Mirage (Mirage #1)(42)

“Tell me,” she began. “Do you believe in Dihya?”

“I do,” I responded.

“I wasn’t so sure I believed in Dihya when I was your age,” she said. “I couldn’t understand why I’d been given Massinia’s face and her mark and nothing else. I don’t wake up from dreams of a past life. I have none of her patience, nor her sight. The Book doesn’t reveal hidden meanings. I have only her face, and most days it felt as if I were being punished. People came to my mother’s camp once word spread, looking for faith or relief or reassurance, and I had none of that.” She was staring into her cup, gaze unfocused, as though she could see the girl she’d been, young and bitter and alone. “Do you know what I realized?”

I shook my head.

“It doesn’t matter if I’m really Massinia, any more than it matters if you are the Imperial Princess.”

“I don’t understand.”

“A princess and a prophetess can do incredible things. We can bring justice to millions. We can do what ordinary people cannot.”

And what was it that ordinary people couldn’t do? My heart pounded out a fast rhythm as my mind raced, trying to pin down all of the things she thought we—I—could do.

“What is it you want of me?”

“We need a spy in the Ziyaana.”

“You have Furat,” I said suspiciously.

“Furat is a lesser cousin in disgrace,” Arinaas said. “You are a body double. You have access to places and information she does not.”

I said nothing. There was no need for me to speak—she knew the risk she was asking me to take. She set a small black box on the table between us.

“Inside the box is a communicator—undetectable by the Ziyaana’s security system. All we want now is information. Watch, listen, report anything of interest.”

“All you want now,” I repeated, staring at the box. The idea thrilled and frightened me at the same time. Spying was not a game—I knew what would happen if I were discovered. I couldn’t be rash or foolish and throw myself into something without considering the consequences.

“We may call on you,” she replied. “It is the nature of our work.”

“Rebellion,” I clarified.

“Freedom,” she countered.

“So.” She gazed at me. “Will you do it?”

As childish as it might have been, I wished for my mother. I wanted her advice, but more than that I wanted her shoulder to lay my head against. I could almost see her, smell the rose water she put in her hair some days, see the firm line of her mouth. I wanted her hand on my shoulder as it had been countless times, wanted the squeeze of reassurance.

Arinaas’s face looked as though it was carved from stone. She wouldn’t have room for softness—not if she had stayed alive for as long as she had. Not if she had spent her life evading the whispers and rumors that led the Vath to her. She had a fire in her, an unquenchable flame that would devour all that stood in her path. This, I thought, had to be what kept people at her side. Once they found out she had none of Massinia’s memories and only her appearance, it would have inspired those around her. This was what made me lean forward, as if I were helpless to resist the flame of hope that burned in her.

Whatever people might have expected her to be, Arinaas had forged herself out of that fire. She’d become someone worth rallying around.

Hope. Hard won, soaked in blood, a hope that burned as much as it lit her way. The opposite of what I’d nurtured while still on Cadiz. That had been a bright, gleaming thing, reflective like a moon in the sky. Harmless, but without its own warmth. Could I live my life knowing I’d never stepped close to such a flame? Could I exist in the Ziyaana knowing I had chosen my shadowed half life, had accepted a horrible changing in my soul, instead of reaching out with both hands with something that might remake me? Arinaas’s flame might char my skin and break my bones, but in the end I would emerge remade, newer and stronger and a version of myself no one could snuff out.

I’d prayed for a sign, for hope, for a purpose in being sent to the Ziyaana. I’d been answered with something I hadn’t even imagined.

“I will do as you ask.”

“Good,” she said, as if she’d expected it. She held out a hand, palm turned upward, and after a moment I realized what she wanted. I’d only ever seen soldiers greet or depart in this way. I reached across the space between us, laid my arm over hers and grasped her elbow, and she did the same to mine.





22

Dawn hadn’t yet broken, but I stood staring into the fountain in our courtyard. My presence had triggered the water so that it flowed, lapping gently. I thought of Furat’s words to me from yesterday, Happiness is rebellion. Since arriving at Ouzdad I’d found both—happiness and an ease with Idris I hadn’t felt since the days before my majority night, and rebellion—the rebellion I’d heard about since I was small, but hadn’t believed in. I knew the possible cost. If I were caught I would find no mercy in the Ziyaana. But I also thought of the night I had been taken from my family; of the look on Husnain’s face as he cried out that the Vath could not have me.

If he could see me now, I thought, he would be proud.

In the lantern light my reflection peered back up at me, broken up by waves and ripples. I recognized this girl, with her round cheeks and round chin, her wide eyes, always lined with kohl now. She was not a farmer’s daughter, not with the gold chain hanging from her neck and bejeweled earrings. And she wasn’t Maram, either; she would never look so vulnerable as I did now.