Lightning flashed across a burning sky streaked with grey clouds above a dying, bleeding sun. It lit up the right side of his father's face, cast an almost black shadow on the other, gave his dark eyes a flash of gold as he slammed a fist into his mother's jaw. She flew across the room to land near the wall he had been curling up against, next to the fireplace that had gone out a while ago from the storm. In front of him, the blood of his mother's lover was still gushing out of his headless body. It made a small pool on the stone floor, creeping toward where he was, swallowing up slowly but steadily whatever was left of the distance between him and the embodiment of death in the form of his father.

A knife was flung in his direction. It landed by his foot, flailing like a living thing tossed alive into open fire. Another lightning struck and the small blade flashed white, its silvery sheen glided along the sharp edges from one end to the other as the light faded. The ground shook underneath him as the next thunder came, rendering all the other noises around him into a faint, muffled sound as he stared at the blade, pressing himself harder against the wall as if it would somehow offer protection.

'Pick up the knife, my lord prince,' someone told him. 'Prove your loyalty, if you don't want to die,' said another. 'Examples had to be set, sacrifices must be made. Do you understand?'

The sky flashed once more, and there, in front of him, his mother was smiling, weeping, and whispering something to him all at the same time—something incomprehensible, inaudible.

His vision turned black when the next thunder came.

***

Rain poured down from the roof like a smooth screen of living crystal. Salar Muradi reached out with one hand to catch the falling water, turning it around to watch as the cold numbed his fingers the way it had back then. He remembered the rain being colder that night, colder when he'd entered the gate of Sabha through its open courtyard.

Cold enough, he thought, that he didn't remember feeling a damn thing after having slit his mother's throat. Didn't remember how she died or what she had said before that either. She had begged to die, and everyone in that room had wanted her to die, that was all he remembered.

It was the same two years ago when he'd ordered the execution of Kuyo and Keijin. The same numbness had been with him then, watching both his sons' heads rolling off the block and landed with a soft thump on the wood. 'Examples had to be set,' a voice in his head had said then, 'sacrifices must be made.'

Examples and sacrifices.

And they had to be—set and made—as with all things. Some people had to die to build a bridge for generations to cross. Someone had to be willing to carry that weight, to make that decision. Life, of any kind, survives on the death of another. You could only limit killing to the things you eat if your life is the only one that mattered. Saving an entire city—or an empire—was always going to take more. It was a matter of mathematics, of proportions.

'A leader must be content with blood on his hands,' Eli had written, 'his, the enemy's, and that of the men he leads.'

It was the kind of truth no one wanted to hear. The kind of truth that was easier for lesser men to point fingers at, and in doing so made themselves acquire a sense of power without responsibilities attached. Being responsible for so many people's lives required killing just as many, sometimes more, depending on who you want to protect. Sometimes it had to be your mother, your father, your sons, to save the lives of thousands. Just because they were his blood, did it give them more right to live than someone else's? Did it make him more of a monster to kill his own child than that of another man's? One would have to be a self-absorbed, entitled hypocrite to measure a life that way. Logic and simple mathematics are the only way to justify killing. Kill them, if it makes sense. Di Amarra would have agreed.

And he had lived with logic and sacrifices all his life, had been used to it to the point of being numb to these things.

But not for this.

Never, as a matter of fact, when it came to Zahara.

She was, for all that he had tried to deny it, his only weakness, his one illogical, erratic decision for the past eighteen years. A weakness that must be dealt with, something he had delayed and neglected for nearly two decades.

And it was time to end it. It was time to make that same sacrifice he had made on that rainy night thirty years ago.

Now, watching the cold rain dripping off his hand, slipping through his fingers, he just wished he remembered what his mother had said.

***

She was dressed in white like the first time they'd met, only tonight it was a nightgown he'd given her, clean, dry, and intact. Makena silk at its best made and stitched in the Rashai fashion and done by the hands of a Rashai dressmaker.

It was as far as one could go to force her into a role she didn't want to play. You could put a tiger in sheep's clothing and it would still try to eat you when you're not careful. And Zahara was much, much more than that. She was his match, his undefeated rival, his twin even, if he were to be honest with himself.

She turned to greet him with surprise written on her face—an expression that was still there as she offered him her usual show of pretended obeisance. He didn't come to her chamber often. In fact, one might be able to count the occasion in the past eighteen years on one hand.

"To what do I owe this pleasure, my lord?" She asked as the chambermaids scurried outside and closed the door behind them.

