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Overview
Although at long last Razia Khan has found peace with herself and love with her prince, Arjun, her trials are far from over. In order to save her prince and his city from certain destruction, Razia made a deal with the devil—her father, the Sultan of Nizam. Now the bill has come due.
Razia must secure the province of Zindh, a land surrounded by enemies, and loyal to a rebel queen who has survived her father's purge. But when her old tormentor Prince Karim invades her new home and forces her into a marriage alliance, Razia finds herself trapped in the women's quarters of a foreign palace, with her beloved Prince Arjun exiled from her side.
Now, in order to free herself, and her province, from Karim's clutches, she must call upon all of her training as a royal princess, a cunning courtesan, and a daring thief to summon new allies and old friends for a battle that will decide her fate, and the fate of an empire.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781984805485 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Penguin Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 04/13/2021 |
| Pages: | 400 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.10(d) |
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Chapter 1
Outside the palace of Bikampur, the monsoon rains fell in torrential sheets, the sound a constant, dull roar that filled my ears. But on this side of the marble latticework jali screens, it was warm, and dry, and safe. The oil lamps, ensconced in pierced-brass chandeliers, sent cascades of orange stars across the dark backdrop of my bedchamber's marble ceiling, and Prince Arjun Agnivansha was busy unwinding my dupatta from my head and shoulders, his full lips stretching into an eager grin.
"My lady, my lady!"
The shouting in the corridor outside gave me just enough warning to pull away, to throw the loose end of the silk fabric back over my head in some semblance of order before Shiv, one of Bikampur's court eunuchs, came striding into the room. My cheeks burned nearly as brightly as his did when he saw the state of my clothes, and just how close Arjun was standing beside me.
"Ah . . ." Shiv pursed his lips, his blush stretching all the way to his ears. "Forgive me, this is a bad time."
"No, no, it's fine," I said, because I didn't think we were going to get the mood back now anyway. "What did you need?"
"I was just making the final preparations before your household leaves for Shikarpur in the morning, my lady, and-"
"Your highness," Arjun corrected. "She's a princess of Nizam now, remember?"
I could have kissed him for that, had Shiv not been there. Royal titles weren't things that were branded on your skin. They only existed if other people believed that they did, and so Arjun's support meant everything to securing my station.
"Of course." Shiv bowed by way of apology. "Your highness, I was preparing your household as you commanded and the workmen told me they were ready to load your bed." His eyes flickered to the one that was sitting in the middle of the room, the one Arjun had been steadily guiding me toward.
"Oh. Right." My face burned even hotter than it had a moment before. It was a good thing Shiv had arrived when he had, otherwise . . .
I shook that thought from my mind. "You can have the men sent in to claim it. We'll go elsewhere."
"If you'd prefer we came back later . . ." Shiv offered, but I shook my head.
"No, no. The household needs to leave as soon as possible since they'll be crossing the desert on foot and camelback rather than through the air. Best they take it now."
I forced a smile I didn't feel, made sure my dupatta was arranged neatly, and strode from the room, Arjun hot on my heels.
He matched me step for step, walking so close beside me that our bodies were practically touching, but he didn't put his arms around me, not here where the guards and the servants could see. Instead, he whispered, "We could go to my bedchamber," in a voice that was so deep and quiet that it was almost a purr. My heart jolted in response.
I opened my mouth to tell him what a brilliant idea that was, but the words that filled my ears weren't my own. They belonged to Lakshmi, my little sister.
"Akka, they took my bed!" She was shouting down the corridor at me, her arms crossed over her chest, her dark brow furrowed at the indignity. "Where am I going to sleep?"
Before I could respond, Sakshi, my elder sister, appeared beside her, clad in the same white shalwar kameez as my little sister. They'd clearly both been about to go to sleep. The workmen's timing couldn't possibly have been worse, but I knew I couldn't blame them, not when the rain had been falling nonstop for three days. It had slowed everything down.
I sighed. "We'll find a place for both of you. I'm sorry."
"It's all right, Razia," Sakshi said, her arms going around Lakshmi and holding her close. "We know that this move is more stressful for you than for anyone. Don't we?" She aimed that last question at Lakshmi, but our little sister was having none of it.
"Why do we have to leave Bikampur again?" she groaned.
"You know why," I replied. She was eleven, not five, and I'd explained it to her more than once.
