Chapter 38

Long after Maryam has reluctantly left me, and Mikael has snuck me the breakfast he was told not to, I hear heavy boots coming down the dungeon steps. Even if I had any energy to turn my head, I wouldn’t have to. I know those boots, those footsteps, the sound of arrogance and evil getting closer to me. My father has come. To gloat, to look at my back with glee and satisfaction, to watch me lie here in pain. The cell door squeaks open and a large shadow blocks out the light from the torch in the hallway. A few more steps and then…silence.

I have to close my eyes against the humiliation trying to consume me. It feels like I can sense everywhere his eyes travel on me. The torn up exposed skin of my back. My arms that are tucked into my side because to move them is to cause myself more agony. I hope the lack of light hides that a salve has been smeared on my wounds.

I also feel that Widad is here. Her magic pulses within me, a sharp, angry thing. I can only hope her anger is for what my father has done and not what she chided me for earlier. Silence continues to fill the cell, and I struggle to take even breaths, but the waiting, the anticipation of what my father will say and do next is overcoming me.

Then a sound worse than the silence fills the cell. A laugh, a maniacal laugh, comes from my father. I imagine his eyes crinkled at the corners while his smile widens and mirth fills him at seeing his daughter brought so low. He thinks he’s finally knocked me down to where he’s always thought I belonged. He believes he’s finally broken me. A smile of my own forms then.

He cannot possibly know what he has unleashed in me.

“I should have done this so long ago,” he finally says. “Maybe I would have saved myself so many headaches and disappointments with you.”

I stay silent. There is nothing to say. Not yet. I know what point he will eventually arrive at. And then… Then will be my time to speak.

“Did the lashing render your tongue as useless as your back?” He snickers. “That’s okay. I find I like your silence. It means you may actually listen for once. Here is what will happen now. You will sign the marriage agreement and stop this war in its tracks. You will marry King Azar right away and be the wife and queen he requires you to be. You will not interfere in the way I rule this kingdom, my kingdom.” He iterates,” Any longer. You may have this kingdom when I am dead and gone, but I suspect Azar will have made you a proper queen by then.”

Proper, meaning silent and beaten down. Willing to let Azar do anything to my people. How can this truly be what my father desires? But I am past trying to make excuses for him, trying to find humanity in him. There is none to be found. He is nothing but darkness, greed, and malicious intentions.

“I will not sign,” I grit out.

“Still defiant then, huh?”

Fire ignites across my back as he digs his finger into one of my open wounds. As hard as I try to hold it in, a desperate cry escapes me. My scream echoes in the cell as my back tries to arch away from the pain, but moving just increases it. He removes his finger and waits until my cries quiet down before speaking, threatening, again.

“You must still think you have some say in anything.” He scoffs. “I have fed you, clothed you, brought you up with the very best and all for what? The betrayal you have handed me? You don’t even realize what you have cost this kingdom. I could have had a witch for a daughter, powerful, respected, feared. But instead you hid, pretended to be this weak nothing that now lays before me, and so that is exactly how I will treat you. Like the nothing you are.”

“You have given me nothing.” I pant, still trying to recover.

“I’ve given you your very life. And were you not the only heir I have left, I would take even that from you. But you will agree to marry Azar. I am sure of it. Because if you do, maybe, just maybe, I will let Maryam keep the skin on her back. Because rest assured, I will not let her knowing you had magic and helping you hide it from me pass without it’s due punishment otherwise. I had the princess of Nur lashed in front of the nobles with no remorse or hesitation. Have no doubts I will find a way to make Maryam suffer far worse.”

“I will never marry him. I will not give you what you want.”

I say my protestations against the marriage with conviction that I do not feel. All this to goad him right to where I want him.

“Well maybe here is something that’ll take the bite out of your words.”

Footsteps come closer to me, walk around me, from one side of the cot to the other, until my father is crouching before me. His hateful eyes lock with mine, and I have to fight to keep my emotions from showing. I must appear broken, lacking all hope. I must appear to be the woman he expects me to be after the lashing. A woman who really isn’t a woman at all.

“Everything you’ve done has been in vain. I will summon The Unspoken One again. Only when you’re able to be there, of course. I will have you watch as I cut his heart from his body.”

Ah, here it is. What I’ve been waiting for. Even though I expected the words, they still make my heart seize in my chest. The thought of watching my father take Hamza’s life, of watching him take his last breath, causes every single part of me hope that what I have planned works. Because if it doesn’t, me and Hamza will both end up dead.

“No, please,” I croak.

“I thought that might do the trick. Your pleas, even if they were as loud as you screamed on the whipping posts, can’t change what I’ll do to that criminal. In fact…” He rises and I painfully crane my neck to look up at him. “Why not do it now? It would be better to watch you struggle to save him when we both know you can’t.”

