27 - Rohan

T he babe lay quiet and unmoving in Rohan’s palms, its warmth already bleeding into the cool waters. The other ducklings continued to splash in the pool, blissfully oblivious. His sleeves were wet, but that wasn’t what chilled him to the bone.

First Mama, then Baba, now the duckling.

Jafar was nowhere to be seen—the trellised rooftop terrace where he’d stood with the Sultana was now empty—but he had been there to witness the duckling’s death. And as the chick had gasped its last breath, Rohan was struck with a sense of certainty that his brother’s ire was the reason for the death.

That can’t be, Rohan chided himself.

Still, Jafar’s rage itself scared Rohan far less than how well that anger suited him. As if Jafar had cultivated such fury long ago and, over the years, had mastered a way to keep it at bay. He had no reason to be that angry, not when he’d wronged Rohan just as much by dragging him all this way on false hope.

The duckling was only a weight in his palms now, delicate beak prone, feathers still softer than soft. Death was a little like alchemy. An irrefutable change, an irreversible shift from one state to another. The realization sent a surge through him. An excitement, almost. Potent and heady.

Rohan needed to hide the duckling before someone saw him holding it and assumed he’d killed the thing.

No sooner had he had the thought than a shadow slanted over him and the dead duckling in his palms. He chanced a look up, hoping it was a passerby, and balked.

The Sultana. The source of Rohan’s problems.

“It happens,” she said with a sympathetic smile. “Runts rarely make it.” Would she believe Rohan if he said it was Jafar’s doing? Rohan wasn’t sure he believed it himself. He was the one who was cursed, who had killed his parents, but what if Jafar’s ire was at the core of it? That darkness that swirled in Jafar’s gaze? “Aman had a graveyard for all the young deaths.”

Rohan hadn’t heard that name before. “Aman?”

The Sultana looked away, but not before he caught the swallow that bobbed her throat, half obscured by her pearl-white shawl. “My son. The prince.”

The eyes she turned to him were ones of torment and pain, rimmed in red. She looked much, much older then. “I do not have the freedom to mourn or tell my people. I will always be a mother, but I’m a ruler first. My son has died, but the prince must still live on.”

My son has died. So what Jafar had heard from the caravan leader was true, then. But what did she mean by the prince must live on ? Were they not one and the same?

“Why?” Rohan asked.

“Life as a queen means making endless promises. One such vow was to the kingdom of Hulum. Our lands are similar and our armies a good match. Being equally matched, however, tends to result in a great many deaths for both sides.”

The Sultana faced the city.

“To avoid that, we deemed it appropriate to unite our kingdoms.”

Rohan didn’t know how that was possible.

She glanced at him, searching for something, and sighed when she didn’t find it. “Through marriage.”

Rohan didn’t know much about politics, but he knew that kingdoms united by matrimony rarely resulted in happy marriages. Most parties carried on with partners they preferred over their spouses, their unions restricted to writing.

“But how can the prince live on?” Rohan asked. Jafar would know the answer, but he wasn’t here right now.

The Sultana laughed, as if he was hopeless, as if his question was the funniest thing in the world.

“Why did you leave your home?” she asked suddenly.

“Our father died,” Rohan said softly. I killed him with a wish. “In a fire. Jafar said there was nothing left for us.”

“In a fire,” the Sultana mused. “How did you know he was dead?”

It was an odd question to ask when Rohan held a duckling in his hands that was most assuredly dead. “Because Jafar said so.”

He didn’t let Rohan verify it, nor did Rohan ever check himself.

The Sultana hmm ed.

Rohan’s fingers were shriveling from the water and the duckling’s soaked feathers. He wouldn’t even need a shovel to bury so small a creature.

“Can you tell me where the graveyard is?” he asked.

She studied him again, and it took everything in Rohan not to squirm under her scrutiny.

“I can take you there,” she said, finally, and began walking toward the veranda. Rohan petted one last duckling before joining her.

“Do you know what you have that your brother does not?” she asked, and part of Rohan thought this entire conversation felt orchestrated, like when Baba would bring both Rohan and Jafar into a room and begin a conversation, furtively dictating the direction it took.

Still, Rohan could not imagine. His brother had—and was—everything. Smart, charismatic, clever, fearless. Surely the Sultana could see that.

“The illusion of compassion,” she told him.

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