"You should tell your father you're staying here," Lakshmi said. "Tell him you like it here and you don't want to leave."
I sighed so I wouldn't scream. My stomach churned at the thought of leaving yet another home, of having to start over for the third time in my life. But I knew that I didn't have a choice. If I told my father I wanted to stay in Bikampur, that I loved being Arjun's princess so much that I couldn't possibly do what he asked of me, then he'd probably send assassins to slit my throat in my sleep. Honestly, I was a little surprised that he hadn't. He'd made me the subahdar, the provincial governor, of Zindh as a battlefield concession, under duress. Now that he was safe in the imperial palace in Nizam, it wouldn't take much to dispatch an army of trained killers to find me and do away with me. Wouldn't that be cheaper and easier than getting the other subahdars of the empire to respect a hijra as one of their number?
Of course, the cheapest and easiest way to kill me would be to just bide his time until I arrived in Shikarpur and kill me there. I'd be at his mercy then, surrounded by his soldiers. Here in Bikampur, with Arjun at my side, and his father's soldiers all around us, I was as safe as I could be anywhere. That was all going to change when we left for Zindh.
"Lakshmi, we've talked about this," Sakshi said, stroking my little sister's silky black hair, taming it down where it had come loose from its braid.
"You've talked about it," Lakshmi corrected, stamping her foot in irritation. "I've been saying I don't want to go and you won't listen!"
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, praying to God for strength. "We're listening. But we don't have a choice. We have to go."
"I hate your father!" Lakshmi exclaimed.
That, of all things, brought a smile to my lips. "Me too, little sister." I came forward and embraced her tightly, wishing that I could let her stay here, because that was what I wanted more than anything. We'd made a home here. I was liked here. For the first time in my life, people respected me for me. And now I was going to have to give it all up, to cross the desert to start a new life in a new city. And yes, I was going to be the subahdar, I was going to be the ruler of city and province both, but I knew better than to believe that my father's gift of a royal title and a governorship would earn me the respect of the men and women who lived there. A hijra princess was an oxymoron, and I doubted if they'd let me forget it.
"Well, you can be sad," Arjun told Lakshmi as he came up behind me. "But I, for one, am glad we're leaving."
I was sure that my face betrayed the same skepticism as Lakshmi's.
"You are?" she asked.
"I am," he replied.
"Why?" she demanded.
"Because I like new adventures," he said, in tones that suggested he didn't think she did. "I like flying over new lands and meeting new people and eating new foods that I've never even heard of before. And I like going to new marketplaces where they have different clothes and jewelry and spices. And I love learning new songs and new games too. And Zindh is probably going to be a little bit dangerous, so I'm going to have to fly my zahhak a lot, and I might have to get into aerial duels with your big sister's enemies.
"But"-he shrugged-"that stuff is probably too exciting for you. You're probably too dainty for aerial duels."
"Am not!" Lakshmi grumbled, wrinkling her nose at that accusation.
Arjun carried on like he hadn't heard her. "Yes, it's probably too dangerous and too exciting for little girls. I can talk to my mother and see if she'll let you stay here in the women's quarters with my sister. We'll let Sakshi have your zahhak instead, since she's learning to be such a good rider."
"No!" Lakshmi exclaimed.
"No?" Arjun's obsidian eyebrows shot up to his hairline in mock surprise. "But what are you going to do with a zahhak here where it's safe and there's nothing new to explore?"
"I like new things too," Lakshmi insisted. "I'm just going to miss it here is all." Her dark eyes flickered up to meet mine. "I'm tired of starting over."
"Me too, little sister," I said, and for once I couldn't summon up any words of encouragement at all. For all Arjun's talk of excitement and adventure, I knew that he opposed this journey as strongly as any of us. I was lucky he was coming at all. Most princes wouldn't have followed their lovers to new lands when they had perfectly good ones already.
"We've all started over a lot," Sakshi said, her mahogany eyes moving from me to Lakshmi and back again. "But each time we've started over, things have gotten a little bit better, haven't they?"
Lakshmi gave a cautious nod of agreement, and though I thought that Sakshi's lecture was ostensibly for our little sister's benefit, there was a part of me that suspected she was talking to me too.
"When you ran away from your father's palace because he was mean to you, that was hard, wasn't it?" Sakshi asked.
