Chapter 32
My welcome at Dalila’s ceremony soured quickly after that, as though I were the former spouse at a wedding whose presence was merely tolerated.
Mitanni found me after Dalila received her belt and deposited me in the care of a half-dozen guards while my companion was enveloped by celebrating Khatti Ugalans, toasting over cups of wine and joining dance circles.
The music followed me long after, still ringing in my ears as I was all but shoved into the guest quarters, a locked bar sliding into place behind the door.
The apartments were silent and dark as the grave; perhaps Raksh was still out. Lonely despair yawned through me. I kept seeing Lab’s triumphant smile as she stood with her hands on Dalila’s hips. No matter what game Dalila was convinced she was playing, the queen clearly believed she’d claimed her.
There is still the last hank of hair, I tried to tell myself.
My shorn tresses being spun into the queen’s sacred thread was affecting the magic of Khatti Ugal, even if I could neither predict nor control it.
With only a single hank left—and Dalila falling deeper into Lab’s claws—sneaking it into the queen’s wool was likely the best use of my evening.
I retrieved the shorn hair from where I’d hidden it, then headed for the tunnel beneath the bath chamber.
The chamber was dusky, the only illumination that which came from the silver moonbeams streaming through the starbursts cut into the stone ceiling.
I glanced around, but I was alone, the only sound save my hushed breath the trickling of water.
Silently crossing the room, I headed for the hidden door and pushed it open with a whisper.
Every candle, brazier, and oil lamp in the bath chamber blazed to fiery light.
I nearly jumped out of my sandals, drawing the meteor blade and spinning around. I expected to see a troop of guards bursting through the door; Queen Lab herself, brandishing the spindle like a magician’s wand.
But it was only Raksh, grinning back from the simmering pool.
I lowered my dagger. “Where in God’s name did you come from?”
“Did I scare you?” he teased, sounding delighted at the prospect. Moonlight ribboned across his sinuous limbs as he swam backward, turning even his human form a pale blue. “And here I thought nothing frightened the mighty Amina al-Sirafi.”
I scowled. “Only bathhouse chamber perverts looking to creep upon unsuspecting women.”
“Oh, am I the one doing the creeping?” Raksh inclined his head toward the meteor blade. “You’re armed, hardly dressed for a bath, and if I’m correct . . . about to sneak down some sort of hidden staircase?” Malicious curiosity swirled in his voice. “Whatever are you up to, wife?”
Yes, I suppose this was about as suspicious a scene as one could imagine. “Testing the limits of my cage,” I said blandly, not quite a lie. If Raksh was spying for the queen, he would no doubt tell her where he’d found me, but I wasn’t sure it mattered—Lab and I were headed for a fight either way.
Raksh sprawled to sit on an underwater bench, spreading his arms. “Does it lead anywhere interesting?”
“To catacombs packed with the bones and painted skulls of the dead.” I was already caught, but the tunnels were a maze; better to admit I’d seen some of them rather than try and deny it all.
“You’d love it. Indeed, feel free to take a look for yourself once you’re done with your bath.
In the meantime . . .” I headed for the main door.
It slammed shut.
“I do not believe,” Raksh said softly, “that we have finished our conversation.”
Wordlessly, I turned back around to face him. Raksh had never been able to do magic like that.
But then he smiled, almost giddy, as though whatever hostile impulse had stolen through him was only temporary.
“Why don’t you join me?” he suggested. Steaming water cloudy with fragrant oil reached his chest, more beading down the long column of his throat.
His hair was loose, drifting in the water like an ebony cloud.
“You would be more comfortable. And we can talk: about where that tunnel goes and just what you’ve been up to every night when you slip from our bed. ”
Raksh in a bath was typically as tempting and dangerous as a cup of wine placed directly beneath my nose, but not a hint of ardor rose in even my treacherous body.
Instead, I gripped the knife harder. “I’d prefer not to.”
Raksh sighed and rose from the pool. Every movement was languid, the way he dried his face and wrapped a towel around his dripping thighs, and yet the tension rising between us—of a very different kind—was thicker than the humid air.
Even in the bath, he was still wearing the queen’s belt, the wet wool flush against his belly.
