FOUR WEEKS LATER
WAITING WAS AGONY.
Javan Samad Najafai of the house of Kadar, prince of Akram, paced the stone corridor outside the headmaster’s office because staying still felt impossible.
He’d spent the past ten years at the prestigious Milisatria Academy for the Comportment and Education of the Nobility in the northern kingdom of Loch Talam, far from his family. He hadn’t seen his father since the moment the king had escorted him into the school at the age of seven and solemnly reminded him of his duty to his mother’s muqaddas tus’el before returning to Akram.
He’d done his best to fulfill his mother’s sacred dying wish that her son would earn the most honors of any prince educated at Milisatria. He’d studied hard for every exam. Taken extra classes and turned down invitations to visit the taverns and theaters in town so he could do schoolwork instead. He’d worked tirelessly to prepare himself mentally and physically for the challenge of earning the academy’s top honors, and now everything came down to the thin sheet of parchment the headmaster would soon be nailing to his door.
“Stop pacing. You’re making me nervous,” Kellan said. The crown prince of Balavata was slouched lazily against the wall opposite the headmaster’s door, eating a sandwich as if learning which ten students had qualified to compete in the upcoming final exam for the position of top honors was of little consequence.
Javan glanced at his roommate, his heart jumping in his chest. “Nothing makes you nervous.”
Kellan spoke around a mouthful of thick oat bread and ham. “I am pretty unflappable.”
Javan rolled his eyes, forced himself to breathe past the surge of nerves that wanted to close his throat, and continued pacing while two dozen of his friends and fellow students joined him in the corridor, their eyes lit with anticipation, their conversations echoing throughout the stone hallway.
Kellan shoved himself away from the wall and offered half his sandwich to Javan. “Here.”
“I’m not hungry.” And Yl’ Haliq knew if Javan tried to swallow anything right now, he’d choke.
“You’re always hungry.” Kellan raised an eyebrow at Javan, and the prince shook his head.
“I can’t eat right now. My stomach is in knots.”
Kellan grimaced and took a small step back. “Last time you said that, you vomited on my boots two seconds later.”
Javan punched Kellan’s shoulder. “That was in fifth year. And you said you’d never bring it up again.”
“Just making sure that’s the only thing that’s coming up.” Kellan winked at Javan, and the prince laughed, though it felt like his lungs were constricting.
He’d make the cut. Of course he would. He’d studied longer and worked harder than anyone else at the academy.
But what if?
What if the tricky question on his applied mathematics exam had knocked his grade down a point? There were three other students who were naturally better at math than he was.
What if he’d used the wrong codex to interpret the obscure quote on his philosophy exam? He could name five others who would never make that mistake.
What if the margin of victory he’d tried so hard to achieve was a fragile thing easily lost by a single mistake?
Yl’ Haliq be merciful, Javan couldn’t return to Akram without fulfilling his mother’s muqaddas tus’el. He’d never be able to look his father in the face again.
“Stop it.” Kellan smacked Javan’s back, his dark eyes glaring at the Akramian prince.
“Stop what?” Javan frowned at his friend, refusing on principle to rub the spot where Kellan’s handprint felt singed into his skin.
“Stop obsessing. You’ll make the list. You make every list. You always get everything you set your mind to. If I hadn’t spent the last ten years with an up close and personal view of your many flaws, I might be jealous.”
Javan snorted. “Since when are you jealous of anyone?”
Kellan grinned, but any reply he might have made was lost as the headmaster’s office door swung open. Silence descended on the corridor as every student watched the tall man with close-cropped gray hair and a neatly clipped beard step out of his office, a sheet of parchment in his hands.
“Greetings, students,” he said, his low voice filling the corridor.
“Greetings, Headmaster,” the students answered as one.
“Exams for individual subjects have all been graded, and your marks over the course of your tenure at the academy have been tallied.” The headmaster’s gaze slowly roamed over the small crowd of tenth-year students gathered around him. “I’m proud of all you’ve accomplished, and you should be too. As you know, only the ten students with the highest overall scores will be allowed to compete in the upcoming final exam to win the crimson sash and the title of Most Honored at the commencement ceremony.”
The headmaster’s eyes caught Javan’s and held for a brief second before he turned his back on the students and raised a hammer to nail the parchment to his door. Javan’s heart was thunder shaking his chest as he surged forward with the others once the headmaster stepped out of the way. His eyes skimmed the list rapidly, and then the world snapped into sharp focus as he caught the fourth name on the list.
Javan Samad Najafai.
The pressure in his chest eased.
He’d made it. Now all that was left between him and the sash was the final exam—a multifaceted assessment designed to rigorously test students mentally and physically through a series of challenges. There were others on the list—Kellan included—who were better at individual events in the exam, but Javan could hold his own. And he knew that victory wouldn’t go to the student who was most naturally skilled at each of the five tasks. Victory would belong to the student who approached the exam with the best strategy. Figuring out how to win was like solving a puzzle, and there wasn’t another student at the academy who was better at strategizing than Javan.
“I suppose it’s bad form to say I told you so,” Kellan said from Javan’s left.
“Terrible form.” Javan laughed and turned to offer Kellan his hand. “Congratulations on making the cut.”
Kellan shook Javan’s hand and then shouted, “This calls for a celebration! To the tavern!”
“To the tavern!” Many of the surrounding students echoed back, though a few whose names weren’t on the list were slinking away.
“Are you coming?” Kellan asked, even though never once in all of their years of friendship had Javan ever gone to town to celebrate anything. There was always another exam to study for, another weapon’s technique to practice, another goal to hit.
This time was no different.
Javan started to shake his head, and Kellan rolled his eyes. “The exam isn’t for another three days. Are you going to start overpreparing already?”
