The Serpent's Veil

Embers

"Her eyes." He exhaled, and his eyes fluttered closed. A single round tear managed to claw its way out of the corner of his eye and wet the fabric of the pillow. But Yahya had seen Khaya's soul, he knew this was not the same, no matter what it was that Rehan had seen.

"Do you want me to bring her here?" he asked.

"No," he blinked and more tears fell. "She can't see me like this."

In that Yahya agreed, it would devastate her. Listening to them was one thing, but seeing with her own eyes the hideous, bleeding scar cutting across his shoulder and chest, and the hundred other cuts and bruises smattering his body—it was not a sight he wished anyone to witness, especially not her.

X

As the pair of them rested with their decision, high above in the upper chambers of the residence Khayzuran lay with her body flush against the door, slamming her fist into it without pause.

"Open the door! Let me out!" she cried, "Let me out!" She screamed louder and louder until it was the only sound in her ears, the only sound in the world.

The moment she awoke, after washing her sore face and praying, she searched through sound to see what the fate of the night had been. Soldiers were streaming in, some with strength and some with weakness in their veins. Yahya was there, Sharan was there—both tired but alive. After a moment she clenched her jaw, searched farther, harder. She could not find Rehan's heartbeat. No breath sounded like his, no fall of foot or sway of arm. Where was he?

She found Yahya again, beside him there was a stranger, a woman, older but strong. There was someone else with them, a heartbeat so faint, a breath so shallow they were scarcely alive.

"He will be alright, you should get some rest," Yahya said.

The woman shuffled around the room, fiddling with some kind of fabric, and was quiet again. Soon her breathing turned slow and regular, a fitful sleep. Khaya swallowed, still honed in on Yahya.

Her body knew it before she did, before she wanted to let herself know it.

"God willing, please Rehan, please wake up," said Yahya.

Khayzuran's eyes snapped open and she whimpered in pain, as if an arrow had pierced her stomach. She listened again, listened to the faint pumping, the slow blood of the third person in that room. It could not be him, it was nothing like him. It was all wrong, it was weak. It was embers where there should have been flame, stillness where there should have been a storm.

Another sound came out of her, a crack in her chest that splintered. Her mouth hung open and she brayed like a dying animal, collapsing to the floor. After a time she managed to still her breathing, close her mouth and cry in silence. There was not a single second her senses left that room. She did not have to concentrate so hard now, what she thought was a blessing was now a curse.

His heartbeat was so faint. So faint even to her.

She did not know how much time passed, a dozen minutes, an hour, before a new sound emerged from that room. A human sound. An alive sound.

She sat up and wiped away her tears as she heard his voice, strained and tired, but his, say "The boy?"

She listened to them converse, heard the knock, the shadow enter the room. Every whisper he uttered in Rehan's ear which Yahya himself was not privy to.

"She says she came of her own accord to protect you, that the Vizier conscripted her to spy on someone, but it was not you... Your orders?"

Every word from Rehan after that was a solace and a knife.