"YOU FOOLISH GIRL, NOT EVEN YOUR STORIES CAN SAVE YOUR BEAUTIFUL THROAT."
Khai killed 1000 girls before he got to her. And he would make sure she would die like the others. His beautiful hands demand blood on them.
Mazeeda would make sure that she'l...
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THE FIRE BURNED LIKE A strong inferno, bright like the sun, and hot like the desert. It turned everyone’s brown eyes golden as the fire seemed to lick at their feet. No one dared to look away from it.
Yusuf closed his bota bag before speaking. “You have called for our help, my son, and we are here to answer it.”
“This isn’t what I wanted,” Sokath tells him. What, specifically, he didn’t know himself.
He could feel his father’s heavy gaze on him, but he did not dare to look up. He instead continued concentrating on the sand beneath him, tracing lines and symbols into it with a stick he had found. This reminded Sokath of the time he and Zeeda would practice writing their names in the sand behind their family’s tent, hoping that one day they would have to use it. He never did and he probably never would, but perhaps his sister was able to.
“You were expecting something else,” Yusuf said, almost filling in the words himself. “Perhaps an army?”
“I was expecting more people.”
The leader sighed. “What I have planned does not call for more than the necessary people you see here.”
Sokath’s eyebrow twitched. He hated how his father never made any unnecessary moves. He wanted to say, that’s why Mazeeda is gone, because you didn’t dare take more than what was asked of you, he wanted to say it, the words dripping at the edge of his tongue. Sokath bit them down and swallowed it. “What plan possibly only needs six people to kill the king and bring Mazeeda back?”
“You doubt me,” the older man stated matter-of-factly.
“Have more faith in your father,” Shazerade soothed Sokath. She knew when Sokath was getting his buttons pushed, this was no different. As she looked at her old lover, she found his eyes lost in the sea of fire.
He clenched his fist at her soft voice. “What do you know about faith?”
Shazerade’s breath halted in her throat as he stared at her, his eyes relentless and stubborn. Just like always. She looked away as quickly as she caught his gaze.
Alik watched his lover from the corner of his eyes.
“Father,” he said, closing his eyes. Shazerade took note of his clenched fist. “What am I missing?”
He still refuses to meet father’s eyes, Toha thought, feeling like he was caught in a venus fly trap.
Yusuf put his palms out and open. “My son, a horse may not be a camel, but if it is a camel in spirit, then the disguise becomes the truth.”
“Braiding a horse’s mane and dressing it up as a camel are two different things.” Sokath finally matched his father’s gaze with the same heaviness.
Toha and Rain looked at each other, concern written on their faces.
“Perhaps,” Evilla’s leader hummed, amused that his son could finally muster the courage to look him in the eye. “But if they believe that the horse is a camel, then that is enough.”