“You have a peculiar talent for always choosing the most destructive path, do you know that? All you’ve done since arriving in Khatti Ugal is burn bridges, Amina; even a demon can see you’re outmaneuvered. Take this last chance to confess, to make things right.”
By God, Lab really has made him her creature. What magic was the queen capable of to force the chaos spirit to bend to her will?
“Let’s make an exchange,” I offered. “You take off that pretty belt and I’ll tell you anything you want.”
He lifted his brows in surprise. “And why should I do that? You’re the one harping about how Lab is a witch who sent you to fight griffins and turns people into livestock. Why should I risk offending her?”
“Because she’s obviously ensorcelled you!” I burst out in frustration. “You’ve not been yourself since you put that ridiculous belt on. Your memories are scattered, you have no ambition . . . by the Most High—you just called yourself a demon, the one insult that seems to bother you.”
Raksh seemed taken aback for a moment, but then he chuckled. “Fascinating.” He came from around the pool, his bare feet leaving puddles on the floor. “You claim to hold no affection for me and yet you recall something so small, so petty.”
He prowled closer and I glanced around the bath chamber, an instinctual reaction to preparing for a fight my body seemed primed to accept even as my mind argued against it.
This was Raksh; he wanted to seduce me, to travel at my side and spin legends.
And though I had no doubt that he’d effortlessly slit my throat if it were ever truly me versus him, I had a hard time imagining him fighting on behalf of someone else.
“Take the belt off, Raksh,” I urged again. “Remember Sarilaglag? That’s the power you want, not this.”
“See, that’s the problem, Amina. I don’t remember Sarilaglag.” He stood just across from me now. “Your husband wouldn’t let me.”
Shock froze my tongue.
“Wh-what?” I finally managed. “But you—”
“Oh, I am not him. Not entirely anyway.” Raksh sat back on the edge of the pool and shrugged.
“I’m asking you to be honest so I might as well try the same since clearly, pretending isn’t going anywhere.
And you needn’t look so horrified. I am partly him.
” He frowned. “Not sure how that works with all your absurdly firm beliefs around adultery.”
Disbelief and horror roared through me. I had assumed Raksh a spy or perhaps under a spell .
. . but partly him? What in God’s name did that even mean?
The man before me had all the arrogant ease of my husband, the way he rolled his neck and lounged like a fallen celestial being.
His accent that couldn’t be placed and impossibly black eyes.
I knew that man, that creature. I’d slept with him. “I don’t understand,” I stammered.
“I am a construct, spun from his memories.” He glanced down, seeming to admire his body. “A fascinating challenge. It is typically impossible to weave these while their mortal forms are still alive. Though I suppose on that matter, your spouse is exceptional.”
I had backed up against the wall, putting as much space as possible between myself and the creature wearing Raksh’s face, so filled with revulsion that I could hardly speak.
But what he’d just said . . . “So he’s still alive?”
He cocked his head. “Would you mourn him if he wasn’t?” When I didn’t respond, he shrugged. “Regardless, your question is one for the philosophers. Can something created not by blood nor earth nor bone be considered alive?”
“If you’re spun from someone with memories of me, you must have an idea of what sort of patience I possess for philosophy.”
Raksh—not Raksh, but it was impossible to think of him as anyone else when he stood before me, the body I knew so intimately—laughed. “A warning well received. We did wish to keep your husband alive; one does not destroy such a fountain of luck. But he was terribly resistant.”
An emotion I couldn’t name churned in my chest. “I don’t believe you. Raksh would do anything to save his own skin.”
“Oh, he offered to sleep with, spy upon, and murder anyone the queen named; including the entirety of your crew, by the way. But you—whatever is between you—he guarded that in his mind like a jewel. Like a great dragon wrapped around a treasure hoard.” Raksh was closing the distance between us again, putting himself between my body and the door.
“It made us so terribly curious. It wasn’t love, we don’t think; that would be too simple, too mortal.
Obsession, perhaps? Need? We struggle to come up with an adequate human term. ”
Every word he said filled me with horror. “Why are you telling me all this?”
“Because I like you!” he replied. “At least, part of me does. I can see why Raksh would be so fascinated. But the other part of me . . . I was woven for a purpose, for my maker. And you’re causing her a lot of problems.”
He laid it out all so simply, his smile never wavering. “What do you want?” I asked warily.