He smiled at those words. Pleasure, she'd said. Pleasure had never been a part of their encounters, not for her at least. It was a lie she knew he would catch—had always made sure he would catch, by the hundred different kinds of blades hidden in each syllable she chose to fling at him. The woman was never out of weapons, truly.

Even now, standing in front of a window through which a blistering wind rushed past her small frame, her long tangling silver hair danced defiantly in it, coiling in and out like venomous creatures made to sink their teeth into anyone who approached. The harsh lines of her face made harsher in the flash of lightning multiplied the severity of her presence, complimented, all too appropriately, by the brutal sound of her silk dress snapping in the storm that raged and poured into the room.

The sky flashed once, followed by a thunder trailing closely at its tail. It shook the ground between them, struck him like a punch in the gut, left a presence so permanent, so persistent in its delivery of aches and pains in his torso, in his chest.

It always felt like this in her presence. In the storm, the calm sunny day, the cold quiet night, or here, in the flickering light of the hurricanes. Despite all the warning signs and the undeniable danger tugging at his conscience, he was always helplessly drawn to it, like a craving of some potent drug he'd gotten used to and couldn't live without, like the quaint taste of blood and saliva following a jaw-crushing blow fighters learned to appreciate, like that overpowering, orgasmic rush of energy that made you bounce back up after being beaten close to death during a hand-to-hand combat. She could do that to him for just being there, taking up space in the same room, sharing the same air he breathed.

It was true now, just as it had been eighteen years ago. That part of their relationship had never changed.

He closed the distance between them, watching for—and saw—the signs of her struggle to not flinch at his advance. She succeeded, as always, but it was never without an effort. It pleased him to see the effort.

"Is it so strange," he asked, studying her expression as he did, "that I might want to see my wife before she is delivered to god?" There was, as always, a scent of spice and something else he never could identify in her hair, clinging to her skin. It gave him the need to draw deeper, longer breaths than usual.

She put on a smile, masking just in time whatever it was that had bothered her before it was brought too far forward. "You make it sound as if I'm about to be sent to slaughter."

"It is your slaughter, is it not, Zahara?" The name rolled off his tongue like honey, like wine. He liked the taste of it on his lips. Liked the way her breath caught every time he delivered it. There was power in this, as with every look, every touch that earned him a reaction she would always fight so relentlessly to crush out of existence. "For what you are, who you are, and what you represent? I am amazed, to tell you the truth, that you seem so willing."

And he would have been—truly amazed and bewildered—had he not known better.

She stiffened at that. A gesture so small only he could see from years and years of having studied every inch of her, every move she made no matter how slight, and every snag in her breathing pattern. The command to have her bend the knees to Rashar and convert her faith had not brought forward the expected reaction if one knew her character well enough. It had, however, brought forward the expected reaction when he confronted her with the lack thereof.

A confirmation of sorts of what had recently come to his attention. An open wound to accompany it—one that was sure to leave a scar if it ever healed. Not unexpected, no, but a cut was a cut and pain was always there whether or not you saw the blade coming. And he had seen the blade coming. Had simply failed to put up his defenses, or hadn't wanted to.

Such discomfort lingered for just a moment, before it was promptly replaced by a clear determination to stand her ground. If there had been any guilt in it, she hadn't let it show. He didn't think there would be anyway.

"To save the lives of thousands, my lord?" She said, her voice a note higher, crisp as a newly honed blade. "I have lived with worse."

It felt like a knife inserted between his ribs, twisted as it went in even, by the way she stared him down as she delivered it. And he was bleeding in earnest, he admitted. But he had also bled worse and enough times to find the smell of blood pleasant. That night in particular, and for a good reason, he found himself wondering if there had been ways around it. If some things could be done or unspoken words could be said to not have it come to this.

"Is it really that hard to bend to me, Zahara?" He reached for her hair, winding the silvery strands around his fist, made sure he would remember the feel of it on his fingers. "To accept your role, your place by my side even once?"

Deep down, he already knew the answer to that. Once had always been too much to ask. Once was something she would never offer. Then again, once would have never been enough for him to consider her conquered...or to ever call her his.

"Would you, my lord?" She asked, eyes blazing golden, holding him as if by knifepoint, putting his own theory to the test, "accept such a role, in my position?"

Would I?

He smiled at that.

She smiled back. Triumphantly. "I didn't think so."

That might have been it, the thing, the trigger that always started the fire in his belly, fueling the need to strip her to the skin and force her into submission— that taunting, arrogant smile so close to a daring challenge from an equally skilled fighter that could always get him excited, get his blood racing.