“You know me.” Javan shrugged as if missing out on a night at the tavern with his friends didn’t feel like another moment in a long chain of lost opportunities that he’d never get back.
He’d have a chance to socialize once he returned to Akram, having brought honor to his family name and peace to his mother’s spirit. He could invite Kellan to visit from Balavata and show him the racetracks, the roasting pits full of pistachios and marinated goat meat, and the dimly lit salons with their citrus-flavored liquor and their harp players whose nimble fingers flew across the strings until you couldn’t help but dance.
A pang of homesickness hit. Ten years was a long time to go without seeing his father. The other students returned home for the winter and summer holidays, but not Javan. He’d stayed to study. To practice. To sit with the headmaster or a tutor and do his best to live up to the expectations that rested on his shoulders.
Soon it would all be worth it. He just had to enter the exam with the best strategy, stay focused, and win.
“If you change your mind, we’ll be at the Red Dwarf. You can come embarrass yourself with your poor drinking and conversational skills,” Kellan said.
“I think you’ll be embarrassing enough for the both of us,” Javan said with a quick smile for Kellan as the other boy crooked his arm through the elbow of the closest girl, flashed her a charming smile, and walked out of the building with a pack of students on his heels.
“You don’t want to celebrate with your friends?” the headmaster asked, pinning Javan with his gray eyes. “Not even for an hour?”
“I can’t. The exam—”
“Isn’t for three days.”
“Only three days to study the tasks and come up with a plan—”
“Only four days before commencement and your friends scattering to their own kingdoms.” The headmaster smiled at Javan, though there was a sadness in his eyes. “You’ve pushed yourself hard for your entire tenure at the academy. No student of mine has ever given more to his studies. But being the best at everything isn’t all that matters.”
“It is to my father.” The words were out before Javan could stop them. Heat flushed his cheeks at the expression of pity on the headmaster’s face. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”
“We should never apologize for speaking the truth, no matter how uncomfortable it might be to hear.”
“It’s just . . . I’m the only heir. My uncle Fariq doesn’t have any children, and even if he did, he’s my father’s cousin, though he’s been treated like a brother. Only a direct descendant can inherit the throne. I’m the last of the Kadars, and we’ve ruled Akram for nearly two hundred years. I have to bring honor to my kingdom.”
The headmaster moved to Javan’s side and rested a heavy hand on the prince’s shoulder. “No student has brought more honor to his kingdom than you. Taking an hour away from studying won’t tarnish that. If anything, it will improve your ability to be an excellent ruler.” At Javan’s raised brow, the headmaster squeezed his shoulder. “People matter more than competitions and grades. You matter. I hope you realize that you are more to your father than the honors you bring home from school. And I hope you know that you are more to me than any of your accomplishments.”
The warmth in Javan’s cheeks poured into his chest, and he stood a little straighter. Earning his father’s respect and fulfilling his mother’s dying wish were the fuel that pushed him to the limits of his endurance every day. But earning the headmaster’s affection—seeing love and pride in the eyes of the man who’d been like a second father to Javan for the past ten years—was a light that burned steadily in the prince’s heart.
“And before I forget, another letter arrived for you.” The headmaster reached into his robes and produced an envelope with creased corners and a gritty coat of the burned red sand of the Samaal Desert that separated Akram from Loch Talam.
Javan took the envelope, and the light inside him burned a little brighter.
Maybe he hadn’t seen his father since he’d arrived at Milisatria, but the letters his father sent—as infrequent as they’d become in the last five years—kept Javan tethered to the family he’d soon be returning to.
“Thank you, Headmaster. I need to go now,” Javan said.
“I hope you mean go to the tavern with your friends,” the headmaster called to Javan’s retreating back.
The prince clutched the letter to him as he exited the building and turned toward the dormitory. Moments later, he was inside his room and sliding a slim dagger across the envelope’s edge, leaving the royal purple wax seal with its Kadar family crest intact as he always did.
There was a single piece of parchment inside, and Javan tried to quell the sting of disappointment at how few lines were written on it. The first letter his father had sent him, three months after he’d arrived at Milisatria, had been two full pages detailing the comings and goings of Uncle Fariq, who loved to travel, the antics of Javan’s pet leopard Malik, and the growth of the jasmine he’d planted on the queen’s grave. Until five summers ago, his letters had contained a wealth of details that kept Akram alive in Javan’s mind and strengthened the connection he felt with his father.
But then the letters had begun to change. Less description. Less interest in Javan’s life. When the letters began arriving every six to eight months instead of every three months, and Javan found entire paragraphs that didn’t quite make sense, the prince had finally sent a letter of his own to his uncle asking after his father. His uncle had assured him that King Samaal was simply busy—distracted by the heavy burden of ruling Akram.
Javan had absorbed both the hurt and the comfort in his uncle’s reply and had redoubled his efforts to prove to his father that he too was worthy of the burden of ruling Akram. Turning to the latest letter from his father, Javan’s eyes devoured the two short paragraphs greedily, lingering on the last sentence.
I am sure you will do your duty.
Slowly, he placed the letter in the box that contained the rest of the correspondence from his father. A band of pressure wrapped around Javan’s chest as he slid the box back under his bed.
Javan’s duty wasn’t to Kellan or the rest of his friends, no matter how much he might wish to spend an afternoon with them at the tavern.
His duty was to fulfill his mother’s wish, earn his father’s respect, and return to Akram ready to rule his people with strength and honor when the time came for him to take his father’s place. Nothing less would do.
And to do that, he had to earn first place in the final exam.
Without hesitation, he sat at his desk, pulled out a sheaf of parchment and a quill, and began to plan.