hours. Up and down hallways, peering at the different doors I dare not open, distracting myself with their strange designs from the whirl of thoughts crowding my brain. I visit the banister and waste far too much time stroking it and delighting in its creaking moans of happiness.
There is no sign of Gaya or Safya. I’m not nearly as unsettled by the quiet fullness of the palace air as I was when I first arrived. Granted, it is early afternoon by now and there is something far less menacing about a place when the sun reigns at its zenith than during the depths of midnight.
At some point, I blink, and the door I’m facing comes into focus. It’s a pair of towering oak doors, carved with motifs of dancing creatures with wings. Most of them seem human, but others resemble butterflies or dragonflies.
I haven’t opened any doors I’ve come across today.
But I open this one.
Darkness greets me. This darkness is warm, inviting—like an embrace in the dead of night. There are no stars hung from the ceiling today, no fireflies illuminating the ballroom. No sweeping strains of music.
The door gives a creak, then a thud as it shuts behind me.
Night becomes my shroud. It echoes with each of my steps across the polished floor to the center of the room. And for once, I’m not afraid of it. I’m not waiting for the shock of a blade in my back. Perhaps I ought to, considering what happened here last night.
But I’m simply not afraid.
It’s a feeling I long to bottle up, to save and savor for those long hours between dusk and dawn when I inevitably try and fail to fall asleep.
What would life be if I wasn’t afraid all the time?
When I’m standing in the midst of the ballroom, I close my eyes and lift my arms. It’s not difficult to imagine him here with me, holding me again as we spin through dreams and starlight. I move my feet in an awkward attempt at last night’s dance. Without him to guide me through the unfamiliar steps, I stumble more than glide. As I go, however, I fumble less. My muscle memory takes over, carrying me back through one of the few moments of my life when I was truly happy.
Even though I’m alone, I smile. There will always be happiness here, in these steps, these movements. I want to remember them forever, no matter where I go. I lock them deep inside myself where no one can take them from me.
A hand catches hold of mine.
Another slips around my waist, drawing me to a solid chest.
My eyes open. I stop dancing.
The Neverseen King stares down at me, our fingers intertwined and our hearts pounding the same erratic rhythm. He says nothing, and neither do I.
Then, in silence, he draws me back into the dance. We start slow, keeping to the basic steps. He sends me spinning under his arm, then twirls me until my back is flush to his chest for the span of two steps. It is enough for his heart to pound against my shoulder, enough for me to breathe in that scent of his that my body cannot help but associate with safety as his hand splays across my middle.
He spins me out again. When he brings me back to face him, this time I’m the one to step closer to him, to tighten my grip on his upper arm. His head dips forward toward mine, his mouth coming near my ear as his breath tickles my neck. But he says nothing, and we continue dancing. When I close my eyes, I can almost imagine threads of music wrapping around us, entangling our souls with every step, every spin.
We inch closer, until there’s hardly a whisper of air between us as we dance. His lips hover at my hairline, warming my scalp with each exhale. Instead of having a chaste hand on my waist, at some point his grip shifts, until his arm is completely wrapped around me. Holding me to him.
We slow our dance until we stand still in the center of the ballroom. His arm keeps me close as we stare at each other—king and assassin. Shadow and woman. I wait for something I cannot name as my heart thuds painfully in my chest, so hard he certainly must feel it.
He bends forward again with agonizing slowness, until he leans his forehead against mine. My breath catches in my throat. He seems to hesitate. Then his nose gives mine a little nuzzle, almost as if he cannot help it. Somehow it’s that scrap of contact, not his hand in mine or his arm around me, that makes me tilt my chin up to his.
Please kiss me, I want to beg. I want to know if this is real, that I’m not imagining this connection between us.
But the moment I lean forward, to span the distance between our mouths, he turns his face away. Such a slight movement—yet it hits me like a blow. A blow that leaves behind a cavernous aching in my chest. That ache is quickly replaced by coldness, hardness. I tighten my grip on his hand and shoulder.
“Why?” I whisper.
“You know why.” The words are a ragged growl. And yet—he doesn’t let go of me.
