She traced his words with her fingertips. Watched the confidence in his script grow. This was no diary of feelings, but a scholarly record. Mantras, too, and scraps of knowledge sewn together. Ever since the Maha’s death, Zahir had searched for answers, as much a Hidden One as his mother—or as much as he could manage to be behind the palace’s walls. And in her time in the palace, Arwa had done the same. She had come a long way from the widow crying tears of frustration in the library of the hermitage’s prayer room, full of questions without any access to answers. She had new questions now.
They truly were a mystical order of two, she and him.
One of the final images was not copied art, but something Arwa knew could only have come from his own hand: a human built of pale lines and the silver of glass, run through by great roots, red and deep as blood. He must have drawn it after Arwa arrived at the palace, after her blood opened the doors to the realm of ash. She looked at it a long moment.
She heard a noise, and looked up from her book. Froze.
At the end of her bed, shadowed by night and candle glow, sat a figure small enough to be a child.
It raised its head. A child’s face, carved from shadow, looked at her. Eyes like fractured silver. As she watched, heart in her throat, its face fractured too, skin unfurled, peeling away, to reveal a face beneath it, flat as bone, a nightmare made flesh—
Her lungs filled with rattling fear. She woke up, shooting into heart-pounding awareness. The room was entirely dark.
Even the lantern had guttered.
It took her a moment longer to realize the lantern should not have guttered, that she had grown adept at knowing how to keep a lantern burning all night long, the necessary measure of oil to wick.
It took her a moment longer, still, to realize there were thin facets of light winking in and out of sight. That there was something concealing her lantern with the shadowy bulk of its body.
Daiva.
She rose onto her elbows. The shadowy bird-spirit bristled upon her lantern. When she moved, it lifted its wings and rose, letting the light pour over Arwa’s bed and the book beside her once again. She looked around herself, careful.
The walls were covered in shadows. No Darez Fort child-nightmare in sight. But that did not matter. Arwa knew what she had dreamed, and what lay before her now. Hundreds of bird-daiva upon the windows and walls.
Arwa rose to her feet. Carefully, ash whirling through her mind, she shaped a sigil of respect, a hint of a question in her stance. The tilt of her body. The turn of her head.
The daiva broke into wisps. Coalesced into one formless being, that took her arms, shaping them, then curled over her like a black shawl. Heart still hammering, she repeated the gesture it had made for her.
What had it meant? The ash within her answered.
Blood.
Arwa’s hands were shaking. She went over to her trunk, searching blindly. Ah. There.
She picked up her dagger and tucked it into her sash, where it was properly hidden. She raised the book too, holding it against her chest, and opened her room, stepping out into the corridor. For a moment she stood still, entirely still, and listened.
Silence. Utter silence. She felt the daiva melt away, slipping into formless shadow. For a moment, Arwa stood alone in the corridor, listening to birdsong as dawn approached. She felt terrified, but also strangely a fool.
Then she heard footsteps. A figure, gold-armored, came around the corner. The guardswoman spotted her and approached.
“My lady,” she said. “Why are you awake?”
“I heard a noise,” Arwa said. “I was afraid. My apologies.”
The guardswoman shook her head with a smile.
“There is nothing to be afraid of, my lady. Go back to your rest.”
Arwa turned. Hesitated.
“Where is Eshara?” she asked. “She usually patrols this corridor.”
“Sick,” the guardswoman said shortly.
“Or Reya? She—”
“Go to sleep,” the guardswoman said. “My lady.”
And Arwa would have, perhaps, if she had not paused for a moment longer—breath still in her throat, heartbeat no longer a roar in her ears—and heard the slow, steady drip of liquid against marble.
She turned.
Saw blood drip from the sheath of the guardswoman’s scimitar to the floor.
The guardswoman saw that she had seen. She looked at Arwa, expression resolute.
“Go into your room,” she said softly. “Allow me to bar your door. Sit silently, and you will live. I have not been tasked with killing women tonight.”
Not women. Then—
Zahir.
Arwa made a choked noise, suitably small and terrified. Nodded. Shaking, she edged back toward her room. Drip. Drip.
Her fingers tightened on the book.
Using all her strength, she flung it at the guardswoman’s head.
The book was heavy, but the guardswoman’s helm should have protected her entirely from harm. Arwa was lucky—the shock of the blow stunned the woman for a moment, giving Arwa all the reprieve she needed. Barefoot, unveiled, she ran for the hidden passage that led to the gardens.
She heard a yell and the sound of steel being drawn behind her, but she did not stop, and did not look back. Hesitation would have been certain death.
Familiar path, concealed by high trees. She ran. She ran.
She tripped, but didn’t fall. Instead she paused and turned, her breath ragged, and saw what had blocked her path. Curve of a shoulder. Long rope of hair.
Someone had not been averse to killing women this night.
The maid was undeniably dead. The grass around her, the paving stones, were red.
Blood, the daiva had told her.
Arwa held an arm to her face, shaped her teeth around the skin of her forearm, and breathed deep and slow. She had seen death. She knew death. She would be damned if she wept like a widow here, out under the fading night.
She kept on moving.
She moved more slowly now, in the shadows thrown by the trees. Through the leaves, she saw that Zahir’s workroom was surrounded by unfamiliar figures. Armed women. Armed men.
Her stomach fell away. She had hoped—somehow—that she would be able to warn Zahir. That he would be well. But how could he be?
A step back, under the cover of trees. Then she began to walk more hurriedly; her vision was almost black with something akin to grief. She stopped—she didn’t know where—surrounded by trees, a canopy of leaves concealing the sky above her.
She heard the crack of wood. Her vision snapped into focus.
In the shadows, she saw movement. A man. Watching her.
A guard. He had to be a guard, though he dressed like a soldier, his garb not ceremonial but worn by use, scuffed and stained and bloodied. He looked at her. There was no resolute sympathy in his eyes. Arwa’s insides curdled; she looked about herself, wild, a thing caught in a trap.
Under the cover of trees there was nowhere to run to.
There was no softness on his face. Not even particular malice.
“Who are you, then?” he whispered. “Another maid?”
Arwa said nothing.
“No,” he said. Still soft. “A widow. So, widow, do you know where the bastard is hiding?”
She took a step back. Another.
The man followed.
Arwa could feel the sweat at the nape of her neck, the fistlike thud of her heart. She felt wood at her back. Her legs numb.
I am going to die, she thought. After all this time.