The Tiger at Midnight (The Tiger at Midnight Trilogy #1)(79)

Hurt flashed across her eyes.

It hurt him too, a sharp pang in his left side. What had she done?

The fog came back up, swirling and threatening, overcoming his senses so that he was fire and smoke. He didn’t want to go. Reached for her.

The last thing he saw was her face.





Chapter 52


The shift happened so quickly Esha almost wasn’t prepared, her thoughts preoccupied with replaying how he had recoiled from her. How much hatred had been in his eyes.

Was that how he truly felt about her when all artifice was gone? Did he blame her for this? His capture, the poison. It wouldn’t have been her choice.

The turning was ferocious, claws snapping at her, his skin tearing open at his back. Like lightning, he turned back and forth as if his body didn’t know which form could take the pain coursing through its blood.

Esha pulled as close as she could without coming under attack. She whispered to him, soft and slow, stories of their childhood, holding a hand out.

He stopped flipping bodies like the flickering flame of a candle, calming as Esha herself calmed. The pain in her chest eased as he turned human, and stayed that way.

She shook her head. The soldier. Her lemon boy. A Samyad prince.

It wouldn’t matter that he couldn’t sit on the throne or might not be able to perform the renewal ritual any better than Vardaan. Though he was a Samyad, he wasn’t a woman, and the renewal ritual required a Samyad woman and a Himyad man. A queen and a king.

He would be royalty in name—and cease to become anything else. Her mind whirred at what it might mean for the rebels—was there a possibility he could delay the full death of the land long enough for them to find Reha? She was no scholar, and the gifts of the gods were wild in nature, unpredictable as the seas. But time was running out. Only four moons now remained before the winter solstice and the last renewal ritual.

The scholars hadn’t reached any firm conclusion, but there was a chance that his blood could hold back the tide of destruction. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing. Could she ask that of him? To give up his dreams for his quiet future? If he helped them, he might never see it.

She wrung out the cloth again and put it to his head. Esha was choosing him over all her other loyalties.

So he better survive.





Chapter 53


He still burned, but it felt like a dull roar, a deafening of the pain that had racked his body earlier.

Kunal felt more lucid, aware that he was no longer in the dungeon. He was adrift in a sea of silky red-and-gold sheets, ensconced in a large bed with gold lions carved into the bedposts, staring down at him from above.

The purple fog still hung over him, clouding his thoughts and memories. Every inch of his body felt as if someone had stabbed him with careful and detailed precision, and he could tell by the burning in his throat and chest that he hadn’t kept down any food.

All he could do was move his head, a nudge, to the side. Enough to see what was making the noise. He was pretty sure it wasn’t in his head.

Kunal’s eyes strained to look down the room, where two faint figures stood. Their words were sharp, hot, furious. The passionate tones moved closer.

“You told me it was a mild poison, Harun. You lied to me!”

“You were being unpredictable. I had to get you out of there, otherwise we would’ve all continued arguing while the rains descended on our heads.”

“And you kept him in the dungeons. He was burning with fever and racked with pain when I found him. You gave him a strain of night rose.”

It sounded like Esha. The voice was low, dangerous. The other figure moved back suddenly, as if pushed.

“And now you have him up here, in one of my private suites. I don’t care if he’s a turned asset, until he proves his worth he’s an unknown. He’s only alive thanks to your grace, and thanks to whatever secrets he might have in his head. A soldier of Jansa being treated like royalty,” the male voice spat, traces of venom in his words. “Have they not done enough to us? Think of Sundara.”

“If I hadn’t gotten him out of there and administered the antidote to him properly, he could’ve been paralyzed.”

“So what?” Something told Kunal that the voice wasn’t being truthful. The man sounded less confident. “And it’s not your call to have him moved. Esha, I would give you anything, but do you know how that made me look?”

A hiss. A warning.

“I don’t care how it looked. You were wrong, Harun. You promised me. And you broke that promise. Either you trust me or you don’t. Don’t live in between.”

“Then don’t undermine my power,” he snapped back.

“Don’t try and control me. I risk my life on missions, I kill your failures, I ensure we have patrons; what more do you want from me?”

Kunal heard pain in her words and tried to speak, to reach out to her. He hurt too.

The figures were leaning in, the larger one holding the smaller in its arms.

Kunal tried to clear his vision, to focus again.

The smaller figure—Esha? Her head whipped around.

She looked like someone who had hurt him, but he wanted her happy. He didn’t know why. Who was she?

“Did you hear that?”

“No, Esha—”

She was at his side in moments, a cool hand on his forehead. He tried to move his lips but the fog thundered back in and she disappeared in smoke.