The Wrath and the Dawn(96)

As she began to shut the door, her eyes fell on a leather sleeve filled with sheets of parchment, wedged like an afterthought between two massive tomes on a shelf high above her.

It seemed out of place. Just like her.

A small part of her knew she should leave it be. This was not her room. These were not her things.

But . . . it called to her. This collection of afterthoughts whispered her name, as if from behind a locked door with a forbidden key. Shahrzad stared up at the sleeve of leather.

As with Tala and her bluebearded husband’s ring of keys, the parchment pleaded for attention.

And, like Tala, she could not ignore it.

She had to know.

Shahrzad stood on her toes and tugged on the leather sleeve with both hands. It slid from between the tomes, and she clutched it to her chest for a nervous beat before kneeling against the black onyx. Cold fear skittered down her back as she raised the fold. The sheaf of parchment was inverted and illegible, so she grabbed the stack and upended it with care.

The first thing she noticed at the bottom was Khalid’s formal signature, composed in clear, neat script. When her eyes skimmed across the rest of the page, she rapidly discerned it was a letter—

A letter of apology, addressed to a family in Rey.

Shahrzad turned to the next piece of parchment.

It was another letter of apology. Written to another family.

As she leafed through the stack of parchment, her eyes began to swim in realization. In recognition.

These were letters of apology to the families of the girls murdered at dawn by a callous hand and a silk cord.

Each was dated. Each acknowledged Khalid’s sole responsibility. None offered any justification for the death. No excuse.

He merely apologized. In a manner so open and full of feeling that it left her throat dry and her chest aching.

It was clear they were written with no intention of being delivered. Khalid’s words were far too personal and introspective to indicate he ever meant for any eyes to see them apart from his own. But his unabashed self-loathing cut into Shahrzad with the effectiveness of a newly honed knife.

He wrote of staring into frightened faces and tearful eyes, with the abject knowledge he was robbing families of their joy. Stealing their hearts’ blood from them, as though he had the right. As if anyone had the right.


Your child is not a notion or a whim. Your child is your greatest treasure. And you should never forgive me for what I’ve done. As I will never forgive myself.


Know that she was not afraid. When she gazed at the face of the monster sanctioning her death, she did not quail. Would that I had half her courage and a quarter of her spirit.


Last night, Roya asked for a santur. Her playing drew every guard in the corridor to her door, and I stood in the garden and listened, like the cold, unfeeling bastard I am. It was the most beautiful music I have ever heard in my life. A music that rendered all thereafter dull and colorless in its memory.

Tears began streaming down Shahrzad’s face. She turned the pages faster.

Until she found the one addressed to the family of Reza bin-Latief.


How does one begin to apologize for robbing the world of light? Words seem strangely insufficient in such a case, and yet I fall to their uselessness in my own inadequacy. Please know I will never forget Shiva. For the brief moment she stared into the face of a monster, she deigned to smile and forgive. In that smile, I sensed a strength and a depth of understanding I could never hope to fathom. It tore at what professes to be my soul. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. A thousand, thousand times. At your knees, and it will never be enough.

Shahrzad sobbed, and the sound rang out in the chamber. The parchment shook in her hands.

Khalid was responsible. Whatever the excuse, whatever the reason—he was the one. He had killed Shiva.

He had robbed Shahrzad of this light.

She had known it, all along. But now, clutching the undeniable truth between her fingers, she realized how much she had wanted it to be a lie. How much she had wanted there to be some kind of excuse. Some kind of ready scapegoat. That, somewhere along the line, she would discover it was not his fault.

Even now she knew how ridiculous it sounded.

But it was breaking her . . . slowly. The wall around her heart was crumbling, leaving behind scorched embers and bleeding wounds. Her sobs grew louder. Shahrzad wanted to hurl the leather sleeve across the room, shred its contents, and deny its pernicious truths, but she lifted the next page. And the next.

So many.