“*Mine.*”
The curved scimitar rested flat against Tarkhan’s thigh, its polished steel reflecting the dancing yellow flames of the oil braziers. Munjal’s whiskers twitched in fury, but against an unhinged sovereign holding bare metal, even an octogenarian bureaucrat knew when to retreat. The High Scholar bowed stiffly, cast one final, venomous glare at Senzhi, and backed out into the vaulted corridor.
Senzhi stood frozen, her teeth grinding behind clamped lips so hard she felt the enamel creak. *Bedchamber Advisor?* In what deranged lexicon did translating a bitter woman’s diary qualify someone to sleep twenty feet from the imperial four-poster bed?
“You look faint, Scholar,” Tarkhan said. The lethal frost in his voice vanished the second the heavy oak doors clicked shut, replaced by that terrifying, honeyed sincerity that made her scalp prickle. He sheathed the scimitar with a quiet *snick*. “Sit. We have twelve more journals to review. The volume marked ‘The Idiot’s Cookbook’ contains an extensive rant about dumplings. I must know if the poisoned filling was a metaphor for her unexpressed passion.”
“Sire,” Senzhi rasped, pitching her voice down into the scratchy register of a sickly young clerk. She bowed, folding her sleeves to hide the violent tremor of sheer murderous rage in her knuckles. “This lowly servant’s digestive tract is currently rebelling. The... the mutton porridge from the lower refectory sits ill upon my stomach. Permission to seek the ablution chamber before my constitution embarrasses the Crown?”
Tarkhan’s dark brows pinched together in tender concern. “The plumbing in the west wing is ancient. Take the private corridor behind the screen. Be swift, Senzo. My thoughts wander into dangerous valleys when you leave me alone with her handwriting.”
“Infinitely grateful, Your Majesty,” she wheezed, practically throwing herself behind the heavy silk privacy screen.
The moment she rounded the corner and entered the stone-lined passage leading to the private latrines, the meek slouch vanished from her spine. Her posture snapped straight.
*That’s it,* she thought, blood roaring against her eardrums. *This farce is over. Senzo dies tonight. I’ll throw a duplicate coat off the southern aqueduct, stage a drowning, dig up the cache of gold under the turnip cellar, and smuggle Rupi across the desert border before dawn.*
There was no outmaneuvering Tarkhan when he entered this manic, lovesick phase. He didn't see logic. He saw omens in doggerel, and now he had her locked in his bedroom.
She took three hurried steps down the narrow hallway toward the servant exit.
*CLANG.*
A square iron grate overhead rattled violently. Screws gave way with a screech of rusted iron.
Senzhi barely jumped back before the grate tore free and crashed onto the flagstones. Down through the narrow ventilation shaft tumbled a squirming, soot-covered bundle wrapped in an oversized archivist tunic.
*Thump.*
The bundle landed directly on a heap of discarded woolen runners, rolled over, and sneezed.
Senzhi choked on her own tongue. “Rupi?!”
The toddler sat up, soot smeared across his round cheeks, utterly unfazed by a ten-foot drop through an imperial air duct. He blinked his enormous, glassy irises at her, offered a gummy, toothy grin, and waved his prize.
Between his chubby, grease-stained hands was a solid block of translucent, mutton-fat jade carved with a nine-headed serpent—the legendary Jade Seal of Kholum. The supreme talisman of imperial executive authority, missing from the lower vaults for three centuries, the very piece of rock Munjal had been trying to find so he could legally ratify his mandatory two-hour scribe nap schedule.
And Rupi was enthusiastically gnawing on the carved tail of the serpent, leaving thick streaks of drool across the ancient glyphs.
“Nom,” Rupi announced proudly, offering the drool-slicked priceless relic toward her face. “Candy.”
“Spit that out! That is not candy! That is treason!” Senzhi dropped to her knees, frantic, clawing at his sticky little fingers. “How did you even get in the vents? Where did you find this? Do you know what happens to babies who chew on sovereign regalia? They get put in cages, you lunatic!”
Rupi giggled, thinking this was an exhilarating new round of tug-of-war, and clamped his jaw tighter onto the jade serpent’s snout.
“Let go, you menace!” she hissed under her breath, prying at his cheeks while checking the shadowy corners of the corridor. “Munjal will skin us alive, Tarkhan will execute us, and then I’ll die twice! Drop it!”
“Mine,” Rupi burbled stubbornly, echoing the very tyrant who sat twenty yards away.
A floorboard groaned at the end of the passage.
The silk divider parted.
Tarkhan stood in the opening, a silver water pitcher in his hand, his posture relaxed. “Senzo, I found some mint leaves to settle your—’
The sentence died on his lips.
The silver pitcher slipped from his fingers, hitting the stone floor with a hollow, echoing clang. Water splashed across the carpets, soaking the fringes around Senzhi’s knees.
Senzhi froze over the toddler, her hands still locked on the child's shoulders, her mind instantly going dead white. Her hood had slipped back during the scramble. A filthy, soot-stained toddler was sitting between her thighs, sucking happily on the sacred ancestral seal of the Zha-Khar dynasty, while she knelt over him like a cornered beast.
Tarkhan did not look at the fallen grate.
He did not look at the jade seal.
He did not look at Senzhi’s exposed jawline or her terrified, murderous stare.
His gaze fell squarely onto the boy’s face.
The boy, curious about the loud noise of the dropping pitcher, pulled the slobbery jade from his mouth and stared back at the towering Emperor. Under the cold lantern light, the soot on the child’s forehead framed a pair of striking, unmistakable eyes.
Not the dull brown of the common folk.
Not the hazel of the southern scribes.
A piercing, incandescent, liquid silver—the exact, terrifying mark found only in the bloodline of the founding conquerors of Zha-Khar.
Tarkhan took a stumbling step backward. His hand flew to his chest, fingers knotting into the dark brocade of his tunic. His pupils contracted into tiny, vibrating pinpricks, his lips parting in an intake of air so sharp it sounded like tearing silk.
“Those eyes,” Tarkhan whispered, his voice trembling with an ecstasy that bordered on pure madness.