The Girl King (The Girl King #1)(86)

“That was you?” Nok asked, dumbfounded.

“You heard about that?”

“They were talking about that all the way down in the capital,” he told her.

“I looked for you, you know,” his sister told him. “We raided the same camp we were taken to—number four, they call it. Creative.”

“I wasn’t there anymore,” Nok said, thinking again of Omair.

“No,” Nasan agreed. “Neither were any of the others. Karakk, Mitri, Chundo, Ammi, Moha, and Dohti . . . all the kids taken from our Kith. I didn’t see any of them.”

“Dead?” Nok asked.

Nasan just shrugged. “Probably.” Her voice wasn’t cold, exactly. Just unconcerned.

The unreality of seeing his sister sitting here, breathing, radiant, thriving, was beginning to wear off, replaced by a growing sense of unease.

“Lu—the princess, can I see her now?” he asked.

“I said she’s all right. Don’t you trust me?” His sister grinned at him, but behind the flash of teeth she was all cautious calculation.

Lu was a valuable commodity; what did Nasan want with her? Her face gave nothing away.

“She’s quite the fighter, your princess,” continued his sister. “Pretty, too. She nearly took out my best lieutenant’s eye.”

“She’s not my princess,” Nok said, pulling himself up to his elbows. This time she didn’t try to stop him. “And your best lieutenant . . . ? Nasan, who—what are you?”

A wall went up over Nasan’s face. “That depends.”

“On what?”

She didn’t answer the question but instead asked, “What are you doing with the Hu princess, Nok?”

“Helping her get north. To Yunis.” he admitted.

“Why?”

“To—to get an army, regain her throne. If I help her, she’ll free Omair, the apothecarist who saved me.”

“You’re helping an imperial—a member of the very family that killed our parents, our Kith—for some peasant doctor.”

“Yes.” How to make her understand what Omair meant, what Nok owed him?

Nasan’s eyes, so like his own but so different, narrowed in suspicion.

Nok felt a prickle of fear. On instinct, he reached down to pat for the knife in his boot. He wouldn’t use it; just wanted the assurance that it was there.

It wasn’t. Of course; he’d dropped it in his botched attack on Ony.

His sister’s eyes flicked down to where his hand was groping for it and she raised an eyebrow.

He’d kept a knife there, too, when they were children. She understood.

“I need her,” he said. “To get Omair back. What are you going to do with her?”

“That depends on what she’s willing to do for me.” Nasan’s tone did not invite further questioning. “Do you think you could convince her to help me?”

Nok very much doubted anyone could convince Lu to do anything she didn’t want to do, but his sister didn’t want to hear that.

“I guess we’ll have to find out.”

He licked his lips. This was his sister, as sure as the sun rose in the east, but what could that mean stretched so thin over four years of separation? There was a lot Nasan wasn’t telling him; more than he even knew to look for. He was sure of it. The way they were talking, it was like two dogs circling one another, unsure of the other’s strength.

He almost laughed; if only his father could see how hard he’d turned out. The old man would never believe it.

“I’d like to see Lu now,” he said decisively.

Nasan sat back on her heels. Something in her posture slackened, tentatively. “Are you sure you’re up for it? You look terrible. Your face is all messed up.”

The irony of her words cut through the fog of his suspicion. “Yes. Because you messed it up.”

She smiled at that, all fierce joy and sharp teeth. “It could’ve been worse, big brother. At least I didn’t kill you.”



Nasan led him out the door, then abruptly swung an arm back to stop him in his tracks. When he looked down he saw why: they were a good thirty feet above the ground, standing on a narrow platform in the massive boughs of a tree. So, his sister didn’t want him dead. At least not yet.

“I’ve been living in a tree, too,” he told her when his shock wore off. “What a coincidence.”

She gave him a quizzical look, like she wasn’t sure if he were joking or not, but just pointed to a massive wooden basket hanging on an elaborate pulley of rope that swung all the way down to the ground. “We’ll ride down in that,” she told him. “I don’t think you could make the climb in your state.”

“Right,” he said with a snort. “It’s only because of me. Otherwise you’d be scampering down to the ground, no problem.” Then, seeing her solemn face, “Wait, you’re not serious?”

“I make that climb every day,” she told him. “These are my quarters.”

Quarters? He stared at her again, wondering for the hundredth time since he’d woken exactly who his sister had become. It was strange, how familiar she felt—it was so easy to slip into their old roles like they hadn’t missed a day. But he had to mind the massive gaps between them, precarious holes of missing time and knowledge he kept threatening to fall through.