For the record, he'd slept with both Raj's wives the last time he was in Samarra, but for the sake of manliness and reputation, you didn't tell anyone it had been more about the feud between the two women than your charm, or your mother about how it had ended with a rather vigorous threesome, which did resolve the conflict for the two wives. His failure to come up with a respectable answer in a timely manner, of course, hadn't escaped his mother's notice, which led to her telling him to just write them both a letter.

They were relatively young women, and more accurately the Raj's second and fourth wife. Both of whom, however, and at the time, prided themselves as the trophy wives of their Raj. Just as the Raj competed with each other for control over the ports, the wives also did over the reputation of who among them were more beautiful, more skilled in bed, more often showered with gifts, and had more of their Raj's attention. So when the infamous Shakshi prince from the Black Tower had declined a dinner invitation from the winning one (he simply hadn't wanted to be caught in another mess), the runners up had gone out of her way to get him to dine with her instead.

One thing led to another, and by the end of the week the Raj were in on it. The two women had, with their extraordinary skills and influence, managed to convince the two Raj that their failure to catch the Shakshi Prince's attention would reflect badly on their husband's reputation, making whoever loses this competition the man with the lesser wife. And because a prince was involved, one could assume said reputation would be publicly known, perhaps all the way to Rasharwi, perhaps the entire Salasar, if not also talked about on Raviyani in a Kha'gan somewhere.

They couldn't live with that, of course, especially when most Raj and men of power tended to collect wives mostly for pleasure and reputation. It wouldn't be the first time some had gone so far as to share theirs with another influential figure to prove and elevate the value of the woman they possessed. It was a matter of status, and long story short, both Raj had decided having a wife who could seduce the Salar's favorite Shakshi son with a reputation among women of the capital looked good on their resume.

He was supposed to know best, they had said, if a woman exceeded the standard of being desirable in bed. It was, however, more important to the wives of these men to achieve such status than their husbands. They'd married for security, comfort, and gems, and being the most prized possession of their husbands was the key to not be left out of the family's fortune. It was simply sex, in the end, and the only Shakshi tradition the entire Salasar wanted to adapt was the freedom of changing bed partners every Raviyani. It had become a trend lately, among both men and women, and one that was growing quickly in popularity.

Long story short, he had gotten caught in the mess, and the only way his decision wouldn't start a war between the Raj in Samarra (which would have pissed off his father then) was to please both women and kept their Raj's reputation even. And so he'd thrown the banquet himself, invited both parties, and bedded both women, while bringing in the two most expensive escorts from Rasharwi to entertain their husbands that night. Everyone left happy, and he still owed Deo a lot of money for making it happen, with interest.

He decided his father was going to wake up and pay off that debt for the two letters he'd finished writing. It might make a difference, or it might not, depending on their current influence on their husband, and the impression he'd left on them the last time they met, or bedded, to be more precise. He never thought the world could be changed or shaped that way, over things that had happened a long time ago, sometimes ones you thought had been a mistake, or a misfortune.

He hoped that was the case with Djari, that every misfortune they'd encountered along the way had its role in changing the future. He signed and sealed the letter, called one of the guards to take them to Akshay who would make sure they arrived discreetly and in time.

The guard wasn't needed, in the end, because while he was giving his instructions, Akshay appeared in hurry with some of his men and went straight to his mother.

"We found them," he told her. "But you will need to come quickly."

***

The small courtyard smelled like blood, even in the constant breeze that came from the sea, Djari thought as she pried her eyes open the third time, trying to stay awake for as long as her energy allowed. There wasn't much left of it, not after what she'd been through. She was cold, tired, and dizzy. Her body ached everywhere, her vision was cloudy, and her head throbbed from flashes of pain that came at intervals. Even breathing had become difficult, but she couldn't afford to fall asleep, not here, not now.

There had to be more than a hundred people in that square, most of them injured or dying, the rest were healers, survivors, people who had lost their family members, or were looking for them. The quake had damaged almost the entire city of Samarra, and then the great flood had wiped out most properties and homes along the coast. They'd passed through another square on the way here that looked like it was being used to hold dead bodies. It didn't look like it was going to hold.

She pulled the blanket up to cover her head, not to keep her hair hidden, but only to keep it warm. The guards had left her hair exposed when they'd brought her here, and so far no one had seemed to notice or care. Everyone was going somewhere, looking for someone, rushing for something more important. Behind her, a man was shouting, asking people for his wife. To her right, a mother was crying over her dead son. Someone's baby was screeching in the distance, either hungry or scared, or hungry and scared. It felt like going through her father's massacre all over again, only this time she was in the middle of it. This time, there was no enemy to beg for mercy, no one to blame.

And yet nothing seemed to be getting through her at that moment. Her mind could only focus on the fact that her sworn sword was lying there, unconscious, critically wounded, and would bleed to death if no help came in time.

