Chapter 20
Dear Amma,
I reread all your letters to me today, and then I went back to your journals and read all the letters between you and Baba. I know why you felt you had to leave, especially after his death.
But I still wish I had you here with me, instead of words on a page.
—Letter from Yaseema to Mahira Nazir, unsent
Yaseema
Panic seized me as I watched Mishah and the General struggle. He slammed her into the table behind her, and a statue of a water dragon fell to the ground with a violent smash. I looked back at the alcove where I’d seen the young man sitting, but he was no longer there.
Blood ran down the general’s face from an open wound near his eye. It was deep, and too long and precise to be a fingernail.
It looked as though it had been done with a blade.
Ramishah must have stabbed him with something.
Her words from earlier echoed in my mind—that the General used his power over those weaker than him in the palace. From the signs of the struggle between them, he was clearly doing so now.
Anger rose hot and dark in my stomach, outweighing my panic, my fear.
I was comfortable with books and research and scrolls.
I could dig up ancient relics and figure out puzzles faster than anyone I knew.
But going against a fae war general as he tried to kill my only friend here?
I didn’t have magic that could overpower him, and I was human.
The only thing I had at my disposal were my hands.
I had also just discovered the information I needed to help my grandmother and cousin, and to fulfill my mother’s final act.
The book sat heavy against my chest as my heart and my head warred with what I should do.
If I intervened now, it would jeopardize everything.
If I got involved in this fight, I couldn’t slip out into the night with my discovery. I’d be hunted, if I even made it out of here alive.
But there was no way I could leave this library and let him kill her.
What was the point of any of this if I sacrificed others for my gain?
I picked up a large statue of an azi from an end table and lifted it high, the dragon’s wings curled in anticipation. Books toppled from the shelves as I walked by, the remnants of my magic still holding them in its thrall, the final golden thread dissipating into the air.
The general didn’t even turn his head, but Ramishah’s wide eyes darted in my direction.
I raised the statue high. The general was short for fae, but I was still shorter, so the most I could manage was bashing the bottom side of his skull with all my body weight behind it. I swung as hard as I could manage, connecting with his head with a wet crack.
But instead of collapsing to the floor as I thought he would, the general howled, clutching the nape of his neck and whirled around.
His beady eyes narrowed on me; fury etched in his expression.
A glint of silver caught my eye, a sharp letter opener that had fallen to the ground when they’d crashed into the table.
“You?” he growled out the question.
Despite myself, I nearly huffed out a laugh, because he reminded me so much of Winthrop from the Golden Vault. “You’d be surprised how many people say that to me.”
I crouched down, picking up the letter opener from the floor as he advanced on me.
“You’re working with her?” he demanded.
The question didn’t make sense to me.
Of course we worked together—he’d seen us in the kitchens, though that didn’t seem to be what he was referencing.
But I didn’t have time to respond. He lunged at me and I flung myself backward, despite being the one holding a blade. Safiyya’s voice whispered in my head, censuring me about holding a knife against an attacker without knowing a thing about using it.
He’ll use it against you unless you use it first.
The thought of stabbing him made me feel sick, so instead I grabbed frantically for anything on the table behind me, wrenching a lamp and smashing him over the head with it. But he still kept coming.
“Do you have a head made of bricks?” I gasped out and scrambled away.
I kicked him in the shins and tried to run toward the door. A hand wrapped around my ankles, yanking me down. The general was on top of me then, blood pouring from the wound in his face, his expression contorted and purple with rage.
His meaty hands wrapped around my throat this time and I choked out breath, trying to fill my lungs with air. I heard Ramishah cry somewhere behind us, but my vision had begun to go blurry. I also felt something darker flood through me from his hands, as if he had spread death to my veins.
The General can create poison with a touch.
I remembered Mishah’s words from the other day, and knew he must be using his power on me now.
My head started to swim, my strength fading. My mother’s bangles burned against my arm, a cool pain that flooded through me. As if my energy had buoyed, I clenched my fingers tight.
And something sharp bit into my fingers. The letter opener.
I gripped it, hearing Safiyya’s voice in my head over and over.
Use it first. Use it first.
IWith the last piece of consciousness I had, I lifted the blade and slammed it into his bulging neck.
His hands dropped from my throat, and his blood splattered across my face.
I gasped as air filled my lungs and the blackness in my vision receded. The cool burning from the bangles at my wrist was still there, a reminder that I was still alive.
The General collapsed on top of me, but he was still moving, gurgling blood in my ear.
Blindly, I lifted the knife and struck again, stabbing himin the fleshy part of his neck.
