The Wrath and the Dawn

It was because I swore I would never say it, and a man is nothing if he can’t keep his promises.

So I write it to the sky—

I love you, a thousand times over. And I will never apologize for it.

Khalid was beside her in a few long strides, pressing his hand to the ebony door. Preventing her from leaving.

“What do you want me to do?” he said in a low voice.

She did not look up, though her heart thrummed in her throat. “Prove that a real man doesn’t make a show of what’s his. It just is.”

“Is it? Are you mine?” Khalid asked with quiet solemnity.

Her conviction wavered further. “I told you; don’t try to own me.”

“I don’t want to own you.”

She swiveled her neck to meet his gaze. “Then never speak of sending me away again. I am not yours to do with as you will.”

Khalid’s features smoothed knowingly. “How right you are. You are not mine.” He dropped his palm from the door. “I am yours.”

Before she could stop her hands, they reached for him, as though they existed for no other reason than to touch him. Her fingers brushed across his jaw with a feather’s caress before pulling away, and he closed his eyes on a soft inhale. Like the poison toying with its remedy, Shahrzad’s hands ignored her and took control, a mere taste of his skin not nearly enough. Never enough. They began at his brow and eased their way to his temples before sliding into his hair, smooth as silk, dark as night. She watched his eyes open and turn from liquid to fire under her fingers. Shahrzad ran her palms down to his neck, where she paused.

“Why won’t you touch me?” she whispered.

It took him a moment to reply. “Because if I start, I won’t stop.”

“Who asked you to stop?” Her fingers traveled to his chest.

“What if I can’t give you the answers you want?”

Again, she returned to nothing.

Yet there, in the warmth of his eyes, was everything.

“Then give me this.” Shahrzad stood on her toes and brought her mouth to his. When he did not respond, she curved her tongue against his lower lip, and his hands drew across her waist in a slow burn. She thought he would push her away, but he dragged her against him. Khalid kissed her, melding nothing to everything. Shahrzad wrapped both arms around his neck, and he backed her into the ebony door until she was braced up against it, each of their breaths matched, measure for measure, beat for beat.

He knelt before Shahrzad and brushed her hair over her shoulder to look at the wound.

“I told you,” Shahrzad said. “It’s not bad. It can’t be much worse than a scratch.”

Khalid poured water from the pitcher onto a strip of linen. He lifted it to her neck and began cleaning the wound.

Before she had a chance to react, she was lifted off her feet. Khalid dismissed her protests as he carried her away from the carnage, with Jalal and the Rajput following close behind. When they crossed the threshold, the lifeless bodies of the two Royal Guards positioned outside her door stared up at her with glassy eyes. Their throats were slashed to gaping maws. She stifled a gasp.

“They’re all dead,” Khalid said without looking at her. “Every guard in this corridor is dead.”

She tensed her grip around his neck as he continued down the hall. Once they rounded the corner, soldiers burst through the doors, led by General al-Khoury.

“Is she hurt?” the shahrban demanded in an urgent voice.

“I’m fine,” she replied, momentarily taken aback by his concern. “Really, I am.”

“She’s wounded,” Jalal clarified.

“It’s not bad,” Shahrzad countered. “Put me down. I can walk.”

Khalid ignored her.

“I can walk, Khalid.”

Again, he refused to look at her, much less respond.

They moved down the hallways with guards lighting their path, encircling them in a gleaming bastion of steel and torchfire. Deciding to cede this particular battle, Shahrzad leaned against Khalid, closing her eyes to the glare for an instant, and his hold on her tightened.

Despina edged closer. “When I was a little girl in Thebes, I remember asking my mother what heaven was. She replied, ‘A heart where love dwells.’ Of course, I then demanded to know what constituted hell. She looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘A heart absent love.’” Despina studied Shahrzad as she spoke.

“So you would have me throw Shazi to the wolves?”

“Shazi?” Jalal’s grin widened. “Honestly, I pity the wolves.”

“Be serious for once.”

“I am. In fact, I would take the enterprise a step further. Invite all your bannermen to Rey—every last emir. Let them see that you are not your father. You are not the rumors that have been plaguing you of late. You are a king worthy of their allegiance . . . with a queen full of fire and promise.”

The edges of Khalid’s mouth turned upward, ever so slightly.

“My God. Are you smiling, Khalid-jan?” Jalal teased in an incredulous voice.

“Perhaps.”

Despina kicked off her sandals and sat cross-legged on the bed. “We women are a sad lot, aren’t we?”

“What do you mean?”

“Strong enough to take on the world with our bare hands, yet we permit ridiculous boys to make fools of us.”

She lifted her right hand, slowly, to his face.

He closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, he placed his palms on either side of her neck.

How could a boy with legions of secrets behind walls of ice and stone burn her with nothing more than his touch?

He trailed his right hand through her hair, over her shoulder, and down her back. His left thumb lingered on her neck, brushing across the hollow at its base.

I—I won’t stop fighting, Shiva. I will discover the truth and seek justice for you.

She stared up at Khalid. Waiting.

“What are you doing?” she whispered.

“Exercising restraint.”

“Why?”

“Because I failed to do so in the souk.”

“Does that matter?”

“Yes, it does,” he said quietly. “Do you want this?”

Shahrzad paused. “We’ve done this before.”

“It’s not the same. It won’t be the same.”

The blood flew through her body, ignited by his words.

He pressed his lips beneath her earlobe. His tongue lingered for an instant on her skin. “Do you want this?” he repeated in her ear.

Shahrzad steeled herself, fighting back an onset of trembling limbs.

“Why do you think I’m standing here, you idiot?”

Then she seized his chin in her hands and slanted her mouth to his.

What began as a playful kiss soon changed into something more in keeping with the prurient thoughts that had filled the space only moments before.

Shahrzad’s fingers curled into Khalid’s soft hair as his lips curved over hers. He enveloped her in an embrace that took her bare feet from the marble. The veil tore from its mooring as they fell back onto the cushions with complete disregard for such trappings as gossamer.

Her hands dragged the hem of his qamis over his head. The muscles of his torso coiled at her touch, and the air in the room grew ever more stifling, ever more tangible. When his lips moved to her neck and his palms slid across her stomach to the laces of her shamla, she knew he was right.

This would not be the same.

For this was untrammeled need; this was a body of water and a soul of ash.

After Shahrzad cut the scimitar in Khalid’s direction a few more times, she was shocked when the Rajput stepped forward and kicked at her back foot, nudging it into a new alignment. Then he lifted his bearded chin with a jerk.

He . . . wants me to keep my head up?

Khalid stood by, watching.

“Like—this?” Shahrzad asked the Rajput.

He cleared his throat and moved back.

When Shahrzad looked at Khalid again, his eyes were alight with an emotion she recognized.

Pride.

And the moment felt so terrifyingly real that the thought of anything destroying it cinched the air from her body . . .

Like a silk cord around her neck.