through the room, knife raised, I half expect to meet with nothing but air—proof that I am merely inventing threats of death in my dark imagination.
But a hand wraps around my wrist. A real hand. A large, strong one.
I shouldn’t have disarmed myself before bed. I reach for the knives at my biceps, only to be met with skin and cloth. I gasp, blood roaring in my mind, but I bring up my leg to land a blow to my assailant’s knee.
The pressure on my wrist and the bulky presence behind me vanishes. It didn’t let go—it simply . . . vanished. I whirl, but there’s nothing there.
Is there . . . magic in this room?
I’m crouched in the dark, eyes peeled for any sign of my attacker, but I can’t even guess where he has gone before my feet are knocked out from under me. I roll before I hit the ground, and I’m almost certain I hear the plunk of a knife into the floor where I’d been only seconds ago.
Someone is trying to kill me.
The thought shoots a bolt of terror down my spine. I shove it away, noticing that I’ve rolled into a crouch beside my knives. I grab one in each hand, and then I’m moving again as the black bulk coalesces beside me.
I can’t always be on the defensive now, can I? Not if I’m to have any hope of surviving. Even my reluctance to shed more blood tonight isn’t enough to keep my blade from flying through the air, straight at the unseen figure before me.
There’s a sharp grunt of surprise, but my knife hits the wall, not a person. He’s dodged it somehow.
Suddenly, wind rushes around me, and then a body hits me, my wrists snatched and pinned as my back hits the floor. No matter how my eyes strain in the gloom, I can make nothing out of the face above me.
I console myself that both his arms are occupied by pinning mine. He’s unlikely to stab me through my pounding heart.
A low, dark voice fills my senses.
“You are better trained than I anticipated. Delightful.”
I frown, wriggling my wrists to distract him as I tuck my knees to my chest and prepare to kick against his face. “Who sent you?”
There’s a bark of surprised laughter above me. “Sent? Surely you don’t think anyone sent me! What a notion.” He chuckles, and the sound is like a knife down my back, leaving beads of blood in its wake.
I kick.
The bottoms of my unshod feet meet with a hard, partially bare chest. I nearly let out a sound of disgusted shock at the contact of flesh on flesh, and when I try to dislodge him, he’s like a boulder above me. Unmovable and impassive.
I sag in his grip. Not because I’m out of ideas, but because I want him to believe I am. I glare at the darkness above me. “Who are you?” I ask, proud of how my voice doesn’t shake.
“Who am I? You cannot be serious.” There’s a pause. Then, in a softer, lilting version of his darkened voice, he asks, “Are you serious?”
“I do not know whom I’ve had the pleasure of being assaulted by tonight.”
Another snort. Then I grow warmer, as if he’s leaning closer.
“I am . . .” he says, pitching his voice lower, “. . . your worst nightmare.”
Now it’s my turn to snort and raise an eyebrow. “I seriously doubt it.”
He doesn’t say anything, and I almost have the impression of a head, canted to one side. I strike. I kick hard, this time lower than my first blow, intent on causing real pain.
The presence above me dissipates into nothing yet again. I don’t even look as I stab my knife behind me, hear another grunt of surprise but my blade slices through nothing. I growl, moving more by instinct than rational thought as I whirl, dodge an unseen blow, and land several of my own. My frustration mounts as none of them connect. Somehow, he is evading me, and I can’t help my disbelief. No human should be able to move so quickly. I’ve never been not able to kill something.
The weight of helplessness that settles over me is almost as alarming as the haunting feeling of blood on my hands.
Then, to my shock, I’m slammed face-first into the wall. I gasp, barely turning my head to the side in time to not break my nose. He pins my hands again, leaning his weight heavily into mine. My chest heaves against cold plaster.
Again, however, his hands are occupied with mine. I’m not sure how he intends to kill me, but if he moves quickly enough, he can release one of my wrists, snatch a knife, and stab me.
My breath comes hard and fast. “What do you want?”
“You, of course.” As if it’s obvious.
“I’m not for sale. Jabir wouldn’t—”
“Sale?” There’s a confusing sound behind me, and I’m not sure if it’s amusement or shock, or perhaps a strange combination of the two. “I don’t buy people.”
“Just kill them?”
“And kidnap them,” he replies promptly, as though we’re discussing this over a cup of qahwa and not between gritted teeth.
“Is that what you have come to do, then? Steal me away from my slaver?”
I feel him shrugging, and I nearly shake my head in bewilderment.
“You are a slave?” he asks, instead of answering a simple yes or no.
