Traitor to the Throne (Rebel of the Sands, #2)(96)

Jin leaned in and whispered something to the Xichian man next to him as they descended the steps into the garden. The man nodded, turning to say something back. The crowd shifted, and he vanished. I battled my instinct to move towards him. To fight my way through the crowd and damn the Sultan watching me.

I started to move slowly towards where I’d seen him disappear. Or as slowly as I could with my heart beating out the rhythm of gunfire. I dodged around foreigners in strange clothes, Mirajin folksin fine colours, dangerous men in uniforms. Only I couldn’t see him. I’d lost him. Again.

‘Amani.’ His voice by my ear sounded exactly the same way it had the last time I’d seen him. In the desert. On the run. Breathless from kissing me in the tent.

When I turned around he was so close I could’ve reached out and touched him. Only if there was one surefire way for us to both die as gruesome a death as the bronze men around us, that would be it.

His eyes travelled the length of me, from the top of my perfectly combed head all the way to my bare feet. I was suddenly more keenly aware of my appearance than I’d been all night. That I was a golden-glowing girl, not wearing a whole lot, who’d been polished like the other harem girls for the express purpose of being looked at by other men but not touched. The other Xichian man with Jin was doing exactly that, his gaze snaking across every piece of uncovered skin I had. But Jin didn’t seem to notice that I was painted gold and on display as if to taunt him.

‘You cut your hair,’ he said finally. It was such a thing for him to notice, among everything else. The clearest wound I wore in the open of everything that had happened in the walls of the harem.

‘Not deliberately.’ It was too much to explain to him now everything that had happened. But Jin could read some of it on my face. In the two-word answer.

‘Amani, did they—’ He stopped himself. Did they hurt you? stalled there. I knew why. If someone had hurt me and he hadn’t been able to stop it, I didn’t know what the chances were that he’d forgive himself. ‘Are you all right?’

Now, that was a heavy question. ‘I’ll live.’

His face changed, hand curling into a fist at his side. And when he spoke again his voice was low and urgent. ‘I swear to God, if he’s hurt you, Amani, I will make him suffer for it.’ I didn’t have to guess who he was. The Sultan.

‘You don’t believe in God.’ It was all I could think to say.

His hand twitched forward, like he wanted to pull me to him, away from everything else happening around us. ‘Then I swear to you.’

I had to ball my hands together to not reach for him. I remembered being little, my arms shaking from the effort of holding up a rifle too heavy for a ten-year-old. All I wanted in the entire world was to let the gun drop. To release my hands and let it fall. The effort of holding it up was too much. It was tearing into my muscle.

But staying alive depended on me holding that rifle up. Learning to shoot.

I kept my arms where they were. Shaking with effort.

‘Jin,’ I said as low as I could in Mirajin. ‘It’s not safe for us to talk.’

‘I really don’t give a damn about safe or not.’ His voice was low and sure. And for a moment I thought he really might grab me. Just take my hand and run us both out of there. Then he remembered himself; the gesture turned into a bow as he stepped out of the way of the man behind him. It was one of the Xichian men, trailing him like a shadow. ‘I’m the translator for Prince Bao tonight, of the Xichian Empire. So long as we talk through him, we’ll be fine.’ The man inclined his head, oblivious, saying something in Xichian.

‘What happened to his other translator?’ I asked through what I hoped was a deceptively polite smile.

‘He came down with a bad case of broken ribs this afternoon.’ Jin winked at me over the prince’s head, which was still bowed in front of me. ‘The prince has a weakness for beautiful women so it wasn’t all that hard to steer him over to you. Say something back, as if I’ve been translating to you.’

I hadn’t seen Jin in two months. And last time we’d been fighting and his hands had been inside my clothes, and his mouth over mine. There were months of unspilled words between us. Not to mention I probably ought to let him know that as soon as the last of the light that was currently stretching our shadows faded, there was the small matter of freeing a whole lot of Djinn. There was too much to say and too little time, and it was too hard to spill it all through a polite smile. ‘Where the hell have you been?’ I asked finally, through a forced smile at Prince Bao, as if I was talking to him and not demanding an explanation through my teeth.

I didn’t catch Jin’s expression as he turned away from me and said something quick in Xichian. I recognised it as some sort of polite platitude. The man said something back, nodding and smiling, handing it to Jin to translate. And finally Jin could turn back to me.

‘I was looking for you.’ His right hand was still curled into a fist, bouncing tensely against his leg.

‘Well, that was stupid,’ I said, and Jin stifled a laugh as I pressed my lips together and tried to radiate politeness at the foreign man who seemed to think I didn’t know he was staring at my chest. ‘I was right here.’

‘Yes, Shazad has already gone into great detail about my choices.’

‘Shazad knows you’re here?’