Chapter Twenty-Nine Bitter Re
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Bitter Reunion
Hasan held Poppy by the shoulders. Beneath his touch, she trembled—with excitement, or maybe exhaustion, or perhaps both.
She had done it—no, she had excelled beyond any expectation he had had of her.
Her breakthrough today had allowed her to tap into a much deeper, controlled level of her daivyakhi.
The villagers murmured and stared, the respect in their eyes a shallow reflection of the reverence taking root in Hasan’s chest.
Poppy had come a long way from the cowed woman she’d been at her engagement party.
Nor was she the haughty, demanding maharani she’d been in the cells.
In front of him was a lady who had humbled herself to learn about others, who could summon springs and save lives.
Another rush of fierce pride ran through him.
He blinked. When had Poppy Sutherland become someone he admired?
Grumbling rippled through the crowd as it parted for a newcomer. A man in a wrinkled gray suit pushed to the front, his usually tidy black hair mussed, as though he’d run to get here.
“Hasan?” Zeyar asked, bewildered. “What are you doing here? Is that Poppy? Why isn’t she at the house?”
Hasan whirled away from Poppy. “Zeyar!” He laughed, still giddy over Poppy’s display of daivyakhi. “You’re back early! Oh my gods, Zeyar, you would not believe—”
Zeyar caught him by the arm, dragging him away from the banyan tree. “Hasan, you shouldn’t be here.” His eyes flashed, darting from Hasan to Poppy to the crowd.
Hasan inhaled, his mood deflating as he remembered he’d done this all behind his brother’s back. He had opted to beg forgiveness over asking permission, and now it was time to get on bended knee. He squared his shoulders. “I have something to tell you.”
“We’ll talk,” Zeyar said, hustling Hasan along even farther. “But right now, you need to go back to the safe house. Quickly.”
Zeyar had managed to steer them back to Hasan’s car. Hasan opened his mouth to protest—Poppy was still back at the tree—but a chorus of screams cut him off. Lightning quick, he darted around Zeyar and sprinted back to the banyan tree.
“Poppy!” he shouted, pushing through the crowd of villagers.
They stampeded past, and he doubled over, coughing from the dust they left in their wake.
When he straightened, he spotted her, still standing by the banyan tree.
“Poppy,” he called again, but she didn’t turn her head.
Her gaze was locked on the lithe figure approaching her from the other direction: Montrose.
Though he’d come out the victor in his brawl with Samina, Montrose looked like hell. On the right side of his face, he sported a black eye. On the left, scabbed-over nail scratches marked his once-perfect ivory skin from cheek to collarbone.
“Poppy!” Hasan yelled once he finally caught up to her.
She turned to him at last, her wounded gaze searching his. “What is this? I thought we had a deal.”
“We do,” he said. “It’s an ambush! Zeyar must have been tailed.”
He reached for his dagger, but he’d given it to Poppy.
Opening one hand, he hurled his good arm forward and sent a ball of flame at Montrose’s head.
Montrose ducked, scowling. Hasan shot another jet of flame his way.
The arm of Montrose’s uniform caught fire; he stripped his jacket off, tossing it to the ground.
“Zephyr, control your man!” he shouted, stomping on the jacket until the flames died.
Hasan didn’t know whom Montrose was addressing until Zeyar seized him, wrapping his arms around him tightly. His gunshot wound throbbed from the pressure, but he struggled anyway.
“What are you doing?” Hasan kicked backward, making contact with Zeyar’s shins, but Zeyar didn’t let him go.
“He’s giving us Paranjay,” Zeyar said. “Stop it! Stop.”
Hasan froze, his mind racing as he processed Zeyar’s words. “You bartered with him behind my back?”
In front of them, Richard lunged at Poppy. She flung herself at the knife discarded at the base of the banyan tree, but Richard seized her first, arms wrapping around her waist.
“No!” she screamed, thrashing. Her eyes met Hasan’s, and the look of raw betrayal took his breath away. “You said you’d help me!” Her voice broke. “I thought you believed in me.”
“I do!” Hasan said, frantic, twisting in Zeyar’s grip once more. “I didn’t do this, I swear. My brother—”
He stilled for a moment as something occurred to him, a detail that hadn’t quite clicked in the chaos of the moment. Twisting as much as he could to see Zeyar, he asked, “Where’s Paranjay?”
Zeyar didn’t meet his gaze. “He’s in a secure location in the city. The deal depends on the peaceful transfer of—”
“So you don’t even have him.” Hasan laughed in disbelief. “You fucking idiot, Zeyar—”
Zeyar bellowed as Hasan clasped one flaming hand around his forearm, burning his handprint into his suit jacket. Reflexively, he let go. Hasan tore free, chasing Poppy to where Richard had dragged her, close to his car.
“Poppy!” he shouted. He glared at Montrose. “She’s not going with you.”
“Step down,” Richard said. “This doesn’t concern you. I’ve already arranged this with your brother.”
Hasan flinched as his words drove the knife of Zeyar’s betrayal in a little deeper. “Let her go!”
