Mirage (Mirage #1)(30)

“There you are,” Idris said from behind me, and I spun around, startled.

“What are you doing here?” My heart was racing and my voice trembled. The question came out as a demand, and an angry one at that.

He raised an eyebrow and took the lantern from me. “Your maidservant said you were down here. You’ve never liked the catacombs before, so I wanted to see what you found so fascinating,” he replied. His gaze narrowed at me. “I did not peg you for a Massinite, cousin.”

I frowned. “A what?” Maram wouldn’t know that word, even if I did.

He gestured to the mural. “An acolyte of Massinia.”

I shook my head and turned back to the wall. “I don’t pray to her, if that’s what you mean. She’s dead—she can’t hear me.”

“Then why do you look as if you love her?”

Even my mother had commented that how I felt about Massinia was stronger than what most of the faithful felt, and I chided myself for showing it.

“I’m not,” I said at last, and picked up my lantern.

As far as I could gather, Maram had no faith. Her mother died before she could teach her, and her Vathek family had not bothered.

He caught my wrist, and raised an eyebrow at me. “We’ve never kept secrets.”

I hardened myself against his smile and shook my head.

“I’m not keeping a secret,” I said. “The murals are beautiful and I came down to look.”

He wandered a little way down the mural and traced a finger over the lines of Kushaila. It depicted her first revelation—hidden away in a cave with a blank book open in her lap, and the first lines of our Book swirling around her.

Hear and recite, the words read, for We know things you do not.

“One day you shall return to the stronghold. That’s how her poem ends,” Idris said.

I paused, confused, then realized what he was referring to—the poem we’d talked about during the ball. Massinia’s flight.

“That is a horrible translation,” I said flatly.

He turned to look at me a second before I realized my mistake.

Maram didn’t speak Kushaila—and even if she did, she would not have known the poem he’d tried—and failed—to translate.

“You are almost as easy to bait as Maram,” he said at last. He wasn’t smiling.

I felt the blood drain from my face.

Maram. The name hung in the air.

I’d been caught.





16

I stood in the gloom of the catacombs, head spinning.

“When—?”

“When did I know?” he asked. “I suspected at the ball, when you asked that servant if she was all right. Maram doesn’t see servants, as a rule. But a million little things have told me since. Your face is far too open—Maram is never so unguarded. You look at people when you talk to them, instead of through them, as is her practice. You listen—everything I said elicited a reaction from you, no matter how small or benign. You seemed awed when we landed in Gibra, though Maram has never spared it a glance. Perhaps most telling of all is you listened and catalogued my mistakes during my … uninspired … telling of Massinia’s stories. I could see it in your face, even if you had the grace not to share your true feelings with me.”

Horror crept up my spine. Had I been so transparent? Were my mistakes so easily pinpointed and catalogued? A small part of me was impressed—I knew Idris had to be clever to have survived in the Ziyaana all these years, but this … How closely did he watch everyone around him to spot a difference even Maram’s father had missed?

“If you were so sure,” I said angrily, “why bait me at all?”

“Because you never would have admitted to being other than Maram if I’d asked nicely.” He huffed a humorless laugh. “So, then. Who are you? And why are you here instead of Maram?”

I clenched my jaw. All my work, all I’d suffered, had come to nothing in a single moment. And Idris hadn’t proven himself trustworthy, only clever. “And if I refuse to tell you?”

For the first time he looked surprised, and took a step forward.

I quickly stepped back.

“You’re frightened,” he said, eyes widening.

“Of course I’m frightened,” I said, my voice breaking. “You live in the Ziyaana! You know the cost—”

“Of failure,” he finished. “I didn’t think—”

“Of course you didn’t. This was just a game to you. A puzzle to decipher.” I drew in a trembling breath. “This is no game to me. My life depends on my success.”

He nodded, eyes searching me, missing nothing. “I understand. But I can’t help you unless—”

I scoffed before I could think better of it. “Help? You can’t help. My old life is over. There is no escape, no respite from that truth. This is my life now. If this is a life at all.”

He stared and I raised my chin, daring him to disagree with me.

“You speak like one of us,” he said instead.

My jaw clenched harder in anger. “Thank you, sayidi,” I said, the highborn Kushaila title a pointed reminder that I was not one of them. “A high compliment.”

“That isn’t—”