Traitor to the Throne (Rebel of the Sands, #2)(71)

‘But she would have had longer.’ I could hear the tears in my own voice. ‘We could have escaped.’ Her death wouldn’t have been my fault.

‘You did escape,’ he said.

My temper snapped. ‘Don’t you find it tiring not caring about anything, ever, for all eternity?’ I didn’t want to cry in front of him. I hated how much I cared if I cried in front of him. But it was too late. Through the tears, I could hear footsteps now, distantly. Soldiers were coming for me. ‘You let my mother hang. You let me and Noorsham face each other in war – both of us your children.’ The footsteps were behind me now. I was screaming. ‘You stood there while I held that knife against my stomach! You made us. Why don’t you care about us?’ And then it was too late. The soldiers were grabbing me, yanking me away from my father, dragging me up the stairs as I fought against them, still shouting.

Something pricked the side of my neck. A needle, I realised, in the hands of the guard. There was something on the metal. I knew instantly. Something to make me sleep.

Suddenly everything rushed to my head. I felt the floor tip out from under me. I would’ve hit the ground except someone caught me. Strong arms.

‘Amani.’ My name punctured the storm of feelings. ‘I’ve got you.’

Jin.

No. When my vision cleared, the Sultan was the one propping me up. He was strong. I tried to struggle, but with one swift gesture, his hands went under my knees and he lifted me into his arms like I was a child. He started to walk, each step shaking me closer to his heartbeat.

‘I wanted—’ I struggled for some half-truth to cover what I had been doing. My mouth felt fuzzy as the drugs kicked in, the motion making me sick.

‘You wanted to see your father.’

I waited for the punishment. For the anger. We passed out of the cool shade of the courtyard, through another set of doors. Tree canopies spread out high above me, the sunlight dancing through their branches.

‘Yes,’ I admitted. And that was the simplest truth. I had wanted to face him. I’d wanted an explanation. I was swimming in and out of dreams now. I was starting to shake, too. Every part of me wanted to curl into the warmth of another body holding me. Like I was a small child being carried by my father.

But he wasn’t my father. He was Ahmed’s and Jin’s and Naguib’s and Kadir’s and Rahim’s and Leyla’s and he was a murderer.

I was dimly aware that we were in the harem. I felt the Sultan kneel down and then I was being laid down in a bed thick with scattered pillows that crowded around me.

‘Fathers often disappoint us, Amani.’





Chapter 27

There was a gift next to me when I woke up. It had been left while I slept, a conspicuously perfect tidy package of paper and ribbon amid the haphazard mess of pillows flung around my room. It swam into focus slowly as I emerged from the haze of drugs.

I pressed myself up onto my elbows, ignoring the pitcher of water next to me. No matter how dry my mouth was I wasn’t about to risk something that might send me back to sleep. I poked at the gift with my foot cautiously, half expecting some trick from Ayet. When nothing exploded, I finally picked it up.

Blue fabric appeared below the paper. It was a khalat. The fabric was the colour that the sea had been, the brief glimpse of it I’d had from the deck of the ship. And the hem and the sleeves were trimmed in gold stitching. When I looked at the embroidery closely, I realised it was the story of Princess Hawa, in tiny golden detail. On my right sleeve, where she rode the Buraqi across the desert, there were even tiny gold beads showing the dust kicked up under its hooves. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

I’d hated wearing blue most of my life. It just made my eyes more obvious than they already were. It was one of a thousand reasons I’d loved the red sheema Jin stole for me. Only I didn’t hate this khalat.

I slipped it on, revelling in the feeling of the fabric against my skin. It occurred to me that I’d never worn a piece of clothing that had never been worn by anyone else before. My clothes in Dustwalk were all cast-offs from cousins. I’d bought second-hand clothes in Juniper City when I fled there. Even my clothes in the rebel camp were Shazad’s. This was the first thing I’d ever worn that truly fit me. It had been made for me. And I knew what it meant.

It was forgiveness for going to see Bahadur.

*

In spite of the Sultan’s gift I didn’t know what I might’ve lost by tricking my way out of the harem. The Sultan’s trust, definitely. My freedom, too, probably. There was nothing stopping him from stripping away the freedom he’d given me with just a few words. He wouldn’t be wrong not to trust me to leave the harem. I ran my thumb over the raised golden thread of the sleeve as I headed for the edge of the harem. I was working to destroy him, after all.

But even though my step slowed the closer I got to the gates I didn’t meet any invisible barriers there. I passed through the archway that led towards the palace the same way I had yesterday, when Shira and I had been tricking our way out. Still, I didn’t quite dare drop my guard just yet. But there was no battalion of soldiers waiting for me at the gates, either. Just one man, same as always. Only it wasn’t a soldier. Or rather, it wasn’t just any soldier.

Prince Rahim, Leyla’s brother, wearing his commander’s uniform, was waiting for me outside the gates, hands clasped behind his back. The one who’d spoken that day in court as if he was born on a battlefield. The one who’d watched me with dark eyes that made me nervous so often during negotiations. He didn’t speak a whole lot, but when he did, it was always something worth hearing.