. Something she doesn’t want the rest of us knowing.
Something is wrong.
Eshe.
I’ve gotten so caught up in my own struggles, my own thoughts and desires, that I abandoned Eshe in a pit of vipers. Giving her instructions to get out isn’t enough. She is drawn to trouble like a moth to a flame, and there has been relatively little trouble with her while she’s been here, which means she’s overdue for a disaster.
The moment I slip back in through the gate, the wrongness hits me like a stone to the gut.
It’s in the air, in the play of the shadows, in the angle of the sunbeams on flagstone. And it’s been wrong ever since I left the ballroom; I had simply been too preoccupied to notice it before.
Drawing a knife in each hand, I slink close to the patches of darkness between pillars and arches, crouching in corners behind shrubbery. The count starts in my head by habit.
One, two, three.
I slip forward two more steps, dodging against a pillar and peeking out.
Nothing looks wrong. The palace complex is as it should be. But everything is wrong. Uneasiness simmers in my bones. Ought I to call out to the Neverseen King? Would he hear me like he heard me in the maze?
I don’t want to need him.
Ten, eleven, twelve.
I reach the courtyard, and though the sun hasn’t fully set, the fountain is completely silent. Restlessness drips down my spine. I enter the palace, every sense on high alert. The corridor has gone dark—darker than it should be. The banister is stiff before me. Reaching out two of my fingers, I touch its surface.
It’s ice-cold.
What is wrong? I send the words shooting into the wood through my touch.
No response.
Except . . . the very faintest shiver.
Lights spare me and the way my fist clenches as resolve hardens like rock around my heart. If someone scared my banister, I will make them pay.
But protecting Eshe is more important than avenging the palace furniture’s fear.
Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two.
I take three more steps. And abruptly stop.
There, not five paces from me, is a tall, unmoving shadow. One that is very much alive. Teeth flash in a visible grin. Then, a voice washes over me, from the top of my head to the tips of my toenails in pure horror. A voice made of laughter, drunkenness, and the spirits of the dead.
“Come play with me, little human.”
