in wet clothes, but completely submerged, my chin barely above the water. I thrash, my limbs hitting something solid. Trapped—I’m trapped.
I’m drowning.
“Quit with the flailing and gasping. You’re being dramatic enough to put me to shame.”
My eyes fly open. I’m—not drowning. I’m being gripped under the armpit by a strong hand, held submerged in liquid, and above me arcs a glass ceiling and a clear blue sky. I start to look down.
Something catches my chin, tilts it so far backward that I’m staring up at the sky again. And a smirking face.
“Eshe!” I gasp.
“Don’t look down,” she says. “The water is a little . . . ahem, murky.”
My eyes widen, my head instinctively fighting her hold to look.
“Now what did I just tell you? Quit being disobedient. You’re welcome to scrub yourself though. I’d prefer to decline that responsibility if it’s all the same to you.”
“How do I scrub myself without looking?” I ask dully.
She arches her brow. “Make a plan, if you must.”
Then she thrusts a fat, slippery bar of soap that smells like lemon and jasmine into my hands, along with a brush, and lets go of me. I find my limbs are willing to move again, and I settle my toes on what feels like mosaic tiling. It’s hard to see without looking down at the water, but I can tell enough from where I’m hugging the ledge to know that I’m in a gigantic, recessed bathtub of sorts. A pool. One large enough to bathe an entire army of women.
My thoughts stutter.
“What happened?” I demand, working quickly to bathe, reassuring myself with every breath that I’m not standing in blood. Water. Water. “What—”
Eshe tugs on a lovely midnight-blue sirwal and matching tunic that I’ve never seen before, her long wet hair falling over her shoulders and dripping onto the floor. She gets that look on her face, a wry look that means something dryly sarcastic is about to pass her lips.
“Well, we were kidnapped, brought to the palace of the Neverseen King, told we were his prospective brides, and then chaos ensued and we fought an army of tiny vicious blue things. And we closed what seemed to be a portal to another world. Oh, and you passed out.”
“What happened to that girl? The one who died?”
“She’s gone.”
“Oh,” I say, a rock sinking into my gut.
“No, not that gone—that is, I don’t know if she’s dead. I was trying to help her, but I had to keep fighting, and when I turned my back for more than a few seconds, she was gone. Just . . . vanished. I didn’t see her among the other women who bathed. No one knows what happened to her.”
I shiver, blinking rapidly as I lather my arms, scrubbing beneath my fingernails. I’m just about to open my mouth to ask a question when Eshe interrupts me, straightening to her full height and lacing up the gold-threaded ties of her tunic.
“So. How does it feel to be a prospective bride? Quite thrilling, isn’t it? One of twelve, chosen out of all Arbasa.”
“I love thrills,” I say.
Eshe laughs. I marvel at how unshakeable she is. But then I remember the look I’d seen on her face in the Golden Hall. No matter how collected her composure, she can break just like me.
“We need to get out of here,” I say, lowering my voice to a whisper.
“And lose the opportunity to earn a bridegroom? I don’t think so.”
“Be serious.”
She snorts softly, rolling her eyes and crossing her arms over her chest. She stares down at me, at the soap that keeps slipping out of my grasp. “Why do they want us to keep from leaving our rooms after dark?”
I’m glad she caught the ominous tone of that command too. “Probably because they don’t want us escaping.”
A grin splits her face. “Want to test it?”
“Not until we’re certain it’s safe. Clearly this palace houses more mysteries than I originally thought. If that truly was a portal that opened to another world in the hall today, then we need to be careful.”
The understatement of the century.
Strange how not even a full day ago, I was going over my plans to assassinate a city lord, and now I’m talking about portals and other worlds. Stranger still how normal the words feel on my tongue.
“I don’t think I can wait three months for you to develop a perfect escape plan. By then, we’ll be skewered or married!”
She’s right. I bite my lip. Hard. “I suppose we have no choice but to start scouting. Immediately. You’ll have to help me, because I can’t scout this whole palace and make a plan before we’re dead or married.”
“Of course!” she chirps. “It’ll be like old times!”
“Old times . . . as in, yesterday?”
“Yesterday is old!”
I hoist myself up out of the pool, take the towel Eshe throws straight at my face, and dry myself. I didn’t know how tense I’d gotten until my limbs nearly melt with relief as every last drop is wiped from my skin. I could fall to the ground right here and sleep for days.
I didn’t die. Eshe didn’t die.
A bundle of cloth hits me in the face yet again. I catch it and shoot my friend a glare before looking down at what she’s given me. It’s an ankle-length qamis and sash, complete with delicate-but-functional sandals. Now that I am less panicked than I was when I first dressed this morning, I can notice that they’re vastly finer than anything I’ve ever worn before. Interestingly, these garments are notably more conservative in both cut and color than Eshe’s. It’s almost like whoever set them out for us knows Eshe prefers a little flash of drama, and I am drawn more to function and practicality over beauty. Yet even the gentle brown of my garments is its own sort of elegant, glossy with gold-threaded embroidery. Subtle, but tasteful.