He wants to be close to me. Just not too close.
I won’t have it.
“Because you don’t want to be heartbroken when I die,” I say, and though I try to keep the coldness out of them, the edge of dark ruthlessness lingers. “How much faith do you have in me, Neverseen King? In my survival of Lulythinar?”
His jaw works, and he still doesn’t turn his face back to me. “I have great faith in you.”
But greater faith in the overpowering strength of Lulythinar, it seems. I chew on my cheek as I consider this.
He wants an assassin for his bride, does he? He wants a woman of strength—a woman who will fight for him, for all the worlds. A woman who will kiss death.
Very well.
I will show him what it is to have a killer for a wife.
“Bargain with me,” I say, lifting my chin.
Those words almost seem to rip his arms from me. He steps back, and one of his great hands lifts to scratch his neck. An oddly uncertain gesture for one so powerful, so other.
“What bargain?” His deep voice is a mere rumbling in the shadows.
“A kiss—”
“No,” he answers immediately, turning away.
“—for an answer,” I finish.
He stops. Glances back at me. “What?”
“If you kiss me, I will give you my answer to your offer of marriage.”
His throat bobs. “If you make me kiss you only for you to say no—”
“Then you can focus your attentions on Safya,” I say, and then add dryly, “or Gaya.”
He is quiet. Considering. The air we breathe turns thick, and it coats my lungs like syrup.
“Deal.”
My wrist burns, and this time when I look down, the glowing tattoo on my skin is of a knife, its hilt a crosshatch over my pulse, its blade pointing toward my elbow. The Neverseen King glances down at the matching, glowing tattoo on his wrist.
And then he looks up at me.
My heart pounds. Until I can think of nothing else—nothing but that first step he takes toward me, then the second, and the third. He stands before me, staring down at me, his eyes flashing.
He makes no move for a long moment.
Perhaps both of us are waiting for the other. Perhaps he is as terrified as I am.
Then, slowly, one of his great hands reaches toward me—pauses in midair—before continuing until his fingers land lightly beneath my jaw. He tilts my face up toward his. I swallow as his thumb brushes over my bottom lip.
This is a horrible idea.
A horrible idea I do not regret. Not as he bends toward me, not as his hand slides from my jaw to tangle in my hair as he pulls me against him. My breath shudders out of my lungs as my eyes flutter closed—and his exhale is warm across my face.
His lips brush mine, and that single contact sends sparks straight to my gut.
Then his mouth is on mine, his hands in my hair, around my waist, pulling me against him with sudden urgency. I kiss him back, searching for the answer I need from him as I reach up and wrap my arms around his neck.
Time stops. I’m hardly aware of anything except his lips moving with mine, his arms crushing me to him. Suddenly my back hits a wall. I open my eyes to realize we’ve moved across the room, and he pins me while he kisses me.
He wants this. He wants me. He wants us. Not just a sacrificial bride. He can pretend all he wants, but the truth is plain. My heart soars into the stars, with hope and dreams of a future of belonging.
He truly isn’t as heartless as he pretends to be.
Unfortunately, the same is true for me.
The ache that starts in my chest is so subtle I don’t notice it until it builds and sharpens into something like a dagger. The longer he kisses me, the deeper he kisses me, the more I break into tiny, fracturing shards.
It’s too much. Too much, and I am drowning. I’m going to pass out. If there was ever a moment I didn’t want to pass out—sands and stars!
He pulls back abruptly, catching my head as it lolls backward. “Nadira?”
I breathe hard, my chest heaving. His hand is still around my waist, holding me so close his belt digs into my stomach. His other hand, wrapped around the back of my head and tangled into my hair, slides to my throat and presses two fingers to the hollow of it.
“Breathe,” he urges, sounding strained. “Breathe, Nadira.”
My airways open, and I tilt my head to the side, staring into pitch darkness while I pant. The Neverseen King remains where he is, letting go of me and placing his forearms against the wall, encasing me as he leans his forehead against mine.
“There,” he gasps. “I kissed you. Now tell me your answer.”
My head spins and spins, until the world tilts away from me. I want to reach up, wrap my arms around him, and cling to him. I want him to say sweet things to me. I want him to kiss me again.
