Page 53 of The Shrouded Queen
“I cannot abandon my people when they are in mourning.” He gave me a reassuring smile. “It will only take a few hours. I’ll make sure my soldiers are ready to depart as soon as it’s over.” Before I could argue further, Nasir jogged back to the pyre, Sara on his heels.
My eyes did not leave him. “Jasim.”
“Yes, my queen.” He was at my side in an instant.
“I want you to talk to Nasir’s soldiers.”
Jasim frowned. “About what?”
“This is the second delay he’s caused us. I want to know if he’s keeping us here just because he’s greedy and stupid…”
“… or if we need to run,” he finished for me. I nodded. “I doubt they’ll tell me very much, but I’ll see what I can do. While I’m gone, stay in your room. Door locked. And keep this”—he thrust a dagger into my hands—“on you at all times, plus a scimitar. And we’ll brush up on your training.” He was already undoing one of his scimitar sheaths.
“I don’t need a refresher course.”
“You haven’t practiced in almost two years.” I opened my mouth to respond, but he wrapped the leather belt of the sheath around my hips. His arms went around me as they met at the small of my back, nearly bringing our bodies flush, and the smell of him—sweat, the fresh woody smell of river reeds, and something headier that was purelyhim—surrounded me.
Deep brown eyes bled out the rest of the world as he dipped his face down toward mine. “Ashorah is your realm,” he said, “but your safety is mine. If I tell you to carry a blade, then you do. If I tell youto train, then youdo. No arguments. Understand? My queen.” The last part added as an afterthought.
I should have laughed at his attempt at assertiveness and thrown off his hands, which had already finished securing the belt and now merely rested against my sides.
But I didn’t.
Something had shifted between us this morning. I could not pinpoint it exactly beyond a peculiar fluttering in the pit of my stomach. But it prompted me to nod silently.
Jasim gazed at me a moment longer, lips thin within his beard, before he finally nodded and stepped away.
Able to breathe again, I pulled my eyes away from Jasim and set them back on Nasir.
It was probably nothing. But we should have been several miles closer to Shaya’s temple by now. Something just did not feel right.
I wanted Nasir’s help, but if I had to make do with just Jasim and whatever we could scrounge up, I would.
A chuckle sounded. Not from Jasim or any of the miners. A mocking chuckle. A familiar one that left me feeling cold. That disembodied chuckle reverberated around me, like the strikes of the pickaxes against the crater walls.
TWENTY-ONESAMIRA
Sitting with my legs crossed on my cabin’s hard wooden floor, the chill of the earth below seeping into me, I gazed absently into the fireplace. Just as I had been for the past several hours. But no matter how long I sat by the blaze, the ice in my bones wouldn’t thaw.
There were three parts to the Merging. Now that I knew exactly what was going on, Rade saw no need to wait, so the opening ceremony would happen tomorrow. I wondered if it would become obvious then that I was a fraud. If it did, I hoped they would just kill me. A hanging or beheading, perhaps—not something worse.
Accompanying that fear was an inexplicable guilt. The Kaldfolk were meant to be demented beasts, as animalistic as the Shifters’ bear forms. But not all of them were Shifters. Some, like Rade, held no beast form. And among those who were, Keir and Bain were the most frightening of the bunch, but for all their threats, even they had left me alone—mostly. Granted, it had only been a handful of days since I’d arrived, but they didn’t seem like beasts. They were just… people. Magical, Gods-Blessed people.
And my lies could get them all killed.
My deception was wasting valuable time, and when the twenty-two days were finally up, it might be too late to stop the Shroud.
No, I tried to assure myself,Queen Amunet will receive her powers by the Merging’s end, and she’ll save everyone. From drought and famine, and from the Shroud.
They didn’t need Samira. No one ever really had.
Except Queen Amunet.
I rubbed at my tired eyes. I’d barely managed an hour of sleep before giving up entirely. Dawn wasn’t too far off now, and I couldn’t stay in this room any longer, with my thoughts chasing each other round and round. I slipped my feet into boots, grabbed a fur cloak, and knocked on the door.
Nothing happened.
I knocked again. “Keir?”