Panic fills me. What does he mean? Now? How? This was all going according to plan, but now I have no idea what to do. When my father calls Widad’s name, my panic grows until I feel my heart is going to burst out of my chest. Now I know why he brought her along.

“Come into the cell,” my father commands her.

I struggle to turn my head the other way, swallowing a cry at the agony that erupts across my upper back. Widad enters the cell, her head hanging down, her feet shuffling against the floor.

“Do the spell,” my father demands.

She crouches down, beginning to draw the white chalk circle from the throne room.

“Please, please. Don’t.” My pleading this time is more sincere.

I try to sit up but that, my back simply won’t allow. My body falls back to the cot as a sob escapes me. I cannot watch Hamza die, trapped inside the circle, unable to protect himself from my father. Widad shoots me a look of apology and sadness before raising her arms. Then her eyes go black, and the black mist begins to form between her hands, growing darker and thicker with each second.

I have never read about a spell like the one she used in the throne room and repeats now. I would wonder where she learned such a spell if the panic in my throat were not choking me so badly I feel I can hardly breathe.

“Please,” I beg louder. “He’s done nothing wrong. Please.”

“He defied me,” my father shouts from the side of me I can no longer see. His words echo off the walls. “He is everything that is wrong with this kingdom.”

And I guess in my father’s eyes, Hamza really is. Hamza is justice, righteousness, vengeance for the wrongs people suffer. He is the exact opposite of my father and therefore, is despicable in his eyes.

The mist spreads from the witch’s hands and travels towards the circle, engulfing the white chalk. The mist there becomes the black ooze I first noticed the last time I saw this spell in action. I remember the way it kept Hamza in place, every part of him locked and left vulnerable.

“I beg of you. Please father. Leave him be.”

“Is the spell done?” he asks Widad, ignoring me.

She gives the barest of nods, black eyes leaving the ceiling and going to my father.

“Please, Widad,” I say hoarsely.

She stumbles a moment. I can see it in the shaking of her hands and how her eyebrows furrow as her mouth gets tight. But she has no control over this. My father has given her a command, and she is helpless but to obey. Black mist continues to spill from her, and I close my eyes in despair. My father’s steps sound like the lashes coming down again in my mind, bringing me pain and suffering I feel will never end. When his footsteps stop and I open my eyes, he’s standing beside Widad. His eyes come to mine while he unsheathes a knife from his side. A whimper escapes me and his lips curve up into a grin at the sound of it.

“Make sure you watch every second,” he taunts me. “They will be the last you ever have with him.”

“I beg of you,” I cry.

“The time for begging has ended,” he spits.

Then he widens his stance, squares his shoulders, and sets his mouth in a grim, straight line. I know what’s to come. And it breaks my heart completely.

“Hamza.” My father snaps, in the form of summoning.

A moment passes, then another, and I hope against hope that somehow Hamza has found some way to fight being summoned. That he’s learned some magic that protects him. But then he’s in the cell, glaring at my father like he wants to tear him limb from limb. He stands in all black, his low collared shirt revealing those marks I love so very much on his neck. His pants and boots just as dark as his hair in the low lighting of the cell. I whimper when my eyes land on the bandage wrapped around his thigh, red bleeding through.

The sound I make sends Hamza’s head snapping in my direction. His face crumbles when he looks at me. His eyes flitter between my face and back. His mouth quivers with emotions I know all too well as he observes the damage my father has done. He only takes one step towards me, his hand extending, before his body locks. Alarm crosses over his features before they freeze that way.

I look down to see the black ooze has already covered his feet and is crawling up to his ankles. The spell has paralyzed him once again. His eyes are stuck on my back, helpless but to look at what was done to me, no doubt blaming himself for it all.

Then my father is moving, slowly, one boot coming down long after the last as he creeps closer to Hamza. As much as it pains me, I lift my arm from my side, gasping with the movement, and try to stun my father. My magic is too weak. It only makes my father’s leg buckle for a second. He rights himself and shakes his head at me, smirking.

“Pathetic girl. Too weak to protect yourself, let alone him.”

He continues approaching Hamza, his knife hanging at his side, content that he’s in no danger. What a coward he is, when before he would not summon Hamza without a room full of guards, without this spell incapacitating him. He tsks, shaking his head, taking steps that bring him closer behind Hamza.

“You let this filth touch you?” He sneers.

“I love him. More than you can ever comprehend,” I say more for Hamza’s benefit than to jar my father.

He gets so close that the toe of his boot touches the back of Hamza’s.

“Then you can watch him die knowing it is your love that killed him.”

He brings the knife to Hamza’s throat, the moment I painfully envisioned, expected, prepared for. This is what I waited for. This is my chance to put everything into action.

“I will sign it,” I call out as loud as I can. “I’ll marry Azar. Please.”