But even the thought of those things causes a surge of vertigo and sends my gut roiling.
He will be the death of me.
I’m not ready to die.
“What is your answer?” he asks again, and the strain still hasn’t left his voice. Neither has he pulled away from me. Does he long to kiss me again, as I long to kiss him?
I drag my gaze through darkness, until I find the faint glow of the tattoo pulsing at my wrist. It’s been sliced clean down the middle—half of it gone, fulfilled. The other half remains. But when I continue turning my head toward him, when I find his face hovering not even a hand’s breath from mine, when I realize I’m encased by his powerful arms and shoulders, I . . . can’t.
I’m not ready. I thought I was, but I’m not.
I meet his gaze anyway.
The air changes in that instant when he realizes his mistake. He curses under his breath and pushes away from me.
“I’m a fool,” he growls.
I straighten as cold air blankets me from head to toe. The world stops shifting around me, and my stomach settles now that he’s not so close anymore. My mental clarity returns, and with it, a stabbing guilt.
I shove that guilt away. I’ll deal with it later.
“I will give you an answer,” I say, drawing up to my full height. “But the terms of our bargain do not dictate when. I will tell you when I have an answer.”
He rakes a hand through his hair, clenching it into a fist. His low voice scrapes down my spine. “I didn’t think you this cruel, Nadira.”
“Neither of us is as heartless as we pretend,” I growl back. “But if we stop pretending, we lose everything. You ask for me to lay my very life down at your feet without you promising anything in return. Allow me my cruelties, Sultani. They are the only things keeping me alive.”
He should know that cruelty is nothing but a mask to make weak people feel strong.
“Then was my kiss supposed to be my promise of . . . what, Nadira? What do you want from me in exchange for your life?” Anger threads his voice, but it cannot completely conceal the rawness underscoring each word. The desperation.
I lower my voice. “If I am to give you my life, then you must give me yours. I will take nothing less.”
“My life isn’t mine to give,” he shoots back. “It never has been, and it never will be.”
“Then you shouldn’t dare ask for mine!”
“If this was about me, you know I never would have!”
“If this was about you, you’d have left me to suffer under Jabir’s hand until the day I—”
“Stop!” he growls, catching my clenched fist out of the air, gripping my wrist tightly. “I beg you to understand—”
I pull on my wrist, but he doesn’t release it. “Let go of me,” I demand, and the moment the words are out of my mouth, realization hits me. Suddenly, there is something I desperately need to know. “Why, Sultani? Why?”
“Why, what?” A note of . . . something enters his voice. Is it fear?
I meet his gaze, that jewel glimmer in the darkness surrounding us. “Why won’t you let me go?”
Silence slices through the air.
Counting starts in my mind.
One, two, three, four.
Five, six, seven.
Eight, nine, ten.
My chest rises, falls.
Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen.
Fifteen.
Sixteen.
Seventeen.
Does he even know the answer?
Whatever he says—it might be enough for me. It might make me throw everything else to the wind and promise myself to him. It might be enough for me to risk it all, to take my stand at his side.
Or it might make me walk away forever.
Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two.
I stand barely a full pace from him, his grip on my wrist the only thing linking us in this shroud of night. Despite our proximity, it is like we stand on two ragged cliff edges, a chasm between us. Neither of us wanting the distance, but both of us terrified to take that first step.
What would it be like to never be afraid?
What would it be like to take that step, to risk it all?
But for what?
What benefit could outweigh the cost set before us?
“Because,” he says at last, and his voice is like a cracked clay pot—threatening to break at any moment. His fingers tighten on my wrist. Is that the slightest tug, trying to pull me closer?
I wait, breathless.
“Because something changed inside me that moment you walked into the Golden Hall on that first day and looked straight at me. Because, you, Nadira”—His voice drops, its edges painted in anguish—“for the first time, in ninety-nine years . . . You have given me hope.”
I stare at him, struck dumb.
“These many years have been a torture for me. Unending, spent in the dark, alone, with nothing but a ceaseless battle to fight. There was no reprieve from sorrow, from the constant ache of emptiness.”