"Yes . . ." Lakshmi admitted, and I could have given the very same answer, because it had been hard. It had been the hardest thing I'd ever done in my whole life.
"You gave up so much," Sakshi said, her arms going around Lakshmi, but her eyes looking right into mine. "You gave up your family, and your zahhak, and your place in the world."
I bit my lip hard to keep from crying as Lakshmi buried her face in our sister's silk kameez.
"And when you came to Bikampur, you found a new family, but that was hard too. You had to learn so many things. You had to become a totally different person. But it was better, wasn't it?"
Lakshmi nodded, and I found myself nodding right along with her. It had been so hard, training to be a courtesan, learning to please men, to temper my words, to keep my guard up and my mind active at all times lest I find myself in their disfavor and lose everything. And that was to say nothing of the secret training, learning to steal gold and gems in the dead of night, learning to guard my tongue lest I lose my head. It had been such a heavy weight on my shoulders that there had been times when I thought my body would just give out and crumble beneath the burden. And yet, somehow, it had still been better than being a boy in a palace.
"And then you had to leave that family too," Sakshi said, her voice going quiet, because it was a pain she shared with us. "You had to come to this palace, and at first that was hard. People weren't always nice to us. We had to be careful how we behaved and what we said so that we didn't get thrown out."
Arjun's arm fell across my shoulders and I leaned against him, taking some comfort in his warmth, reminding myself that as hard as things had been here in the palace of Bikampur, he had never once let me down.
"And you had to fight to save this home," Sakshi continued. "You had to do some really scary things to keep it from being destroyed. But you did them, didn't you?"
Lakshmi nodded again, and my guts twisted. I'd forced her to do those scary things. I'd recruited my eleven-year-old baby'sister to fight in a battle, because it had been the only way to ensure victory. God, what was wrong with me?
Sakshi patted Lakshmi's back gently, though her eyes were still staring unwaveringly into my own. "We survived that too, and things got even better for a while. But now we have to go to Zindh, and that's hard because we've never lived there before, and we don't know anyone, and it might be scary or even dangerous. But I think if we work hard and we persevere, we're going to be even happier there than we have been here."
"I know," Lakshmi said, "I'm just sad to leave."
"Me too," Sakshi told her, "even though I think Prince Arjun is right. I think it will be fun to see new things in Zindh. We'll get to see a whole new palace and eat new foods and wear new clothes and fly to new places. But more importantly, we're not really going to be starting all over again."
"We're not?" Lakshmi asked, and I too wondered what Sakshi was talking about, because it seemed to me that we would be.
"No, sweetheart," Sakshi replied. "We'll never have to start over again so long as we're together." She reached out and took my hand and pulled me close to her and to Lakshmi, and Arjun was dragged right along with me.
"We'll stay in my bedchamber tonight, the four of us," he said, ruffling Lakshmi's hair with one hand, the other encircling my waist.
"Like a family?" Lakshmi asked, the hope on her face hitting my heart like a dagger.
"Like a family," I promised, letting my determination replace the tears that had been threatening in my eyes.
Chapter 2
My last visit to Shikarpur had come in the dead of night, the pitch darkness of a new moon hiding the splendor of the city from my eyes. Now, by light of day, the glittering cobalt-and-turquoise-glazed tiles of the city's palaces and temples told me why it had been called the Indigo City by the poets of Zindh. But as beautiful as Shikarpur was, it was the danger that awaited me there that lingered strongest in my mind. As Zindh's new subahdar, I would soon find myself the target of many jealous rivals, both within the empire and without. And that was if I even survived the coming meeting with my father, which was no sure thing.
"It's going to be okay, Razia."
Arjun's voice shook me from my thoughts. He was riding behind Sakshi atop Padmini's back. The beautiful fire zahhak was soaring almost wingtip-to-wingtip with Sultana, my thunder zahhak, her yellow belly scales and flame-colored wing feathers making her look like the living embodiment of a desert sunset. It was Sakshi doing the flying, her brow furrowed in concentration as she clutched the leather reins in a white-knuckle grip. Arjun had been guiding her, his hands resting on her shoulders, which made my insides twist with longing. I wished I was the one riding in his saddle with him, his strong hands resting on my shoulders. I needed the courage I felt when I was with him, today more than ever.