Wicked Like a Wildfire (Hibiscus Daughter #1)(77)
Then Niko breaking the water’s surface, her chin tipped up and mouth opening for breath, slick hair glossy as an otter’s, water trembling in her lashes.
Niko feeding my sister a dewy, amber slice of peach, laughingly pulling it out of reach before she finally let Malina have it, sealing it with a kiss.
Niko’s face drawn and blurred with tears, her little hands clenched into furious fists before Malina caught and uncurled them, brushing her lips over the knuckles. When had that been, I wondered vaguely; maybe after her and Luka’s mother died.
A hundred flashing glimpses of Nikoleta Damjanac, and then a hundred more, of her swimming and laughing and dancing with my sister, their fingers always entwined.
And then a final image of Niko’s sleeping profile: the pert outline of nose and lips against the pillow, her lashes fanned like a paintbrush, her fist baby-curled beneath the chin. And with it, the first swell of love my sister had ever felt, the moment in which she realized that this was the girl who held her heart. That was what the smell downstairs had made her remember, this precise moment of falling.
The devastating and glorious yielding of all control.
“That’s lovely, Lina,” I whispered, my voice thick. The illusion fell away as Malina’s singing fractured into tears, until she sobbed into my shoulder. “Shhh. Don’t.”
“I don’t want to leave her, Riss.” Her voice shuddered. “She’ll hurt so much without me. But I can’t let you go, either. You should have your chance to have that too, to feel how much you’re worth. I’ve already had it, so many years of love. It’s your turn now. It’s time for you.”
“No.” I could feel the resolve hardening within as I said it, like cooling glass taking on its final shape. “She can’t do without you; I could feel that much. You’ll have each other, and Luka—he’ll find someone else. It should be me who goes.”
Lina struggled upright, balling her fists against her thighs. “I won’t let you. Not this time. And even if I were willing, think what it would be like for me. I’d have to have babies, Riss, to carry on our line. How could I do that to Niko, drag her into all of this, make her watch me groom my children—ours, maybe, if she were still with me after all that—for sacrifice? Would she even stay with me? And if she did, how could I live and watch her get old, die in front of me? I won’t do it, I won’t. I’ll go—you stay. You have all the things you’ve never had.”
I drew away from her, unsteady. An ache began building in my center, growing outward, until it sank through my skin and bowed my skeleton down toward the earth.
“Really?” I whispered. “After everything you just told me, everything you’ve already gotten to have that I didn’t—you won’t even let me make this one choice? After all that fighting I did, all the struggling, all the barbed-wire shit that meant nothing while you hid in plain sight? Now you won’t even let me be the one to sacrifice, if that’s what I want? I don’t want to be the one to stay behind.”
She shook her head, her eyes pooling, pale and clear as spring water. “You’re not taking the hit for the both of us, not again. Not ever. I’m the prepped one, anyway. I’m the one they groomed just in case, you know?”
Resignation thudded over me, heavy as soil dropped on a casket. “Then I suppose we’ll see what sort of contest happens when sisters can’t decide.”
“ONE DAY TO prepare,” Sorai said through her teeth. This time she stood as we knelt before her on the cushions, the roses wheeling around us. Her eyes glittered with tamped-down fury, and the skin beneath them was dusky with fatigue. “That is all the time I can give you foolish, self-indulgent fledglings—my hold frays already, the curse bucks beneath my will. Faisali has tried to wake four times since I saw you last. Four times in two hours.”
Guilt poured over me, prickly with panic, and beside me Malina made a low sound of distress. We were putting so much at risk because we couldn’t come together the one time it truly mattered. But there was no splitting the difference here. I wouldn’t let her go willingly any more than she would let me.
“Death will be your judge, and you will agree to abide by the decision. There can be no dissent once that is done, do you understand? Not even an inkling of it.”
“I do,” I said softly, my throat tight. Beside me, Malina nodded silently. We weren’t holding hands this time.
“Then go to bed, rise early, and begin. I will send someone for each of you. If you truly wish to fight each other for this, you will do it tomorrow night.”
“What . . .” I cleared my throat. “What will it be like?”
“After your lessons, you will be readied for the ritual banquet, where you will then perform. Everything done to you—and everything you do—shall be in the service of beauty. That is your work now; make yourselves lovely. Azareen has the advantage here, Lisarah. She has been learning from Naisha since she was a child, where you have been given far too much free rein. So, you will do everything in your power tomorrow to smooth all those jagged edges—in which you seem to take such pride—into something fit to be beheld and beloved by Death.”
Even though I’d decided to do this, committed myself fully to fighting to win, everything in me bucked in protest at that imperative. In my lap, I curled my hands into tight fists. I could do it, if that was what it took to save her. I could force myself soft.