My vision blurs, making the gleam of his eyes refract like diamonds on welling pools of unshed tears.
Torture.
Unending.
Spent in the dark.
Alone.
No reprieve from the sorrow, the emptiness.
Something pulses between us—our broken hearts beating in tandem. It aches, aches so sharply I want to bend over, to wrap my arms around my knees and rock myself into oblivion. To encase myself in ice, in nothingness. But the Neverseen King’s ragged inhales, his vice-like grip on my wrist, keep me anchored. They bind me to this sea of pain, holding me while the tempest rages around us.
“But you, Nadira, you—” He chokes.
I close my eyes and bow my head, letting silent sobs wrack my body, rattle my shoulders.
“For the first time, I have hope. Hope for a new beginning, a new meaning. Hope for a different end. Hope that there might be goodness in the future.” His voice has dropped to a whisper, but then, his grip tightens on my wrist. Almost painfully.
And to my shock—his hand starts glowing. Golden light bursts from his fingers, striking my eyes, illuminating his powerful forearm and each sinew that threads beneath his skin. I look up in shock, wet trails of tears carved into my cheeks, and find his eyes glowing with that same golden light. They ring sapphire blue irises, shooting golden light into my face, my agape mouth.
When he speaks again, his voice isn’t broken. It is whole, undergirded by a soul-deep strength that hits me like a tidal wave, almost knocking me back a step.
“I will never let go again, Nadira. Whether you choose to fight by my side or not, I refuse to lose this hope. With you or without you . . .” The golden glow subsides as his voice lowers, dropping as his hand loosens on my wrist, shifting to thread his fingers through mine. “Dawn will come again.”
Dawn will come again.
Can I believe that? My own dawn was so short—it ended so suddenly with Jabir’s blade. My parents’ blood. That look in Baba’s eyes when he fixed his gaze on me for the last time as that sword came for his neck.
The light vanished from my life the moment it vanished from his eyes.
Dawn isn’t coming back, the voice inside me cries. It is swallowed up in night.
Is night so bad? Is hopelessness so bad?
I look up at the Neverseen King, at the glow fading from his eyes.
Perhaps dawn will come for him.
But me?
I am a murderer. I have the blood of dozens on my hands. If dawn never came, I would deserve it. All those names flood my mind, each one etched into my very soul. I remember their faces, their families. I remember every detail of the plots I devised to kill each one.
I never missed a target.
Every name that Jabir gave me—dead.
If I refuse to hope, to believe, then I will never be disappointed.
If I give up on this, on him, he cannot hurt me. He cannot betray me, or take my life, or let me die. But if I do hope, then he will have the power to utterly and completely destroy me.
“Nadira,” the Neverseen King growls, tightening his grip on my hand. “Don’t give into the despair.”
“Don’t give in?” I repeat as ice wraps around my heart, as hollowness swallows my soul. “You’re mistaken, Sultani. I am despair.”
And then, I throw myself into that ice deep inside me, the ice that has always been there. I let it close over my head. I let it drown me—I don’t fight the panic. Ice coats my lungs, chokes out my air. It surrounds me, fills me, blocking out the distant sound of the Neverseen King screaming my name.
I focus on the core of my gut, that place where that voice lives, speaks.
Yes, it rasps, delighted. Give in. Stop fighting. Let me make you stronger. Let me make you never afraid again.
I will never be afraid again, I say back, wrapping myself in that ice. Burying myself. I will never be afraid again. No one will ever hurt me.
Because I won’t care.
I will be death.
I will be the Mourner, and my blade will strike true. It will cut, slice, carve—and I will forget every name. I will stop trying to wash the blood off my hands. I will embrace its stains, its stench.
The first life I will take is Jabir’s. I’ll savor it. I’ll show him the face of the monster he created. Everything he did to me, I’ll do to him. His pleas and cries of pain will be my anthem.
I’ll show them all why they feared the Mourner.
I will be the one thing I refused to be. Until now.
I will be ruthless.
And I will enjoy every second of it.
Something dark and ugly chuckles deep inside me.
Then I explode.
