The king led Hadhi to her mother, Asha and Sabra. Luckily Nuru had escaped somewhere. Hadhi did not want the king anywhere near her sister. Noam was gone as well, not that it mattered. Five minutes with the king and Hadhi’s skin crawled, her soul shuddered, and her sour-face was stuck in an eternal scowl.
The king kept her hand trapped on his arm as they stood together, showing her his power. She had no choice. The best she could do was clamp her lips shut. If he enjoyed her insults, her silence was best. She might still escape. Not that she deserved to.
I wonder now if he wasn’t hiding you from me. Zuberi would know the pull of a woman like you.
“Where is the prince we were promised?” Asha teased the king so easily, nudging his arm with the back of her hand, batting her eyes. Was she truly so oblivious? So completely innocent that she did not know evil when it stood before her? Hadhi had never liked the king. Long before she became her father’s monster, the king had made Hadhi uneasy. Perhaps evil could only be seen by its own kind. Perhaps Hadhi was evil even then.
“Does he mean to drag us all here only to abandon us?” Asha asked with a pout.
King Enzi laughed. He freed Hadhi’s hand only long enough to pat Asha’s shoulder. Then latched onto Hadhi again before she could slip away and squeezed tight, making plain her captivity.
Hadhi saw Mzaa noticing the action, but her smile never faltered.
“Do not worry, Asha,” the king comforted. “The slipper fit; you will have your chance to lead my son on a merry chase.” He laughed. “If I didn’t know better, I would think it was you in disguise playing tricks with him last night.”
“Sadly no.” She laughed. “I am jealous. It would have been fun.”
The king chuckled with her, as though the idea of this girl making a fool of his son was a pleasure. Perhaps it was. Hadhi’s father only wanted her to be his monster; perhaps this father only wanted his son for amusement.
“Where is little Nuru?” The king asked, making Hadhi stiffen further. Her being transmuted into razor-sharp diamonds; ready to slice the king to bits if his eyes so much as touched on Nuru. “She has such spirit that one. You’ve raised your daughters well, Jauhar.”
Hadhi felt his eyes go sliding across her but refused to look, training her own eyes out the open arch to the veranda. She tasted her own blood, but could not force her teeth to release her tongue. The monster was hungry.
“Thank you, Your Majesty,” Mzaa sunk at her knees, but her head remained tilted to the side, smiling up at the king. “I am so pleased you have noticed.”
Hadhi observed her mother from some far-off separate self. Her eyelids were half-closed, but her eyes peeked out from her lashes, asking permission to see the king. She always tilted her head so that the long column of her neck displayed the well-worn path straight to her lips. Hadhi could not call up a moment from her memory when her mother had looked at a man eye to eye. She was always contorting herself into some pleasingly harmless shape.
It should not be such a difficult thing to emulate. Mzaa had always said as much, but Hadhi could not do it. Could not bend. Or flirt, or flatter—or surrender. She looked men solidly in the eyes. She could be truthful, or she could be silent. She must always appear strong.
And for what? What had it gotten her?
“How could I not notice such beauty?” The king chuckled. “I must go fetch my errant son, but promise to send Nuru my way when she returns. I so enjoyed her company earlier,” he raised Hadhi’s hand to his lips, his eyes boring into her with flagrant challenge. “I hope to dance with her before the evening is out.”
“Hadhi!” Sabra blurted out so suddenly it startled everyone. Hadhi’s narrowed eyes shot to Sabra, only then realizing that her free hand was drifting towards the king’s sword. Her hand hesitated. The king stared at Sabra curiously. “Would...would you hold Lin a moment,” Sabra held out the baby. Mzaa and the king relaxed, but Asha watched Sabra in amused surprise. And Hadhi could not move.
The king released Hadhi and walked away without another word. Still, Sabra held out her son. “Please, Hadhi,” she said more gently this time, her eyes full of understanding and entreaty. She understood what no one else seemed to: that Hadhi would kill the king given half a chance. She was begging her not to, begging her to spare the family the punishment they too would suffer from such an offense. “My back is tired.”
Hadhi did not move. Everything in her screaming with suppressed rage. That man was evil, and he was just allowed to live. Allowed to commit all manner of sins unchecked.
“My soul is tired,” Hadhi hissed and made to leave them, but Mzaa was not so easily put off.
She grabbed her daughter by the wrist, pulling her to a stop. Mzaa ran a hand along Hadhi’s chin. “Smile, my darling. You have just been honored by your king. This sour look does not suit.”
Feeling tears run from the corners of her eyes, Hadhi hissed, “he seems to prefer it.”
She yanked her chin from her mother’s hold and swept away, catching Asha’s tiny smirk out of the corner of her eye as she fled. People jumped from her path. Apparently, her sour-face was good for something; it frightened all before her.
Or perhaps that was an effect of the king staking his claim. He had made her untouchable.
Zawadi was utterly delighted as she watched Zuberi’s eldest march away. She marveled at the power of magic. Just one wish, well two, but the same wish each time, and look what ripples, what waves, what fractals the magic created.
