“I was repaying a favor, Benjamin Amir Rios Vecchio.” She folded her hands on her lap.
“To who?”
“To you.”
Ben blinked. “What are you talking about?”
She smiled, and it was so beautiful Ben felt like crying. “You saved the life of my last living child, Benjamin. Lucien had given up; he’d surrendered to the sun, but you risked fire in order to pull him to shelter. You gave him your own blood. After such a gift, how could I leave you to a life of slow disintegration as a human?”
Ben couldn’t take his eyes away from Saba. He leaned his back against the wall and let out a long-held breath. “You were repaying… It was a favor? To me.”
“Of course.” She nodded to the object cradled in his arm. “You were nothing to me at the beginning. An honorable human and a good servant. But later… Something made me look closer, Benjamin Amir Rios.”
She’d left off the Vecchio on purpose, Ben knew it.
“What?” Ben shrugged. “I’m nothing. I was a nobody, exactly what you said, a pretty decent human and a good servant. Why would you—”
“The blood of Mithra,” she murmured, “is a complicated thing.”
Ben fell silent.
“I have known for many years where the scroll of Mithra rested. I gave the scroll to Mararah with my own hands when I guided him to the throne.” She drummed her fingers on her leg. “He did not have the blood of Mithra, of course.”
“Because he was human,” Ben said. “Only wind vampires carry his blood, right? So it has to be a wind vampire who—”
“Do you think…” Saba smiled. “You think any wind vampire could carry Mithra’s scroll?”
Ben lifted it. “I’m carrying it.”
Saba smiled, her eyes dancing. “I can see that.”
“And Saba…” Ben’s mind pushed past the confusion and focused on the job they’d come to do. “Tenzin and I did not come empty-handed. We know that even though the scroll isn’t Ethiopian, it’s still in your territory and so we’re prepared to offer you—”
“Have you read it yet?” Saba was staring at him with unwavering eyes. “The scroll. Have you read it?”
“Uh, no. One, I don’t read Ge’ez, and two, we’ve kind of been running for our lives from your homicidal boyfriend.”
Saba’s eyes danced. “I’m going to tell Arosh that you called him that. He will be so amused.”
Oh dammit, what had he gotten himself into? “Please don’t. What do you want?”
She leaned forward and rested her chin in the palm of her hand. “Isn’t it obvious, young Benjamin? I want to know if it works. I want to know if Mithra truly did what he claimed. I never believed him in life. But then after I met you, I began to wonder. Was it possible? Could Mithra have actually—?”
“I don’t understand!” Ben was losing patience with the riddles and the double-talk. “If you’ve known all along where the bone scroll was, you could have had any wind vampire you were allied with—Ziri, Inaya, a thousand others—any of them could have—”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Saba frowned. “Do you still not realize who you are? Why the serendipity of Giovanni Vecchio’s finding you was so very extraordinary? Why you hold the scroll of Mithra with such ease? All of this was meant to be. Who am I to interfere with fate?”
Ben shook his head. “I am utterly ordinary. Just like this scroll. The only thing that makes me special is Zhang’s blood, Saba, and I’m not even sure—”
“Has anyone ever told you, Benjamin, that your eyes are quite special?”
Ben blinked. “They changed color. That happens when you turn sometimes, and Tenzin said—”
“You have Persian eyes.” Saba smiled. “Benjamin Amir Rios. Son of Horiya Haddad, daughter of Qamra Saliba, daughter of Dina Azimi, daughter of Ardeshir Azimi, son of Javid, son of Hasan Khani, son of Farideh, daughter of Zana—”
“Stop!” Ben held up a hand. “Stop it. I… I don’t know any of those people. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Those are your ancestors, Benjamin. I could go back further if you like.”
“No, they’re not… They can’t be—” Ben’s mind was swimming. “I don’t know any of those people. You don’t know what you’re talking about. My mother’s name wasn’t Hori… whatever you said.”
“Horiya Haddad,” Saba said. “It was the name she was born with. An honorable name from a prominent family in Lebanon whose roots go all the way back to a Sasanian governor who ruled Sidon a very long time ago, even for a vampire.”
Holy fuck. If Saba was right, his mother hadn’t been lying about everything. Ben was frozen in shock, but what Saba was revealing…
“What are you saying?” he asked. “Be very clear.” A memory surfaced from weeks ago, sitting in Giovanni’s library thousands of miles away in Pasadena.
“But if the bone scroll can be used by someone with the blood of Mithra, that could mean a lot of people… In theory, his human descendants could have had lots of children. They could be thousands and thousands in the modern world, right?”
“You are one of many.” Saba folded her hands together. “And yet you are unique. In so many ways, Benjamin Amir Rios, son of New York, you are singular.”
“You’re saying that I carry the blood of Mithra,” Ben said. “Not only as a wind vampire but as a human.”
Saba smiled. “An exciting prospect, isn’t it? You would think that in all my years of life, I would have tracked down another descendant of Mithra’s and made sure they turned to the air, but I often lose track of things.” She frowned. “Time especially. I forgot about the bone scroll for centuries until Arosh brought it up some time ago.” Her smile turned sly. “So convenient that you’d fallen in with a wind vampire, and one whose own sire owed an obligation to the Fire King.”
A hundred tiny puzzle pieces fell into place around him. The revival of a rivalry thousands of years at rest. A sword lost to the sea. An impossible decision and a wrenching separation.
“You’ve been playing with us.” Ben heard his own voice, and it was tinged with bitterness. “All along, you’ve been playing with Tenzin and me as if we were nothing more than pawns.”
“Have I been playing with you?” Saba cocked her head. “I suppose from your perspective, that could be correct. But you and your partner are far from pawns in this game.”
“My life” —his anger rose— “was not a fucking game!”
“If we are using your metaphor, you and Tenzin are the king and queen of this chessboard. Don’t you see?” She spread her empty hands. “I’ve just admitted to you that the scroll is useless to me. And indeed, Arosh doesn’t know this yet, but he could never wield it.” She smiled smugly. “As if I would allow him to gain such an upper hand; I dearly love my prince, but I have not forgotten who he is.”
“You don’t feel a single regret,” Ben said. “Do you?”