The Rose & the Dagger (The Wrath & the Dawn, #2)(12)
Move slowly.
“What is your name?” she began in a quiet tone.
He sucked in a sharp breath. “I’ll be the one to ask the questions.”
She stood still as he paced around her in a circle.
His agitation was worsening.
“How?” With every erratic footfall, streams of light bounded across his face, casting his patchy beard in sinister shadow.
Shahrzad clasped her hands before her. “Pardon?”
“How did you survive?”
She chose her next words with care. “I told stories.”
He halted midstep. His disdain was clear before he even spoke.
“You told stories? You expect me to believe that monster kept you alive because you amused him?”
Shahrzad leveled a withering stare in his direction. “Believe what you choose to believe. But the proof stands before you, all the same.”
He made a sound of choked disbelief. She almost recoiled from its harshness. “Are you trying to provoke me? Are you truly that big a fool?”
For the second time, Shahrzad lifted her palms in a placating gesture. “I’m not trying to provoke you . . .” She waited patiently, hoping the boy would take the bait.
“Teymur. My name is Teymur.”
“Teymur.” Shahrzad curved her lips into a careful smile. “I’m not trying to provoke you,” she repeated. “I’m trying to understand you.”
A poor choice of words. Shahrzad realized it as soon as they passed into comprehension.
“Understand me?” Teymur snarled. “You couldn’t possibly understand me!”
“Please just tell me—”
He charged at her. Long fingers closed around her throat like a cuff. Shahrzad wrapped both hands around his wrist, trying to stay his grip. She stared back into his flame-filled eyes, determined not to flinch.
She was not afraid. This boy—this skinny man-child—was far more afraid than she would ever be. The sweat fell in steady trickles down either side of his face.
“How could you possibly understand?” He was shaking so hard it made his voice quake. “You’re alive. The monster let you live!”
With his other hand, he placed the tip of her dagger beside her chin. The blade was still ensconced in its jeweled sheath.
“Where did you get this?” Teymur examined the delicate etchings carved into the scabbard. He ran his thumb along the seed pearls and the tiny garnets embedded in the hilt. The emeralds at its base flashed with an evil light.
“Teymur—”
“Is it his?” His gaze moved from the dagger back to Shahrzad. “Did he give it to you?”
She said nothing.
“Answer me.” He shook her by the throat. “You promised me answers!”
“Yes. He gave it to me.”
“And if I kill you with it?” His voice drained to a whisper. “Like he killed my Roya.”
Shahrzad swallowed thickly. She knew that name.
One of so many. One in a sea of scattered letters.
In a storm of remembrances.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t you dare apologize!” The tips of his fingers pushed into her skin.
His pain radiated through Shahrzad, from his hand to her heart, touching an old wound that would never fully heal.
Shiva.
“What do you want from me?” she asked, her eyes squeezed shut, barring him from her pain, if only for a moment more.
“The truth.”
She swallowed again. “What do you wish to know?”
“Where your loyalties lie. Do you matter to Khalid Ibn al-Rashid?” He spat the name as though it were a curse. “Does he care for you?”
“I cannot speak to his feelings. He guards them well.” A half-truth. She could manage this, if pressed further. The blood returned to her clenched fingers in a rush.
“Then speak to your own. Does the monster matter to you?”
Lie.
“No.” Shahrzad locked her jaw. “He does not.”
“So you belong to the White Falcon still?”
“I belong to me.”
“Where is your heart, Shahrzad al-Khayzuran?” His voice was coarse in its insistence.
In an alley by the souk. In a night of oblivion.
In the promise of tomorrow.
“With . . . Tariq Imran al-Ziyad.” The lie burned on her tongue. “Where it always will be.” She kept her eyes closed, knowing they might betray her.
Teymur took in a harsh breath. It rattled in his chest, then filled the space between them, hot and fetid. In, then out. Twice more.
At his silence, a sense of unease kindled within her.
He pulled her close. Too close. His warm breath prickled her forehead.
“Did the monster . . . hurt Roya?”
In his sudden closeness, she understood his meaning.
And was horrified by it.
Her eyes flashed open. “He didn’t touch her.”
He studied her in awful stillness. So very close. Her pulse ratcheted in her throat, pounding with a restless incessancy.
“You told him stories. As you are telling me stories now.”
His resolve firmed as he spoke. And Shahrzad knew she could no longer stand idle. Knocking his arm aside, she rammed into his shoulder and made to flee.