“Heart’s blood?” Shirin sneered, closing her fingers over the carved bone hilt. “Do I look like a martyr in an altar play, Old Man?” Farzan opened his mouth to deliver another solemn lecture, but Shirin gave him no room. She flipped the dagger into a reverse grip and dragged the silver edge across her left palm. Not a hesitation. Not a flinch. A clean, violent gouge tore through flesh. Blood welled across her palm, hissing against the ancient silver. The metal drank it instantly, the polished surface turning an angry, smoking scarlet that mirrored the unstable flare around Iskandar’s neck. “Shirin—!” Farzan gasped, his composure shattering. “Shut up,” she snarled. She was already lunging toward the bed. Iskandar lay there, his gaze vacant, chest rising in shallow, rattling gasps as the slave-geas collar hummed at the threshold of detonation. Heat scalded her face as she leaned over him. The smell of scorched iron filled the bedchamber. “Listen to me, you useless stray,” Shirin rasped, her vision tunneling as the room spun. “Nobody blows up my property. Not Kamran, and certainly not some cursed scrap of copper.” She brought the enchanted blade down against the collar’s seam. The metal screamed. A blast of pure, boiling force tore outward, throwing Farzan against the cedar bookshelves. Shirin held on. Skin on her knuckles blackened, the heat peeling away layers of tissue, but she drove the blood-slicked silver deeper until the rune core cracked. *Snap.* The collar broke in two, clattering against the marble floor like dead stones. The flare died out. Iskandar choked on a breath in the sudden silence. Shirin tried to say something haughty—something biting about the laundry bill he owed her—but the floor rushed up to meet her cheek. Her skull struck the flagstones, and everything went black. *** When Shirin woke, a dull throb beat behind her eyes. She moved to rub her temple, but her wrist jerked back, halted by an immovable tension. She tugged again. A soft rustle answered her. She squinted through the gloom toward the canopy. Her arms were pinned over her head, bound to the carved mahogany headboard of her own bed. Not with iron. Not with coarse hemp. Heavy, jewel-toned ribbons of imported pomegranate silk wrapped around her wrists in thick, decorative loops. Every tug tightened the knot, pressing the lavish velvet counterpane into her back. “What in the burning hells is this?” Shirin barked. Her voice sounded cracked, dry as desert salt. From the shadow by the terrace doors, a figure rose. Iskandar did not stumble. He did not wheeze. The pathetic, sunken hunch that had defined him for weeks was gone, replaced by a terrifying, broad-shouldered grace. He moved across the polished cedar planks like a panther on wet grass, silent and perfectly lethal. In his right hand, he carried Farzan’s unlocked diary. His amber eyes locked onto hers. “You are awake, my Lady,” he said. The gravelly, timid tone had vanished, replaced by a low, resonant rumble that scraped across her nerves. “Untie me this instant, Iskandar!” She pulled hard against the silk, furious color flooding her pale cheeks. “I just sliced my own hand to ribbons to save your miserable neck! Is this how the great warlord shows gratitude? With stolen drapery ribbons?” Iskandar paused at the foot of the bed. He tossed the book onto her lap. The vellum pages fluttered, revealing her own frantic scribbles from a life she couldn't fully remember—diagrams of troop movements, broken timelines, and the recurring, desperate phrase: *Keep him calm. Do not let him burn.* “A cage made of soup,” Iskandar whispered, his voice cracking with a savage tremor. “A leash made of soft beds and clean tunics.” Shirin went rigid. “What are you talking about?” “You knew.” He stepped closer, leaning down until his shadow smothered her entirely. He planted both palms beside her shoulders, trapping her against the mattress. He smelled of smoke, clove oil, and the coppery tang of dried blood. “You knew every city I was destined to trample. You knew what I was.” “I bought you from a slaughterhouse,” she spat, refusing to yield an inch of ground. “I pulled you off a rack!” “Because you were afraid!” Iskandar roared, the sound rattling the crystal perfume bottles on the dressing table. His chest heaved against hers. For the first time, she saw the raw, weeping wound behind his golden glare. “Every pat on the head. Every bowl of broth brought to my bedside. Every time you touched my hair while pretending to scold me... it wasn't because you wanted me. It was because you were terrified of the fire!” His knuckles dug into the mattress. A tear escaped his lash, tracing through old whip scars, but his lips curled into a snarl. “You played with a rabid dog to keep its teeth away from your throat,” he sneered, voice dropping to a poisoned hush. “Tell me, Lady Rostami. Did it sicken you to hold my hand? Did you scrub your skin raw after every time I buried my face in your lap?” Shirin stared up at him. The flesh beneath her ribs pulled tight, aching deeper than the open cut on her palm. “You idiot,” she said, her voice shaking despite her best efforts. “You absolute, blind fool.” “Deny the ink,” he demanded, tapping the diary with a calloused finger. “Deny that you rewound the sky just to tame a beast!” “I don’t remember rewinding a damn thing!” Shirin wrenched her wrists against the silk, ignoring the sharp burn of friction. “I only know what’s right in front of me! If I just wanted to stop an apocalypse, I could have poisoned your tea the first night Farzan handed me the gold! I could have slit your throat in your sleep and slept like an infant!” Iskandar held rigid, his gaze tracking the fierce bite in her stare. “I cut my hand open an hour ago,” she breathed, hot tears spilling down her cheeks despite her fury. “I poured my own life into that blade because I couldn't bear the thought of you suffering for one more second. Does that look like politics to you? Does that look like fear?” For an instant, the warlord wavered. His hand lifted, hovering an inch above her cheek, his fingers trembling with an agonizing desire to touch the damp skin. Then the line of his jaw hardened. Resentment, black and bottomless, swallowed the hesitation. “A pretty lie,” he murmured, stepping back. “You are a magnificent actress, Shirin. You almost made me believe I was worth something. But you belong to this empire. And I belong to the ash.” “Iskandar, stop—what are you doing?” He reached beneath his leather tunic and pulled out an object wrapped in black fur. He peeled the pelts away, revealing an ancient curved horn carved from the mammoth bone of the northern steppes, engraved with deep, blood-red runes that hummed with suffocating malice. The Horn of the Black Harrows. Shirin swallowed hard. The Steppe Horde summoning relic. “If you wished to domesticate a monster to save your city,” Iskandar said, lifting the relic to his mouth, his smile sharp, jagged, and utterly devoid of mercy, “then watch me blow the walls to dust right now.”

The Velvet Cage