The guards had found them washed up on the beach and brought them here. She hadn't fought them. She couldn't. She'd begged for a healer, for help, had even told them who they were, in hope that whoever was in charge would keep them alive, for whatever purpose after. It didn't matter. What mattered was keeping her sworn sword alive. The rest she would find a way to fix later.

One of the guards had recognized Hasheem immediately, and had agreed that both of them should be kept alive for someone of higher rank to decide what to do next. They'd left her in the square with Rhykal and gone to find an extra healer to help. She hadn't been tied up. It didn't take a lot to convince them she wouldn't run and leave her companion here.

Not that she could, in any case. She was still too shaken, too exhausted from what had happened in the cavern.

She remembered now, how Rhykal had been reluctant to get into the water after he'd seen those rays. They hadn't talked much after that conversation. He'd left her alone in that chamber with the lights, and returned all wet and agitated to tell her he only way out was through a submerged opening, and that they would have to swim out, navigating only by the stirred up lights from those glowing creatures in the sea.

It hadn't felt like they were going to be enough, those lights, but once their eyes had adjusted, it was just possible to see the silhouette of their surroundings. She'd learned how to swim but not to dive, and it had taken Rhykal a frustratingly long time to teach her. She wished she'd asked the prince for the lesson. Rhykal had never been patient, and it didn't help that his mood had turned sour by then, because of what she'd said earlier.

They'd made it from the first submerged opening to the second with him dragging her along half the time. The third chamber they'd entered was the largest of the three with an abundance of light coming from somewhere below, telling them they were close to the open sea. They dove down again toward the light, feeling overwhelmed and accomplished to have made it this far. One more swim through, and they would be outside, in daylight again.

Something bumped into them before they reached the exit. Rhykal grabbed her arm immediately, pulling her back behind him, pointing at something for her to see.

Out there, among the slivers of light coming from the outside, gliding through the water with the calm and confidence of a snake making its way across the sand, she saw the creature in all those stories, the monster in every sailor's worst nightmare, the apex predator of the sea.

It was the length of two fully grown horses, thick and silvery with a faint pattern resembling that of the tigers' she'd seen in some paintings. Three large triangular fins, one on its back, one on each side of a body that seemed to be made entirely out of muscles cut through the water like knives, leaving behind a trail of sharp blue lights from the glowing creatures. There were scars all over it, old, severe, and numerous enough to shame the best of their White Warriors. Two rows of serrated-edged, arrowhead-shaped teeth jutted out its mouth, looked like they could cut through bone, never mind how unnecessary it was to tear them apart before feeding. With a jaw that size, swallowing them whole wouldn't be much of an effort. It was the most stunningly beautiful thing she'd ever seen, and the most terrifying enemy she'd never thought she would have to deal with in her lifetime.

The shark made a circle around them, the one eye they could see locked on their location as it waded through the water, making sure they knew any attempt to escape would result in a quicker, more violent death. Rhykal slowly took out a knife and followed its movements, his other hand squeezed harder on her arm as the circle became smaller, bringing it closer. He turned blade into position, catching by accident the band of light coming from the outside. The knife glinted brightly in Rhykal's hand, sent an unintended signal that lit up the monster's eye. It turned in that split second, changed direction with one flick of that powerful tail, and it came for her.

She imagined how easily Rhykal would have been able to dodge that charge under normal circumstances, but here, underwater, in a territory made for no human to thrive or survive, he was weaker, slower, and no more than an easy prey. He knew it, even with a knife still held tight in his hand, and decided to yank her out of the way instead, turning around halfway to shield her with his own body.

The shark took him by the arm, pulling with the same force that tossed them both around when the flood had happened, shaking her loose from his grip. It dragged him through the water, twisting as it circled the enclosed chamber. She heard the sound of teeth against bone, of something breaking as she watched in horror, could only see the faint silhouette of Rhykal when he righted himself to drive the knife in his free hand into its eye.

The creature thrashed and released him on impact, swam away with the blade still buried in its head, and disappeared somewhere into the darker parts of the cavern.

She went to him, wading through the water that had turned red with Rhykal's blood, pulling him up to the surface to breathe. He was still conscious at the time, and they decided to go through the last swim through again quickly. With the last of her strength and Rhykal's, they managed to drag each other through the opening, bringing them out to the open sea, into daylight when they surfaced again.

To find three more sharks circling them.

She prayed then, because it was the only thing left to do, because it was going to take another divine intervention to come out of this alive. It didn't seem possible this time, not even in her wildest imagination. They were alone in the water, surrounded by monsters who had smelled blood, and had gathered here to feed.

And then, out there, against the backdrop of the horizon, in the middle of the open sea she'd just seen for the first time, another pack of creatures was coming toward them at speed, leaping in and out over what the prince muse have tried to describe as waves. They looked like sharks in the distance, with similarly shaped fins, but smaller and remarkably different in the way they moved. As they got closer, she realized their faces, too, were different. They were all smiling, or they all had a face that smiled.

