Rebel of the Sands (Rebel of the Sands, #1)(18)

“Do you always drag girls behind your house to beat them up for putting a knee in your sweetheart’s gut?” I leaned back against the weak wooden frame.

“Marry me.” He said it so suddenly, for a second I just stared at him with my jaw still moving.

Then I burst out laughing.

I couldn’t help it. He looked so damn pleased with himself. Like he really expected me to say yes. “Well, paint me purple and call me a Djinni, if that isn’t the dumbest thing I’ve heard all day.” I shoved bloody hair off my face.

He was still grinning. “You’ve got nice eyes, you know. There was someone else with eyes like yours out in Deadshot last night. Blue-Eyed Bandit, they called him. Got me thinking, not many people in this desert with eyes like that.”

Of all the times for him to grow some brains. “You saying I’ve got a long-lost brother?”

“You know what I’m saying, Amani.” He stepped toward me, and I fought everything in me telling me to step back. Only a few feet away the commotion over the Buraqi was still making a racket, but just then it felt like the world had narrowed to Fazim and me. “And you’re going to marry me so that no one else finds out.”

“And what’s the next part?” My eyes darted to the opening between the two houses. I saw a flash of colorful khalat as someone rushed by. I willed the next person to look our way. “You tell me you’re in love with me and these months with Shira have been a big ruse while you were waiting for my mother to be dead a year?”

Fazim grinned. Like he’d just been waiting for me to ask. “Well, until you caught that Buraqi, Shira was my best shot in town to get me on the way to rich.”

“And she’ll get you even further that way once my uncle sells it.” Was that why Shira had flung herself into the fray? To get this idiot to marry her, for love or money?

“See, I’ve thought it all out, though.” He tapped his head. He was pretty dumb to be acting like he was the smartest man ever born. “Sure, if I marry Shira I’d get a little bit of that money. But seeing as you caught it, if you were to get married, the Buraqi wouldn’t belong to your uncle no more.”

It would belong to my husband.

Damn him. He wasn’t clever, but he was right. And worse, he was serious. Here was the moment I’d been trying to outrun, only it wasn’t coming at my uncle’s hand.

Anger burned my fear straight out of me. “I’d rather shoot myself.” I’d rather shoot you.

“You wouldn’t have to.” He was still smiling, his teeth looking too big for his handsome face. “The army will probably do it for you once I tell them you were with that foreigner they’re after.” His gaze stripped me all the way from my blue eyes to my boots. “Of course, they’ll probably torture you first.”

I smiled at him sweetly instead of knocking his teeth in. “Still sounds better than a lifetime married to you.”

Fazim’s hand slammed into the wall behind my head, scaring the smirk straight off me. “You know, I don’t have to wed you first.” His voice was low, his smile still fixed, like he thought he was charming me. “I can make you worthless. Then you’d have no choice. You could marry me or hang. If you’re anything like your mama, you’ve got a fine neck for hanging.” His free hand traced a line along my throat. I could best just about any man in this desert if I had a gun. But now I was unarmed and helpless.

“Fazim.” Shira’s voice saved me. “What are you doing?”

Fazim pulled away, just far enough for me to see Shira standing in the narrow opening between the two houses. Her mouth was pressed together in that way I remembered from when we were little, when she was trying not to cry. I pulled away from him and scrambled back toward the street. My pace slowed just as I passed Shira. I thought she might stop me, stick an arm out and demand to know what I was doing between a wall and her lover. But she stepped aside at the last moment, her eyes firmly fixed on the ground.

I bolted for home.

? ? ?

I HAD TO leave. Bluffing took more brains than Fazim had. He’d go to the army and tell them I knew about their traitor. I wasn’t going to beg Jin. I was going to make him take me with him.

I paused in the doorway into my uncle’s house, listening for any noise that might mean I wasn’t the first one to get back to the house. When I was sure, I stepped inside, letting the floorboards creak below my boots, praying this would be the last time I ever walked over that threshold.

I snatched up everything I could find that I thought might belong to me from the chaos of the bedroom floor, and a few things I knew didn’t.

I dashed into the boys’ room. It was even worse than ours, with clothes piled halfway up the walls; I grabbed a shirt that seemed as clean as anything got around there. Across the house the front door banged open. I heard Aunt Farrah call my name.

I slung the shirt around my neck as I eased myself through the window, dropping to the sand below before she could think to check the boys’ room.

The main street was busy with folks hanging lanterns, setting out tables of food to sell, and tuning their instruments in the last dredges of daylight. We’d had nothing to celebrate since Shihabian, the longest night of the year, when we remembered the time the Destroyer of Worlds brought darkness and celebrated the returning of the light. That’d been near a year ago now. The Last County was thirsty for celebration. There would be plenty tonight. I just wouldn’t be here for it.