‘Do you remember my mother?’ I hated myself for asking. For caring if he remembered one woman out of what I was sure were many in thousands of years. ‘Zahia Al-Fadi. From Dustwalk. Do you remember her?’

‘I remember everyone.’ Did I imagine the change in my father’s voice, the slight shift from the flat empty tone he’d addressed me with so far? ‘Your mother was very beautiful. You look like her. She was running away from her home. Through the mountains. She wouldn’t have made it very far. She had enough supplies for a few days, not a real escape. She would have been forced to turn back or die eventually. I had sprung one of your people’s ancient traps. The ones you set for the Buraqi. Crude, but, being iron, it did what it should have. Zahia found me in it. She released me.’

‘So why didn’t you save her?’ There it was. The question I’d really wanted to ask. Not whether my mother had made any kind of lasting mark on this immortal, powerful being, but why it hadn’t been enough for him to save her life. How he could leave her with me, a child who she’d eventually die protecting, and not have the decency to step in. ‘You could have, couldn’t you? You could have saved her.’

‘Yes. I could have appeared on the day your people chose to hang her and I could have cut her down and carried her away. Like in all those stories she told you as a child. But to what end? To keep her in a tower for a handful more years as my wife? She was mortal. Even you, who have a little bit of my fire, you will die, too, one day. Dying is what you do. It is the only thing that you all do without fault or fail. If I had saved her then, she would have died another way later.’

‘But she would have had longer.’ I could hear the tears in my own voice. ‘We could have escaped.’ Her death wouldn’t have been my fault.

‘You did escape,’ he said.

My temper snapped. ‘Don’t you find it tiring not caring about anything, ever, for all eternity?’ I didn’t want to cry in front of him. I hated how much I cared if I cried in front of him. But it was too late. Through the tears, I could hear footsteps now, distantly. Soldiers were coming for me. ‘You let my mother hang. You let me and Noorsham face each other in war – both of us your children.’ The footsteps were behind me now. I was screaming. ‘You stood there while I held that knife against my stomach! You made us. Why don’t you care about us?’ And then it was too late. The soldiers were grabbing me, yanking me away from my father, dragging me up the stairs as I fought against them, still shouting.

Something pricked the side of my neck. A needle, I realised, in the hands of the guard. There was something on the metal. I knew instantly. Something to make me sleep.

Suddenly everything rushed to my head. I felt the floor tip out from under me. I would’ve hit the ground except someone caught me. Strong arms.

‘Amani.’ My name punctured the storm of feelings. ‘I’ve got you.’

Jin.

No. When my vision cleared, the Sultan was the one propping me up. He was strong. I tried to struggle, but with one swift gesture, his hands went under my knees and he lifted me into his arms like I was a child. He started to walk, each step shaking me closer to his heartbeat.

‘I wanted—’ I struggled for some half-truth to cover what I had been doing. My mouth felt fuzzy as the drugs kicked in, the motion making me sick.

‘You wanted to see your father.’

I waited for the punishment. For the anger. We passed out of the cool shade of the courtyard, through another set of doors. Tree canopies spread out high above me, the sunlight dancing through their branches.

‘Yes,’ I admitted. And that was the simplest truth. I had wanted to face him. I’d wanted an explanation. I was swimming in and out of dreams now. I was starting to shake, too. Every part of me wanted to curl into the warmth of another body holding me. Like I was a small child being carried by my father.

But he wasn’t my father. He was Ahmed’s and Jin’s and Naguib’s and Kadir’s and Rahim’s and Leyla’s and he was a murderer.

I was dimly aware that we were in the harem. I felt the Sultan kneel down and then I was being laid down in a bed thick with scattered pillows that crowded around me.

‘Fathers often disappoint us, Amani.’

Chapter 27

There was a gift next to me when I woke up. It had been left while I slept, a conspicuously perfect tidy package of paper and ribbon amid the haphazard mess of pillows flung around my room. It swam into focus slowly as I emerged from the haze of drugs.

I pressed myself up onto my elbows, ignoring the pitcher of water next to me. No matter how dry my mouth was I wasn’t about to risk something that might send me back to sleep. I poked at the gift with my foot cautiously, half expecting some trick from Ayet. When nothing exploded, I finally picked it up.

Blue fabric appeared below the paper. It was a khalat. The fabric was the colour that the sea had been, the brief glimpse of it I’d had from the deck of the ship. And the hem and the sleeves were trimmed in gold stitching. When I looked at the embroidery closely, I realised it was the story of Princess Hawa, in tiny golden detail. On my right sleeve, where she rode the Buraqi across the desert, there were even tiny gold beads showing the dust kicked up under its hooves. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

I’d hated wearing blue most of my life. It just made my eyes more obvious than they already were. It was one of a thousand reasons I’d loved the red sheema Jin stole for me. Only I didn’t hate this khalat.