The pack surrounded her and Rhykal in a tight circle, with some going after the monsters and some staying behind. There must have been hundreds of them, these smiling creatures, who had come to save her, chased the sharks away, then accompanied them both to shore.

She had prayed, and Ravi had listened, or someone had.

Rhykal had passed out by the time the guards on patrol had found them from injuries and exhaustion. Then they'd been brought here, to a square-turned-open-air infirmary for quake survivors. She'd done what she could for him while she waited for the healer to come, but without medical supplies, and the wounds being that deep and numerous, there hadn't been much she could do.

It was going to have to be removed, that arm. She knew it, as a healer, even for one still in training. No miracles could undo that damage on his arm. It would already take a miracle for him to survive losing so much blood, two, if their enemies would try to save him at all. She wasn't going to ask for more than that.

It wasn't needed, in any case. Many White Warriors had lost their limbs in battle, in duels, or as a form of punishment and were still able to fight. It would take a long time for him to heal, and longer still to train to be able to fight as well as he could, now with only his left arm. For now, he had to survive, which seemed to her a much more difficult task at the moment.

His breathing was too shallow, too slow than she would have liked. His skin was pale, wet, and cold to the touch. The bleeding had slowed but hadn't stopped. There was a risk of lung infection, of bleeding to death, of the wound festering afterward. She also had no idea what they would face when the guards came back, who would bring, if that someone would decide they were worth more dead than alive, if dying was better than being used as leverage against her brother, her Kha'gan. There were no allies of the White Desert in Samarra. Her sworn sword might not survive. Her brother didn't know where she'd gone. She realized suddenly, as she tried to pinch herself awake, that she was exhausted, lost, captured, and alone.

'If we die for this,' Saya had said, 'it's your sin to carry.'

Sometimes she wondered what it would feel like, if she hadn't been born a Bharavi, or chosen by the gods, if there was someone to share this weight, this duty, or somewhere she could lay it all down, even for a while. If––

"Djari." A voice, coming from behind. Her name, spoken by someone who shouldn't be here, someone familiar, someone who had, too many times than she deserved, always seemed to materialize out of nowhere to be by her side, to save her.

She followed the sound of that voice and saw the prince rushing over with several guards behind him. Among them were Saya and an older woman, one with silver hair and yellow eyes.

She thought then, of something he'd said one night that felt like a lifetime ago.

My shoulder is free, and it would flatter me if you were to use it to ease your pain.

This time, she wanted to take it, the offer she'd cast aside then, and many times along the way. But this time he didn't give her that chance. He had her in his arms before she could do that, clutching her against his chest, trembling like someone who'd been given a gift so fleeting it might disappear any minute.

It didn't feel like Hasheem's. The prince's embrace hadn't been as steady, as reassuring, or as warm. But it had been enough to give her comfort, and it was the safest place she'd been offered since Rhykal had taken her sworn sword from her. She did cry on that shoulder. He did, too, on hers.

***

She had fallen asleep in his arms afterward, or she had passed out from her injuries and exhaustion, Lasura wasn't sure. Her clothes had been damp still, from seawater, and covered in sand painted red with Rhykal's blood. They'd found her on the beach with Rhykal, Akshay had said. He'd been bitten by a shark, and might or might not make it. His mother had done what she could––healers always did––but in the end, it was all left for the gods to decide who lived and who died.

It should have been him, Lasura thought, watching her sworn sword lying unconscious on that bed, hating the sight, what it represented, and loathing himself for hating it. It should have been him who'd saved her from the quake, the flood, the sharks. It should have been his arm that had to be sacrificed. He had promised to take her to the sea, had wanted to be there to witness it––her face being lit up at the sight, her eyes growing wide as she discovers the waves and the creatures in it, perhaps, even, her smiles as she goes for a swim. Those moments were gone, taken––stolen––along with everything else he'd lost, by the Sparrow.

Would there, he thought, ever going to be anything I want in life this man wouldn't take from me?

"Do you know," his mother said, as if she could hear his thoughts and see the wounds it inflicted, "what your father said to me the day we met? When I told him he could never have the White Desert in this life or the next?"

He looked up at her then, and realized it was the first time she'd referred to him as 'your father.'

"He told me I was right about how he didn't understand my people well enough to conquer them, and that there was something he could do about his own ignorance."

She rose and stepped away from the Sparrow whose arm she'd been treating, then wiped her hands clean from his blood. She didn't come to him, didn't try to touch her son. They didn't have that kind of connection. Their relationship was colder, more distant than that.

"If you find yourself repeatedly failing at something, Lasura," she said, in a tone that sought to chastise, not to lessen the pain, "then it's time to look at your own ignorance. Love is a deadly gift that exacts great sacrifices. You can't ask someone to love you when you don't even know what to do with your life, who you are, or where you want to be."

"I do know those things," he replied, at least now he did.

"Good," she said. "Then do something about it. You are the son of Salar Muradi of Rasharwi. That son of a bitch's blood has to be good for something."

***

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