Who knew shy Sabra was observant enough to see that monster preparing to strike, or bold enough to stop And Hadhi...she had not even been gifted a wish and look how the magic played with her. Attracting her the attention of two such opposite men, Noam with his blessed heart and Enzi with the festering putrid, mire of evil that lived where a heart should be. The magic even brought that girl to the point of killing another of Zawadi’s enemies! Fascinating!
Zawadi would have let her do it too. It would have settled her debt with the two of them quite neatly. Enzi, her next prey, would be dead, and Hadhi would be put to death for the offense and Zawadi would barely have lifted a finger.
Magic! It was so exciting watching it work in a world like this, a world where magic was shunned. It was the most diverting thing she’d felt this age. But now that the girl had not killed the king, he needed to be dealt with. Zawadi had hoped Asha’s skin might be distracting enough to get her past the fey bleeders on Enzi’s sword, and she knew now that it was! When he’d approached, when he’d patted her arm, the fey bleeders had neither repelled her magic nor drained it. In this skin, those stones didn’t recognize her as a threat! It was perfect.
Zawadi slipped away while Jauhar was preening to her neighbors over her daughter’s success. Before she’d reached Enzi Zawadi spotted Kane trailing Hadhi towards the veranda. Silently Zawadi sidled up on his right and leaned out the arch watching Hadhi with this man.
Noam slipped out of the shadows on the veranda to comfort Hadhi, as if that blazing mess of rage and fear could ever be extinguished. Ha!
“What is it about her that attracts you all?” Zawadi asked in a playful whisper, startling Kane.
He grinned slightly and shook his head. Asha’s form was easily the most effective one Zawadi had taken. It set so many at ease and so many others on edge; she was a magnificent catalyst.
“Attracts isn’t the right word on my part.” He remarked. “I am pleased to see your father taught you something other than just playing coy.”
Zawadi grinned, playing coy indeed. “I had heard rumors you were my father’s man, but I began to doubt when I watched you pining after Hadhi.”
Kane shook his head. “What interests me about her is how little she makes sense. She moves like a predator; nothing touches her if she doesn’t want it to, not light, not bodies, nothing.”
Zawadi found that an intriguingly apt observation. Hadhi was... untouchable. Even the magic though it shaped the world around her, seemed unable to truly alter that creature.
“Zuberi’s perfect killer.” Kane scoffed. “Your father offered her to me. Did he tell you that?”
Zawadi nodded to keep him talking. But... no. She had not known that. She still found this man’s mind difficult to penetrate. As Zuberi’s had been.
“He said I should have the greatest weapon he’d created at my side. Look at her, crying and useless. Does she look like a killer to you? Didn’t it frustrate you, how much better he loved her than you? How he admired her? Or didn’t he tell you? Zuberi loved his games.”
Zawadi said not a word, letting the man rant, letting his chaotic energy paint the screaming, envious thing that should be his soul.
“I proved myself. I killed and schemed and planted his seeds of destruction all over the world. But she is his legacy? Why? She may move like a killer, but then she just lays down and lets the world trample her. If she hates Enzi, why doesn’t she do something more than cry about it? She should kill him. Zuberi would.”
For a moment there, this man had seemed observant, but now Zawadi had to shake her head at his foolishness. Everything Zuberi had ever done, every people he decimated, every child he warped, every nation he destroyed was done with the blessing of his king. She doubted Zuberi was afraid of Enzi, but he was afraid of something, the consequences perhaps, that hut he’d grown up in. Something had held him back from killing his king, and it wasn’t friendship. Were the consequences what were stopping Zuberi’s perfect weapon from killing Enzi now?
Were they what stopped this hysterical, envious, desperate boy from destroying the girl whose place he wanted?
“How could he admire someone so...powerless?”
“We’re all powerless.” Zawadi prodded playfully.
“I am not.” He turned on her then with fiercely defiant eyes. “I make my own destiny.”
Zawadi shuddered inside at the echo of Zuberi’s last words to her. And her power coiled preparing to simply kill this man, without ever granting him a wish. He was like Zuberi, but he was almost more dangerous, so erratic and volatile. Zuberi had been evil, lacking empathy, and so ravenous for power, but he was always a calm, calculating man. But this one was hysterical. Who knew what might fire off his destructive nature, and if he’d been trained by Zuberi he was very dangerous indeed.
“I will be Zuberi’s legacy. Once I prove myself to the king, I will be the most powerful man in Maltuba,” Kane insisted quietly zealous.
“Is that what you wish for? To prove yourself to the king?” Zawadi asked, reaching out a hand for one of his.
“Yes.” The word growled between them, shaking the air.
“Then it must be so.” Zawadi kissed the back of his hand with its burn shriveled skin. As soon as her lips touched it, sending out her power to grant his wish, she felt a jolt of agony. Screams ripped through her mind. She dropped his hand and backed away with Asha’s smile in place, though her own form was far from comfortable.
She couldn’t shake the feeling that she should not have done that.