Chapter 34

Days pass and I walk around in a daze, pain burrowing deeper with each day I’m kept from being able to summon Hamza. My father asks me if I am ready to sign at every meal. I refuse each time. He doesn’t threaten anymore, simply nods his head, with a sick smile on his face. That frightens me more than his threats, more than his hits because it means he’s planning something. Something he’s sure will make me sign. Something that will make me desperate enough to sign.

Finally, when I cannot take the sadness a second more, I go to the nursery in the dead of night. I stop every now and then, making sure no one is following me. When I reach the nursery, I only open the curtains, too afraid to light a candle. Tonight we’ll have to look at each other in the light of the moon and nothing more.

“Hamza.” I whisper.

He’s in the room the next second, rushing towards me, hands going to the sides of my face as his worried eyes bore into mine. I go to speak, but his lips crash down on mine, his fear and concern bleeding through into the kiss. It’s hard and frantic, and his hands grip the sides of my face so tightly, it begins to hurt.

When we break apart for air, he backs away a little, looking me over. My lip has healed from the throne room, and there are no bruises to see this time.

“I’m so sorry,” I begin. “I wanted to summon you so badly, but I couldn’t.”

His eyebrows scrunch in concern.

“My father is trying to figure out who summoned you in Sameer. He’s refusing to pay the guards and servants their wages until one of them comes forth. He removed the bar from my room, and I was afraid to call you there and have someone burst in and see us. Azar has sent a letter, giving us, me, one more chance to sign the marriage agreement before there’s war. My father threatened to have my hand removed and sign the agreement with that.”

Fire enters Hamza’s eyes, his hands tightening on my arms. Then his face softens, and he motions to his mouth.

“What do you want to say?”

“I have been so worried about you. Every day you didn’t summon me was torture. Not knowing if war had come to Nur, if you were okay, if you were even alive,” his voice croaks, then his mouth purses with renewed anger. “I have never wished for someone to do wrong more than I do your father. Just so someone could summon me against him. Come away with me, Ameera. I can try and take you with me to Shams, or if magic won’t get you there, I will send a boat from Shams to Nur’s beach to take you away from here. Please.”

The pleading in his voice, the way it breaks as he begs me to leave makes me wish with all my heart that I could. It tears my heart in two. I bring my hand up to his face, and he closes his eyes, turning into my palm.

“I cannot,” I say hoarsely. “I cannot leave my people to the fate my father will bring down on them. If I leave, he will be free to choose his heir, and I can guarantee whoever he chooses will bring even more despair and darkness to Nur. I love you. I want so badly to be with you every moment of everyday, but I cannot sacrifice the people of Nur that way.”

I bring my other hand up, and his eyes open at the force I use to make him look at me. “But once I am queen, the moment I can tell the witch to undo the spell, you will be free. You will take your place beside me. I will repair Nur and erase my father from history the way he has tried to erase you.”

A promise of revenge lights up his eyes, and his lips turn up in an evil smile. I love it.

“Yes, my love.” I chuckle. “What is it you want to say?”

“Queen or not, I will be wherever you are. But right now, I want you. I want every ounce of fire you have brewing inside you to unleash itself on me.”

His mouth comes to mine, our tongues circling each other’s as my hands going to his pants. His go to the back of my dress, fingers beginning to undo the first button, but then he freezes. And so do I. I know him well enough by now to know that tilt of his head, what it means. Sadness fills me as I realize our moment is over. But then he speaks, and his words fill me with a more absolute dread than I have ever known.

“Your father summons me,” he growls.

“No.” I breathe.

Really I want to scream, but my fear chokes me.

Then he’s gone.

For once the smell of rain doesn’t comfort me. Because I know what awaits him. My father trying to kill him once again. Visions of him not surviving this time, of my father having found some way to finally end Hamza’s life fill my mind. And although I know this is a trap, whether for Hamza, me, or both of us… I run.

I run from the nursery, down the halls to the only room my father would summon Hamza to. The room my father would want to bring someone to their knees in. The room he’s had me beaten in, the room he decides to interrogate in, the room he likes to fill with fear. I know what it means as I get closer to the throne room. Even if Hamza has managed to escape, my very presence there will tell my father all he needs to know. That it was I who summoned him in Sameer. That I summon him to Nur. That I am the traitor he has made me out to be.

I find I don’t care. Because all that weighed against saving Hamza is nothing compared to what I’m willing to do for the man I love.

I burst into the throne room and sure enough, the picture before me makes my heart stop. It squeezes in my chest. It refuses to beat again. I watch in horror as the witch continuously weaves a spell. The mist of it, black and thick, oozes from her spread hands to where Hamza’s feet are rooted. He stands in the middle of the throne room, inside a circle of black mist. It clearly holds him trapped inside, gripping his feet where he stands. He’s stuck, paralyzed, in a pose like he was bracing to fight back. I know that he would have simply vanished from the room once he entered it if he could, so the witch must be using her magic to keep him there, defenseless and frozen. Not even his eyes come to me. They stare straight ahead, but even from here, I can see how they filled with fear with I entered the room.

