Asha follows me, seemingly undisturbed by the mess I’ve made. I suppose she’s desensitized, though I’m not.
Embarrassment heats my cheeks. I hope no one else saw.
“Do you have a rag or something?” I ask, but Asha is already on her knees, wiping the mess from the ground with a terrycloth she pulled out of her pouch.
“You don’t have to do that,” I say, but she waves away my concern.
“No one should have to wipe up their own vomit,” she says.
“I don’t normally do this,” I explain, though I do feel a bit better. “I’m not really sure what’s come over me. I never throw up. Even as a child, when I had to vomit, my parents always said I would refuse to. Like I could force my body not to. I’m not sure why…”
I trail off, because Asha is looking at me strangely. In a lack of self-restraint, she glances at my belly.
“Oh.” I cover my mouth with my hands, my mind immediately whirring, counting the weeks since my last cycle. “Oh.”
I’ve been so consumed with worry over Blaise, worry over Evander not returning, I haven’t even thought about my cycle in…
“Oh?” Asha says, a bit too innocently.
I let out a shocked little laugh, then throw up again in the alleyway.
CHAPTER 11
ASHA
I’m drowning. Water cascades into my mouth, dousing the pores in my lungs, stealing the air from my chest. I try to scream, but I can’t seem to force the air out, not with all the pressure building in my mouth and nose.
I beg Calias to stop, but it’s no use. I can hardly form words with the water shredding my throat. Besides, Calias is dead, and the laughing in the distance doesn’t belong to him.
This laugh is more familiar than Calias’s laugh should be.
An icy finger strokes my cheek, lifting my chin to meet a beautiful face. Az’s face.
When he looks at me like that, it hurts. It aches badly enough, the pain from my drowning dissipates by comparison.
“I forgive you,” he whispers. “We’re going to forget all about this.”
“Asha.”
Az frowns, because my name is an echo on someone else’s lips.
“Asha. Asha, come on. Kiran’s going to kill me when the servants tell him I let you scream like this without waking you.”
My eye flutters, the voice drawing me through the hazy reflection of Az’s distorted face.
Don’t trust him, Asha. Don’t trust anyone, whispers my magic, still lost in the haze of the nightmare.
When I blink, Fin comes into focus, where Az was just now leaning over me. Concern wrinkles the corners of Fin’s eyes, his light brown skin glowing in the candlelight.
Don’t trust him; you can’t… My magic’s stupor fades a bit as he too comes to his senses.
Carefully, Fin wriggles his hand under the satin sheets. When he finds my hand, he squeezes.
“I’m sorry I woke you again,” I say, wiping the sweat from my forehead with the back of my other hand.
Fin shrugs. “I don’t really sleep these days, anyway.”
I frown, but I don’t press Fin any further. It’s been a year since Fin’s wife, Ophelia, died at Kiran’s hand, her execution the collateral damage of a grab for the throne made by Azrael and his lover, Kiran’s first wife, Gwenyth.
Lately, Fin has settled into a grim silence as far as his late wife is concerned, unless the opportunity to scathe Kiran for her death presents itself. It puts me in a strange position—Fin loathing Kiran the way he does. Fin was a friend to me even before Kiran’s heart changed, before he and I fell in love. It’s been difficult for Fin—watching his friend forgive the brother he so detests—but his loyalty to me has never faltered.
Except that he doesn’t bother to keep his snide remarks about my husband to himself. Even around me.
“What’s going on with you, Asha?” Fin asks, scanning me intently.
I blink away the sleep from my eye, and as my body settles into the fact this is reality, not the drowning, not Az’s touch on my face, my heart rate slows. “Nothing. Well, nothing that I suppose isn’t normal after suffering the trauma of drowning. I wasn’t equipped for that, you know.”
Fin raises a brow.
“What with growing up in a desert, and all.”
“Ah,” Fin says, clearly not amused. “I drowned, too, you know. Unless you don’t remember my loyally holding your hand through our shared experience. Still. I’m not the one tormented by nightmares.”
A small smile grazes my lips, my eye stinging. “Of course I remember.”
Fin smiles, though faintly, and it quickly turns grim again. “Kiran told me the dreams didn’t start until the Old Magic learned of its sister.”
He mocks, but he doesn’t know the evil she is capable of, my magic grumbles within me.