“The sultan wants us competing in style, apparently,” she says. “Speaking of which, we’re to have another competition tomorrow. You might want to think of a plan for that. Until then—farewell! I’m off to scout!”
She doesn’t give me a chance to call after her. Doesn’t give me a chance to display the weakness and panic suddenly bubbling up inside my chest at the thought of being alone in this strange place. The door shuts behind her, thudding softly and encasing me in silence.
I dress quickly, but no amount of movement can ease the shuddering of my lungs. I’m breathing too fast—I need to calm down. I’m a stars-cursed assassin, for the sultan’s sake! I strap on my knives, noting Eshe must have cleaned them.
But the mental coaxing that used to work on my stubborn body doesn’t seem to work anymore. I’m not at home in my horrid cell-room. I’m not on a job, or planning for one, studying floor plans and guard patterns for hours on end.
I’m in a bathing chamber after slaughtering strange creatures in a bid for the hand of a sultan I’ve never seen. No, nothing that has helped me control the simmering fear beneath my self-restraint in the past is helping now. Nothing is familiar.
Nothing is safe.
Nothing, except Eshe, and she just left me.
Something bumps my foot. I leap aside, a gasp clogging in my throat as my heart nearly flies straight through the glass ceiling above me.
There, on the polished and painted tile floor, is a vine.
It’s sapling green with little leaves bursting from its sides, mingled with buds that have just the faintest sweep of yellow peeking out. It is poking out from behind the dressing screen, which is situated near a paneled wall and a shuttered window.
It definitely wasn’t there before.
I stare at it, and it’s as frozen as I am. Did I bump it? Maybe it was there, and I just was too caught up in trying to calm my pounding heart that I didn’t notice I had moved toward it.
I’m sure it wasn’t there.
My senses go on high alert, my breathing calming by habit. I almost start counting. I stare down the plant. And then—it twitches.
“Ah ha!” I cry, whipping out a knife and brandishing it at the vine.
A high-pitched squee erupts from the vine as it rears back, lifting its curling tail like the head of a snake. I take an aggressive step toward it, shoving my blade in its . . . face? The vine reacts, coiling back in on itself. But it doesn’t back down completely.
“Are you magic?” I demand. “Are you poisonous?”
The vine tilts its curled end to one side, leaves shaking . . . irritably?
I try not to let my voice color with sarcasm too much. “Am I offending your vine-ness?”
The vine does something that, on a human, I would have taken to be a huff. It rises a little higher, then sags, as though exhaling.
I frown.
The vine drops to the ground. I startle, brandishing my knife lower. It doesn’t respond, though, only twists like it’s rolling over, rustles its leaves, and to my shock, bursts open its buds into yellow flowers the size of my hand, with a soft pink center and pistils of dark magenta. The sound it makes is rather like a burble, though quiet and high-pitched. I raise my brow.
“Seems fair to assume, after this morning, that you are magic,” I say slowly, and startle at the growling of my belly. No wonder I feel so weak. That’s another problem I have to solve. I clap a hand on my stomach, not missing how the vine’s curl seems to twist toward it. As if it heard the sound. “If you’re magic, then I can’t trust you.”
It whines so sharply I wince and almost cover my ears.
“Can you blame me?” I ask. “You could choke me when I turn around. Who knows what other kinds of devious tricks you could play upon me? So don’t mope like I’ve deeply wounded you.”
The blossoms fold back into buds, leaves rustling loudly. Then, faster than I can react—which is very, very fast—the vine darts out. My hand is moving with the knife, ready to slice.
But the vine merely bumps into my leg. Then again. Like the cats in the city who rub on Eshe.
I stumble back a step, flash my blade, and growl, “No. Don’t do that. Stay away from me.”
The answer I receive is the vine drawing back, lifting its curl up almost to eye level, and then letting out a soft keening. It’s like the magic plant is guilting me for being skeptical that it isn’t another of my sultan’s gruesome competitions.
“None of that,” I say sharply. “Now you listen to me. I’m going to leave, and if you try anything when my back is turned, I’m going to slice you to bits. Understand?”
Its leaves shrivel slightly, twisting inward, but its curl nods. Nods.
I can’t help either the shiver of premonition along my spine, nor the gut-twisting sensation of guilt in the pit of my stomach. The vine seems harmless enough. But it can move quickly, and I dare not trust anything in this palace.
Slowly, step by step, I begin to back out of the bathing chamber, holding my knife in front of me. I keep my attention locked on that sapling green, daring it to test me. To prove that I’m right, and it can’t be trusted.
It doesn’t move. Not even when I turn my back and slip out the door.
I can’t deny my relief. Nor the thickening of guilt that I’d been too harsh when it hasn’t tried to hurt me. But I’d be a fool to let my guard down here. Whatever sentience the vine might have, surely it can understand that.
I blink, wondering how I ended up threatening a vine and then being worried about its feelings. This is ridiculous. I need to get out of here.
The doors close behind me, and I find myself standing in a long corridor. Despite the fact that it must be high noon, judging by the sun, and that there are at least ten other young women somewhere around the palace and servants enough to maintain this place, there’s not a sound.
It’s silent as death.
