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Jesmine gave me a cold stare. “That marriage is to protect him. Not you. Your doors are locked from the outside. Your windows are cursed.”
“He won’t hurt me,” I said again, because I didn’t know how to explain to her how certain I was of this.
“This is bigger than him,” she said. “If I may speak frankly, highness—you are not a prisoner. You are a queen. I have broken the unbreakable before.”
She pulled open her shirt—revealing her scar. “I was bound to a man who sought to control me too, once. I nearly gave my life to break that bond. But I’m free now. I could free you, too.”
Yes. I had underestimated Jesmine.
And maybe that was why I was more honest with her now than I ever intended to be.
“I don’t intend to lead anyone into a war we can’t win. I don’t intend to fight for the sake of fighting. And maybe I have a Mark on my skin, but I don’t know what that means. The world knows me as human. The Hiaj know me as human.”
I knew myself as human.
“If you want to fight for this House, we are ready,” she said. “I won’t pretend it will be easy. I won’t pretend that some—maybe many—won’t want to accept your rule.” Her lip curled. “But Raihn Ashraj’s people don’t want to follow him, either. He was a slave to their king. Turned. Abandoned his clan for centuries. Do you think his people don’t remember those things? They’ll be reluctant to go on their knees for him when they feel it should be the other way around.”
Despite everything, my heart ached to know that they thought of Raihn that way.
“They are waiting to usurp him, too,” she went on. “And that’s only if the House of Blood doesn’t slide a knife into his back first, and then we are all fucked before his own people even have the chance to turn on him.”
A bang rang out in the distance, a puff of smoke rolling from the distant eastern walls. Jesmine’s face snapped to the sound.
“Go,” I said. “I’ll be fine for now.”
“You can find me when you need me,” she said urgently. “Don’t rely on him to protect you, Highness. He has his own threats and weaknesses. You have teeth, too. Yours are sharper than his. Just tell us when to bite, and we fight for you, and you alone.”
Another bang. Another flash of light in the distance.
And Jesmine gave me no time to tell her anything else before she disappeared into the night, scaling the castle walls with the ease of someone who had centuries of experience slipping through the locked windows of powerful men.