The witch’s completely black eyes look to the ceiling. Three of my father’s guards stand in a semi-circle around Hamza, their spears trained on him, but not moving any further. They are waiting, to be told to strike. It’s then that my eyes move beyond all this to my father. He stands before his throne, hands behind his back, a look of pure disgust on his face. His eyes glare at me like I am his worst enemy, come to finally be punished by him. And I guess, that’s his truth.

I am his greatest adversary, and I have all but handed myself to him on an altar to be punished as he sees fit. I would do it all again knowing it was a trap, knowing he was waiting for me to be foolish enough to come here. Because my eyes go back to Hamza, and I know what I have to do.

“It was you,” my father’s voice booms through the room. “I thought as much the moment I saw that rose in your room, but seeing you here fills me with more shame than the thought of you being a traitor to Nur did. Every time I think you can’t disappoint me more, you prove me so very wrong.”

He shakes his head like he’s speaking to a petulant child.

“What have you done to him?” I ask.

“I’ve figured out how to end his pathetic life. Widad was finally good for something.”

If the witch hears the insult, she doesn’t acknowledge it, still weaving the spell that keeps Hamza here, vulnerable and in danger.

“Once she figured out the spell, I waited until a guard reported you sneaking out of your room to summon him. Knowing you would come running after him. Knowing you and your bleeding heart couldn’t bear to let someone even as despicable as him suffer. And here you are.”

His smile sickens me, turns my stomach. But my eyes go from him back to Hamza. I walk over to where he is. I step in front of him, standing between him and the guards, their spears moving back some so they don’t touch me.

“And now you can watch him die,” my father states.

His words should freeze me, should send terror rushing through me, but instead they ignite me. Magic blooms in the pit of my stomach, fierce, hot, and for once feeling just a bit dark. Like when I unleash it, it will scorch this room to the ground. Let it. Widad’s gaze moves from the ceiling to me, and she gives a subtle shake of her head. I’m sure she can feel what is building in me, and she knows what it will mean should I let it free.

I have hidden my magic for so long. Made sure to keep it under control, to never even let my father suspect I had an ounce of it in me. But I can no longer do that. I did not come here to watch Hamza breathe his last breath. I did not run here to watch those eyes that look upon me with pure love close for the last time. No, I think as I drop into a fighting stance, I came here to make sure he lives. And I will!

“Kill him,” my father orders.

But first, I will use what Maryam has taught me.

The guard to my right moves first, thrusting his spear out with no grace. I bring my leg up and kick it towards the floor. Then I step on it with all the strength I have and hear a satisfying crack as the spear breaks near the top. I don’t have time to bask in the stupefied look that crosses his face at my actions because the other two guards spread out, their eyes drifting between Hamza and me, trying to figure out the best way to attack. I don’t wait for them to move.

I step forward towards the guard closest to me and bring my palm under his chin, pushing until he’s off balance and then kicking my leg out to sweep his feet out from under him. As he falls to the floor, I take his spear from him, immediately turning around to deflect the spear Batil tries to stab into Hamza’s side. He turns, his face enraged at being thwarted and charges towards me, but then he stops short, his face clearing like he remembers who I am. My father doesn’t care.

“Disarm her and kill him, or you’ll lose your own head,” he shouts.

Batil’s face fills with a sick glee before he stalks towards me. But that’s his first mistake, still underestimating me. He comes to me, guard down, hands at his sides, spear tip pointed down. I take advantage of his arrogance. I slice the spear through the air with speed, and it slashes across his cheek. He stills, his hand going to the blood that begins leaking from the deep cut. A roar of pure rage leaves his mouth, and he charges me. Mistake number two. Now he’s heedless of what he’s doing, his only thought to get his hands on me. I bring the spear to his left leg and when it makes contact with his calf, I look up at him as I twist the spear, cutting through the muscle there.

Then I hear a muffled scream from behind me, as if it pleads to escape past lips that it cannot. Dread fills me as I turn around to look at Hamza. The guard I’d taken the spear from now has another one, and the tip of it is stabbing into Hamza’s thigh. He cannot even scream his pain because his mouth cannot open.

“No!” I scream and put up my hand.

Magic rushes from me, and the guard goes flying backwards until he collides with the wall. He slumps to the floor as my legs eat up the distance between Hamza and me. I reach him and see the clear pain in his eyes. Whispering an apology, I tear the spear out of his leg and place my hand on the bloody wound, pulsing as much healing as I can in a second’s time. The guard who stabbed him groans, his head lolling to the side and exposing his neck. I barely stop myself from going to him and bringing the tip of the spear across it. He’s only doing my father’s bidding, he’s not truly to blame. My father is. He is the one who deserves to be punished.

Hamza’s muffled shout fills the room again, and I turn around in time to see Batil rushing towards me, as much as he can with his limp. His spear is gone, and his bare hands extend towards my neck. The moment he gets close enough, I kick out, the bottom of my foot landing on his kneecap. I put as much force as I can on it until it bends the wrong way, and I hear a crack right before I hear Batil’s scream of pain.

But then I look back towards Hamza, and my body stills as the blood in my veins freezes. My father stands behind Hamza, a knife at his throat, a little blood already trickling from his skin. I don’t know what to do. I know if I take a single step forward, my father would gladly drag that knife across Hamza’s throat, killing him right before my eyes. But if I stand here, I will still lose the man I love, at the hands of the man I hate.