The Prince
A shamshir sailed toward my head. I ducked in time and speared the soldier through the neck.
He gurgled, his blood splattering onto my palm.
I pulled my dagger free, then sheathed it as I spotted my brother a short distance away.
A man approached from behind him. I didn’t hesitate.
My fingers traveled to my sleeve to withdraw a slim knife.
The weapon glinted under the stars as it slammed into my brother’s assailant.
“Shahzadem!”
The shout was accompanied by a loud smack.
I spun around, raising my shamshir into a defensive position.
A Southerner stood before me, mouth agape, face twisted in pain, arms lifted overhead and gripping a weapon intended to strike me down.
But he crumpled into the sand, a dagger deep in his shoulder.
Blood seeped around him. I looked up, seeing my bodyguard, Zeki, with his hand outstretched, chest heaving. He closed the distance between us.
“You need to get to safety, shahzadem.” My prince.
“Get Bahir to the main tent,” I ordered instead, spotting our soldiers forming a protective circle around my brother. He was panting and scanning his surroundings with evident fear. “I believe the taste of battle he craved may have overwhelmed him.”
Bahir had begged for our father’s blessing to join the attack, desperate to prove his worth.
He did not know what war did to the heart and mind—that I had to pretend the Southerners were soulless beings in order to run them through with my blades, that I had to sacrifice a part of my own soul with each death.
“You cannot put yourself at risk every time.” Zeki’s lips pressed into a thin line. “You—”
I lifted my hand, and he grew silent at once. The swarming figures garbed in gold and red were retreating, sending up a heap of sand in their rush to escape.
“Pursue them! Now is our chance!” Bahir said, joining us with his squad of guards.
“We must take precautions.”
He tilted his head, his mouth twisting. “Peder allowed me to take charge of this battle. I order you to command the troops.”
My fingers fisted; I wished I could refuse him. I released my tension and nodded, granting him his demand. He smiled, teeth shining against the blood staining his face.
You will protect your brother, or I will have your head.
Shah Jihangir’s orders remained imprinted in my mind as I rallied the troops and swarmed toward the Southern camp.
A roar burned in my chest and then poured from my mouth to join the battle cries of my men.
My mental shield fell into place, obscuring the faces, the screams, the dying.
I was far away, on the highest tower in our palace, yelling into the wind and giving my agony to the sky.
But it didn’t spare me from the gaping soulless eyes and motionless forms sprawled on either side of me as I walked through the enemy camp.
The surviving Southerners surrendered, dropping to their knees and raising their hands.
Their fearful gazes lowered as I scanned them.
Then I heard the whispers racing among our new prisoners as I strode past.
“Jaladi Shah.” The shah’s executioner.
“Shahzadeh Marg.” The prince of death.
I could smell the fear, taste it with each step onward.
I stopped before the sultan’s pavilion. My soldiers fell into place behind me.
An ominous silence gripped us as we waited.
Then Bahir burst from the pavilion wearing a savage grin and gripping a man by his collar.
He dragged him, heedless of the man’s pleading, and threw him toward me, sending him sprawling at my boots.
The man coughed, his chest heaving and stout form shaking.
He slowly looked up, taking me in from the tips of my blood-splattered boots to my turban, and his whimper cut short.
“Have mercy,” he pleaded, touching his hands to my shoes. “Have mercy for my people.”
So, this was the Southern sultan. The only times I had seen him were at substantial distances and in portraits. Proud smug portraits, nothing like this groveling man at my feet. Blood seeped from his nostrils. His hair was short and receding. His belly flopped over his belt.
“You must kill him,” my brother seethed, doing nothing to lower his tone. “Now.”
I glimpsed a Southern soldier rising from the line of prisoners.
He took one determined step, then another.
No one else had seen him. His gaze was fixed upon me, hatred seeping from his eyes and .
. . the glint of a dagger in his grasp. My lids shuttered closed.
Finally, my end had come. The shahzadeh perished on the blade of a Southerner, they would say. He died a hero in battle.
There was a clang, and I swept back to the present, my eyes opening to see the man disarmed by my bodyguard and pulled away.
Zeki stared at me with a horrified look.
He shook his head, surely questioning my sanity.
I gave him a grim nod in return. It had been too good a fantasy to be true.
The blade of an enemy would never pierce me as long as Shah Jihangir wanted my service.
I was too valuable to part with, even if that meant he had to lose every soldier in his army to protect me.
“Execute them,” Bahir hissed at my side. “Do it now. They attempted to kill you.”
“Wait!” Sultan Kasim yelled as my men yanked him from where he had kneeled at my feet, a desperate look on his face. “Let us honor the agreement made years ago. A marriage in return for peace. The hand of my daughter, Shahdokht Farani, in marriage.”
I hesitated, glancing at my brother. Our father had made the peace agreement on a whim during that tenuous moment when the South and North had given up on warring with each other.
A prince and a princess, bound to unite the desert.
But Sultan Kasim had been too proud to ever make good on the agreement. Or so I had thought.
“Spare us,” Sultan Kasim said. “Take your prize and spare us.”