his chest, the sleeves of his lavishly trimmed mantle shimmering in the afternoon sun.
“I will not play these games with you, Salim. Where is she?”
Another smug smile. “Have you lost something of import, nephew?”
At that, Tariq took a step forward. The captain of the guard lifted a hand to stop him.
“I have not lost a thing, Salim Ali el-Sharif. You will tell me where Shahrzad is now. Before the words are forced from your tongue.” A muscle worked in the caliph’s jaw. “Before your city is reduced to ash.”
The sultan’s bodyguards flocked to his side, their hands upon the hilts of their swords.
“Bold,” the sultan mused, utterly unmoved. “Especially in my palace. On my lands.”
“This is your palace—these are your lands—at my discretion. As they always have been.”
“Such arrogance.” The sultan snorted. “If you believed so, why have you not taken them?”
“Out of respect. And because I did not wish to bring war upon us.”
“Respect?” Disbelief registered on the sultan’s face. “For whom?”
“For my brother’s family.”
“Misguided. If you truly thought Parthia so easily won, you would have taken it by now.”
“I am not nearly as greedy as you may think,” the caliph said with disdain. “I possess twice your bannermen, and you are outmatched in soldiers and weaponry by more than half. As to the pitiful force you tried to rally in the desert, do you think I could not have ridden through them in an afternoon, if put to task?”
“I think you are a conceited child of ridiculous words, just like your mother.”
The caliph remained placid, even at the slight to his mother. “Then chance it. But I will raze this palace, stone by stone, as you waste that chance. And if you are still in it while I do so? Then so be it.” He turned to leave without giving the sultan a chance to respond.
“I doubt you’ll do that, you whoreson. I doubt that very much.” With that, Salim tossed something in their direction.
It slid past the caliph’s feet.
It took Tariq a moment to recognize it.
In the same instant he did, he wished he had not. Wished he did not know enough to recognize what lay strewn across the pavestones of the sultan’s lavish courtyard. What it was to feel such a thing.
What it was to burn with fear and hate in the very same breath.
It was a length of black braid, wrapped in a broken string of pearls.
The party halted in their tracks.
“My soldiers tell me she smells like a spring garden,” the sultan said softly, without a hint of emotion. Then he smiled. Slowly. Cruelly.
Tariq unsheathed his sword.
All he saw before him was blood.
Khalid had known his uncle Salim would try to provoke him.
But he had not known the depths to which the Sultan of Parthia would descend.
When Khalid first saw what his uncle had tossed across the stones, there had been a moment—less than a moment—where the world around Khalid had been reduced to cinder. Where all he’d wanted to do was crush something between his hands and watch it crumble to pieces.
But he’d realized in the next instant what Salim had done. What he meant for Khalid to do. And though Khalid wanted nothing more than to oblige him, blind rage would not serve a purpose beyond this moment.
Blind rage was the action of a boy who existed in the shadows.
Not the king Khalid wished to be.
Salim wanted an excuse to attack Khalid in cold blood. To kill him in this courtyard, before a string of witnesses. To massacre Khalid in defense of himself.
For it was the best way to ensure a legitimate ascension to the throne. One that did not have the stink of treachery to it.
So Khalid remained still, the fury boiling in his blood, searing fast in his throat.
He did nothing. Said nothing. Made to turn away from the provocation. To stride back into the desert, with plans to rail at the skies later, when he was alone.
Khalid would make the Sultan of Parthia pay for what he had done.
There were a hundred ways to make him pay. A thousand.
But not now. Not in this moment.
Alas, Tariq Imran al-Ziyad did not know the things Khalid did.
So when the boy drew his sword and charged the Sultan of Parthia, Khalid knew what would transpire before anyone else did.
A legion of soldiers materialized from the shadows of the courtyard, ready to defend their sultan. Ready to strike down anyone who dared to assault their king.
Khalid ripped his shamshir from its scabbard without