Then I tore the blade out and struck him again.
And again.
Blood sprayed over me, coating my face, and Mishah’s screams had become an ever-present noise until I couldn’t tell if they were even hers or if they were mine.
Was she still in the room?
Was I?
Was I passed out on the floor and imagining this whole thing?
But the hot, sticky blood on my skin felt real. And the weight of the general’s body slumped on top of me was not a figment of my imagination.
I pushed him off me in a daze and rolled away, scrambling to my knees and coming to all fours. My throat was raw and I still felt like I was drowning, but I was alive.
I was alive.
Awareness slowly trickled back in, the thrumming in my brain fading. I blinked, realizing that the leg of the chair I had been staring at in front of mewasn’t a chair at all.
It was boots.
Which led to legs. And as I raised my eyes, an entire fae male was standing before me, looking down at me, taking in my blood-soaked smock, the letter opener in my hand and the body of the Viceroy’s general, which had been stabbed repeatedly by said letter opener.
It was the young man I’d seen earlier in the library, and a slight fluttering of relief went through me. He wasn’t a soldier come to arrest me, he was a scholar.
I could reason with a scholar.
I knew scholars.
I was playing with my father’s parchments before I could walk, and spending time at his philosophical meetings almost every evening.
This was the type of person I knew—someone who used logic and thought and reasoned with facts.
He didn’t have to turn me in, not yet anyway.
I could make him see reason, escape with the book and be long gone before the soldiers came looking for me.
I swept my gaze around the room to check if Ramishah was okay. She stood beside a bookshelf and clasped her hands in front of her. They were shaking. Her head was bowed, and she was covered in blood.
“Mishah, are you okay?” My voice was a weak croak.
She didn’t answer me, and I cast my gaze over her, seeing the red marks on her throat from the General’s hands. I probably had similar fingerprints on my own neck.
Anger spiked in my blood once more, thinking of the attack and how vulnerable we both were.
I looked back to the young man in front of me. “Thanks for the help by the way,” I said sardonically, nodding over to the General dead on the floor.
If I thought the scholar would be surprised at my censure, I would have been wrong.
The shadow of a smile quirked his lips, which looked foreign on his face—as if they were unused to making such a gesture.
He looked toward the dead general, his face impassive.
“You looked as if you had it all in hand.”
His voice was amused, as if he were bored. I stood up finally, praying my legs held my weight and that I didn’t faint to the floor in front of this scholar. I needed all the finesse I could muster for this one.
“He deserved it,” I said bluntly, looking pointedly at Mishah. “He was attacking her.”
“Oh?” That same faint smile, those too-bright eyes roving over me, as if I were a book and he were reading every word.
I didn’t have time to react to him, or explain, because at that moment soldiers poured through the door of the library, their strange silver helmets blocking their faces, their twisted spears pointed at me.
A shadow of hope whispered in the dark dread that had settled in my chest. This scholar was my witness—surely they might consider the possibility that the general’s death might have been self-defense.
What if this had happened in the Citadel? Would they still let you live?
No.
That was the answer I was most afraid of. If I had killed a lead excavator, I’d be dead myself. But perhaps in this land, things were different. Perhaps those taken advantage of still had some power left.
“Please, help me,” I pleaded with the scholar, and his eyes widened with surprise as they met mine. “Tell them I had no choice.”
He smiled again, and rage filled my chest at his nonchalance, at his amusement.
I was covered in the blood of the Viceroy’s general and surrounded by soldiers about to kill me, and he was laughing at me?
I wished I’d stabbed him with the knife.
“Didn’t you?” His head tilted.
I processed his question, shock sweeping over me. “Can you only pose confounding questions that don’t really have answers? You saw me. If I have a witness maybe the Viceroy will spare me. Maybe they’ll be mercy.”
“Perhaps.” He leaned in close to me then, so close I even smelled the cloves from his soap and saw the dark stubble dusting his cheeks. “But perhaps I might have wanted my general alive still, to win me a few more battles.”
A sound was ringing in my ears, and I thought it might have been Mishah screaming again. But it was just his words, repeating themselves over and over as bile rose in my throat and my stomach twisted.
My general.
My general.
“Arrest them.” He waved his hand in my direction. “They’ll stand trial for the murder of General Faisal.” He met my gaze then, the mirth in his dark eyes increased, his teeth bright in the torchlight of the room. “Don’t look so frightened. Perhaps you’ll be spared if a witness comes forward.”
The Viceroy left the room with a laugh and didn’t look behind him as the soldiers shackled me and Mishah together.