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“Revenge isn’t what you expected, is it?” Shahrzad asked quietly.
“No. It’s not. And it never will be. Revenge won’t replace what I’ve lost.”
Shahrzad swallowed, looking away. “Salim must have been very angry about your refusal to marry Yasmine.”
“I never refused. It never went that far. When the pressure to marry Yasmine grew—to embolden the ties between our kingdoms and solidify my weak stance as a young caliph—I decided the best way to avoid the insult of an outright refusal was to marry someone else. Ava was from a good family in Rey, and she was kind and smart. Once we were married, I tried to be attentive, but it was difficult. I still had many things to learn about being a king, and I didn’t know how to be a husband. Like me, Ava was not the type to readily share her thoughts and feelings, and the moments we spent with each other often drifted to silence. She started to grow distant . . . and sad. Yet I still did not invest the time necessary to learn the reasons. After a few months of marriage, she had withdrawn a great deal, and our interaction was rather limited. In truth, the awkwardness made me even less inclined to seek her out. On the rare occasions I tried to speak with her, she always appeared elsewhere—lost in a world I never sought to understand.”
His face had become more worn and haggard as he spoke.
“Everything changed when Ava found out she was pregnant. Her entire demeanor shifted. She began to smile again. Began pla
Khalid closed his eyes for a moment before he continued.
“We lost the baby a few weeks later. Ava was inconsolable. She stayed in her room for days on end, eating only enough to survive. I would visit her, and she would refuse to speak with me. But she was never angry. Always just sad, with eyes that tore at my soul. One night when I came to see her, she finally sat up in bed and engaged me in conversation. She asked me if I loved her. I nodded because I couldn’t bring myself to lie outright. Then she asked me to say it. Just once, because I’d never said it. Her eyes were destroying me—such dark wells of sadness. So I lied. I said the words . . . and she smiled at me.”
He shuddered, pressing their joined hands to his forehead.
“It was the last thing I ever said to her. A lie. The worst kind of lie—the kind shrouded in good intentions. The kind cowards use to justify their weakness. I didn’t sleep well that night. Something about our exchange u
Khalid paused, his features caught in a storm of remembrance.
“I found her on her balcony with a silk cord about her throat. She was cold and alone. Gone. I don’t remember much else about that morning. All I could think was how she’d died alone, with no one to offer her solace, no one to grant her comfort. No one who cared. Not even her husband.”
Shahrzad’s eyes burned with unshed tears.
“After we laid her to rest, I received an invitation from her father to meet at his home. Out of guilt and a desire to show her family a measure of respect, I went to see him, against the counsel of those around me. They did not know what her father could possibly want to discuss with me in private. But I dismissed their concerns.” Khalid took a deep breath. “Though they were right to have them.”
He withdrew his hand from hers and fell to silence.
“Khalid—”
“One hundred lives for the one you took. One life to one dawn. Should you fail but a single morn, I shall take from you your dreams. I shall take from you your city. And I shall take from you these lives, a thousandfold.”
Shahrzad listened to him recite these words from memory, his eyes adrift in their meaning.
And realization crashed down on her, like lightning to a crag on a mountaintop.
“A curse?” she whispered. “Ava’s father—cursed you?”
“He gave his life to this curse. Before my eyes, he ran a dagger through his heart, paying for the magic with his own blood. To punish me for what I had done to his daughter. For my rampant disregard of his greatest treasure. He wanted to make sure that others would know his pain. That others would despise me as he did. He ordered me to destroy the lives of one hundred families in Rey. To marry their daughters and offer them to the dawn, just like Ava. To take away their promise of a future. And leave them without answers. Without hope. With nothing but hate to keep them alive.”
Shahrzad brushed away the hot tears coursing down her cheeks.
Shiva.
“I refused to comply at first. Even after we realized he’d sold his soul to the darkest magic to enact this curse, even after nights without sleep, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t begin such a cycle of death and destruction. Then the rains ceased. The wells dried up. And the riverbeds vanished. The people of Rey fell to sickness and starvation. They started to die. And I began to understand.”
“I shall take from you your city,” Shahrzad murmured, recalling the devastating drought that had destroyed the crops during the last harvesting season.
He nodded. “And I shall take from you these lives, a thousandfold.”
Here it was. At long last. An explanation.
A reason for such senseless death.
Why do I not feel any better?
Shahrzad studied Khalid’s profile in the dim light of the lamp above as he continued staring at the floor.
“How many dawns are left?” she asked.
“Not many.”
“And what if—what if we fail to comply?”
“I don’t know.” His posture indicated an invisible weight and its foregone conclusion.
“But—it rained. It’s rained several times in the two months I’ve been at the palace. Perhaps the curse has weakened.”
He turned to look at her with a sad half smile. “If that is the case, there is little else I would ask of heaven.”
A gnawing sense of awareness began to tug at her core. “Khalid, what if—”
“No. Do not ask what you are about to ask.” His voice was harsh and laced with warning.
Her heart tripped about in her chest, matching pace with her newfound fear. “Then you have not even considered—”
“No. I will not consider it.” He reached for her with both hands, framing her chin between his palms. “There is no situation in which I will consider it.”
She shook her head, though her shoulders trembled and her nails dug into her palms. “You are ridiculous, Khalid Ibn al-Rashid. I am just one girl. You are the Caliph of Khorasan, and you have a responsibility to a kingdom.”
“If you are just one girl, I am just one boy.”
Shahrzad closed her eyes, unable to hold the fierce light in his gaze.
“Did you hear what I said, Shahrzad al-Khayzuran?”
When she refused to respond, she felt his lips brush across her forehead.
“Look at me,” Khalid said, so soft and so close that it washed across her skin in warm assurances and cool desperation.
She opened her eyes.
He rested his brow against hers. “Just one boy and one girl.”
Shahrzad forced a pained smile. “If that is the case, there is little else I would ask of heaven.”
Khalid pulled her back against the cushion and wrapped his arms around her. She pressed her cheek to his chest.
And they held each other in stillness until a silver dawn broke across the horizon.
OBLIVION
KHALID STUDIED THE PLANS LAID OUT ON THE DESK before him.
The new system of aqueducts directing freshwater from a nearby lake into the city’s underground cisterns would be a costly, time-consuming endeavor. His advisors had counseled against such an undertaking for these and a slew of other reasons.