I grind my teeth. “Of sorts.”
“Then you’re better off coming with me anyway.”
“Am I?” I choke on a burst of terrified laughter. “I don’t even know who you are. Better the devil you know, right?”
“Wrong. How is it a risk to come with the devil you don’t know—yours truly, to be clear—when the current situation is so . . .” He makes a sound of disgust. “. . . Wretched?”
He might as well have stabbed me through the heart. I choke on a sob, my muscles straining against him. But I manage to swallow my tears firmly, and say, “False dichotomy. An unknown risk is always worse because you cannot prepare for it.”
A silence follows my words, and I think there’s surprise in the air between us.
“Then we must agree to disagree,” he says.
I duck, butting my head backwards as hard as I can. I hit—nothing. Yet, even before my body finishes moving, he’s pinned me again. I nearly whimper in frustration, in disbelief, that someone could overpower me without even getting injured in the process.
It’s almost as if he’s moving faster than humanly possible to avoid my blows. My life could end in the fraction of a second, any moment now, and I haven’t—
“This might be too personal of a question to ask right now,” the voice continues with a lilting edge of curiosity and maybe something else . . . something almost angry. “But why is there a fresh corpse in the other room?”
This question surprises me enough that my next attempted strike loses some of its gusto. “What?”
“You were unaware of it, I assume?”
Fresh corpse. Jabir wouldn’t have hurt Kolb or Eshe, would he? He wouldn’t—
Kolb’s sister.
My eyes widen. The realization hits deeper than I expect, even though I’ve never met the girl. I stop fighting just for a moment, panting hard against the wall. “Was it a child? How did she die?”
If Jabir killed her . . .
“I didn’t find any wounds on her. It seemed like illness.”
Those words send fire ripping through my limbs. I throw my body back against his, meeting a wall of unyielding flesh, and stab as fast as I can at his side. He dodges to one side, but I stab there too. The pressure behind me vanishes in an instant.
Jabir took in Kolb’s sister on the promise of getting her medicine, only to let her die and not tell my friend. I funnel my rage into a new attack against my shadowy assailant and don’t stop even when he has me against the wall once more.
“I still cannot believe you don’t know who I am.”
My world freezes. My jaw drops open, so far open I’m sure it’s in danger of landing on the floor. Realization floods my blood as my stomach fills with ice.
“You . . .” My voice trails off, and my throat feels like it has a frog wedged in its narrow space. I stare disbelieving up at the shadow, the face that leans close enough to mine that his warmth caresses me.
That might even be a glimmer of eyes, of teeth in the darkness surrounding us.
“Ah. So you do finally know who I am. I was beginning to give up all hope. Humans, the most forgetful race that ever breathed. But though you might have recognized me now, don’t think my feelings still aren’t hurt. They are, in fact, quite wounded.”
I don’t have enough mental energy to filter out the genuine from the sarcastic in those comments. Instead, my entire awareness seems to narrow on what I’m now sure are a pair of glittering eyes.
They are startlingly near my own.
“You are . . .”
“Out with it! We haven’t got all night!”
If I was being smart, I’d delay. I’d surprise him again, give myself more time to think, to plan, to hope that Jabir will come to my rescue. The last thought nearly makes me choke out a hysterical laugh.
But I’m not being smart. My brain is like melted emaa, swirling around the cavernous space of my skull. I can’t think. I can’t plan. I can’t even hope.
All I can do is breath: “You are the Neverseen King.”
There is a distinct sense of satisfaction in the darkness before my face. Then, he says, his voice low and rich, “A pleasure to finally, properly make your acquaintance, Nadira al-Risya. I’m afraid our introduction was vastly overdue. I’m utterly delighted. And unbearably charmed.”
Then he lets go of one wrist, and I nearly panic. He can kill me now. He will kill me now. I twist, fighting harder, but suddenly his grip turns to iron, and I am no more able to escape than I am to see the face of the monster before me. He’s much stronger than he seemed a moment ago, and with sickening dread I realize he has been letting me strike at him.
Why is my sultan here, in my room, letting me fight him?
A more chilling question occurs to me in those final moments: how does he know my name?
It’s not the razor-sharp edge of a knife that touches my face, however, but a hand. An enormous, warm hand lands to cup my face, and I gasp, its calluses catching on my upper lip. There’s muttering in the dark beyond that hand, beyond the fingers pressing against my forehead, my cheekbone, the thumb that rests on the scars along my jaw.
“Rest,” he says.
The world falls away.