He seized Montrose’s arm, the one holding Poppy, with flaming fingers.
Montrose lashed out with his free hand, striking Hasan in the jaw.
His head snapped back, his teeth cutting into his cheek, but he didn’t let go.
He swung back, punching Montrose in the gut.
Montrose grunted, but the other police officers had caught up to them, tearing Hasan away before he could land a second flaming punch.
“Hasan,” Zeyar shouted. He’d almost caught up to them, clutching his scorched sleeve. “Let’s go. This isn’t our business anymore.”
Hasan tried to twist out of Montrose’s minions’ grasp, writhing like a serpent. “Get off me!” Blood seeped from the wound in his cheek, and he spat a mouthful of it at Richard. “You can’t take her! She doesn’t want to go with you!”
Richard stopped, pinning Zeyar with an icy look. “Zephyr, silence your man, or I will.”
Hasan flipped both palms upward and channeled the last of his daivyakhi into twin columns of flame.
The officers holding him cried out and stumbled back, clutching at their singed eyebrows.
He charged at Montrose. Before the captain could move, the whistle of metal cutting through air sang out behind him.
The nightstick smashed into Hasan’s skull with a crunch. The last thing he saw was Poppy’s feet, disappearing into Montrose’s car, one at a time.
· · ·
“We need to talk.”
It was the first thing Richard had said to Poppy since they’d left Sanivali.
Night had fallen over the island. She gazed out the car window, counting the stars in the sky to keep herself from crying.
I will not cry in front of Richard. She would die before she let him slake his thirst for power on her tears.
“About what?” she asked evenly, still gazing out of the window.
“Don’t act innocent. Something’s happened. Since you were kidnapped, you’ve been different. I thought you were in shock, at the museum. But your kidnapper claimed you didn’t want to come with me. What’s going on?”
The best strategy would be to lie, to buy more time to plot against Richard. But after the last couple of weeks, Poppy found she could no longer go back to playing the demure, toothless fiancée Richard thought she was. She was a threat—and it was time he feared her.
“Will you not speak to me?” Richard reached for her hand.
Poppy whipped her head around, yanking her hand away as she locked eyes with him. “Drop the act,” she said. “I know about your plan, Richard.”
Shock spread across his face—genuine at first, followed by a mask of innocent confusion. “What—”
“No more lies,” she said. “I heard you at the engagement party, how you intend to dispose of me once we’re wed. You never intended to honor any marital vows to me.”
Richard’s face crumpled, wide eyes shining with hurt and disbelief. His act was so seamless, she nearly doubted her own memory. “Poppy, love, maybe you misunderstood—”
“The only thing I misunderstood is the depths of your evil.” She held her ground.
“You cannot trick me; I know what I heard. I know you’re working with the Alderforts.
I know you’ll accuse me of drug smuggling, and I know you intend to have a witness from Welkland falsely testify against me. I know.”
Richard stared, his blue eyes almost black in the darkness of the car. Then, finally, he smiled, his lips stretching as he bared his teeth.
“Okay, so you know. Very good! But what are you going to do about it? Tell someone?” He laughed. “The whole city saw the way you were mooning after me. Who do you think they’ll believe set out to entrap whom?”
When Poppy didn’t answer, his smirk grew even sharper. “I thought so. Face it—you’re powerless.”
She glared at him. She wasn’t powerless. She had Hasan’s support—
No, you don’t, a snide voice in her head reminded her. Perhaps she never had. Either way, now that Zeyar had retrieved their brother, who knew where Hasan’s allegiance would lie? The lump in her throat swelled. She dragged a shallow, painful breath from her lungs. But she didn’t cry.
“I won’t marry you,” she said. “Your plan will only work if I marry you; otherwise, the succession will fall to a vote.”
Richard scoffed. “You will marry me.”
“Or what? You’ll expose me?” She huffed out a humorless laugh. “You’ll do that anyway. There is nothing you can threaten me with that won’t harm you as well, so long as we remain unmarried.”
He leaned in. She jerked back, bumping her head against the window. “You’ll marry me,” he said, “or instead of being exiled to some idyllic Welkish countryside, I’ll have you swinging from the gallows.”
Her heart skipped a beat. “On what grounds?”
“Treason,” Richard said, his voice laced with venom. “Conspiring with the Jackal, a known unnatural, to extort the viceroy, not to mention arson. There’s a certain curator at the museum who will testify to seeing you together the night it burned down.”
“You arranged that meeting,” she said.
“Unofficially,” he corrected her. “The curator thought he was communicating with the Jackal from the start. According to official records, the police only arrived after the Jackal did, and so we were too late to stop him, alas. If only the Marnapur police had a better budget, we could have protected the museum.”
Outmaneuvered, again! Rage rendered Poppy speechless.
She twisted her head away, her heartbeat hammering against her rib cage.
How was he always several steps ahead? He had backed her into a tight corner.
But he would not hold her there for long.
She would claw her way out of this wedding, by any and all means possible.
And then Poppy would see to it that he could never threaten her again.