"You enjoy it, don't you?" He said, cradling her head in his open palm, leaning close enough to feel her shivering on his hand, to feel the heat of her breaths on his cheek. "Staying always out of reach? You like being this," he tilted her face up to meet his, to see her eyes, "this unattainable goal of mine."

The growing heat pooled in his stomach, spilled over, dripped down to meet the pulsing ache between his legs that had been there since he saw her. How was it possible, he often wondered, that he could never control himself around her after all this time?

And Zahara, despite knowing what it would do to look at him that way, despite the torture she knew she would have to put herself through for doing so, said, "Is it any different from what you do, my lord? You, of all people, should understand the sheer joy of letting me sleep next to a blade I can't kill you with." She pressed herself closer to him to make a point, her presence crowded at his chest, forced the breaths out of his lungs as she spoke against his lips. "I am unattainable, no matter what you do to me. Is that not why it entertains you so to torture me this way? Because I am the one thing you want that you can't have? Go ahead and try, my lord. You won't have it, not for as long as I li—"

He didn't need her to finish the sentence. Couldn't. She had him long before that.

The taste of her lips stung him like acid, set something alight in his throat that made its way down his stomach and then further down. The rigidity of her mouth, her tongue, was there, as always. They were straining, tensing as hard as the hand on his arm to refrain from ever kissing him back. She had whimpered, had moaned, had sometimes cried at the pressure of his mouth, his hands, but she had never, not once in the past eighteen years, allowed him that much.

It took no time, no time at all for him to rip apart the silk of her gown and take in the scent of her, to taste that aching, agonizing sound of restraint from her lips. Restraint, because as much as her mind, her pride was always denying him, her body never could. There was a part of Zahara that craved the same battle and bloodshed that he did, the part that responded to threats with an unstoppable drive to never retaliate, to stay on top of the game rather than to turn from a fight. He knew it from the first time he'd touched her, knew it like the crude, acrid stench of blood and sweat from an opponent refusing to die and admit defeat to his last breath. It hadn't even felt like rape. You couldn't take anything from a woman like Zahara if she wasn't willing to give.

They hadn't made it to the bed the first time. There had been no time, no patience for that, none whatsoever of those things he could have mustered then or now as he pulled her down to the floor right where they were. Through the window, the storm was still rushing in, its loud, reverberating rumbling falling in rhythm with the thundering beat in his chest, in his racing pulse, in the roaring unstoppable influx of need, of want, of maddening hunger until there was no telling any of them apart. He laid her down on the marble, felt a stirring of her body trapped underneath his weight as the cold touched her back, and found himself shuddering at the response. Outside, the rain smashed hard against the window ledge, throwing droplets of water on their skin, on her hair, on the torn, tattered silk still clinging to her limbs. She clenched her fists on the fabric of his robe, clinging desperately to control as their bodies collided, as sweat and water, and their cries merged and blended into one.

He remembered it then, that first time when it had been just like this. When the blistering heat of the desert turned their skins slick with sweat, when he could taste it all on his palette—that salty, tangy, slightly bitter taste of bodily fluids and blood from unclosed wounds. She hadn't fought him then—she couldn't, not for the promise of death he'd declared for thousands. She'd carved him up in return, digging her nails into his flesh, tearing his skin open and had drawn blood—the blood he'd painted on her body and feasted on.

She was doing exactly that now, stretching her claws against his back, sinking them in as he devoured the taste of her, pressing his lips hungrily on her bare skin, here, there, and everywhere he could reach. Her breathing quickened as he made his way up her torso, her chest heaving for breaths the closer and closer he came to her heart, and then, at the same moment he closed his mouth around her breast, a searing, burning pain tore through the skin of his back the same time her body arched clear off the floor, straining every muscle in her limbs to not make a single sound.

It didn't stop him. He couldn't. All it did was to drive him deeper into the maddening scent of her, to press himself harder against her skin, to dig and dig again for the roots of her limits until it all comes tumbling down.

It never did. You could drive Zahara up against a wall, threaten to break every bone in her body, to sink your teeth in her flesh and drink her blood and she still wouldn't surrender. But it was exactly this that had kept him coming back for more, what gave him the constant need to stretch her thin, to push and torture her to the extent that there was nothing that could have been said or done to avoid what he had to do that night. She would never bend to him, to anyone. And neither would he.

But he would take this, this one last fight to his grave—the grave she would never see.

He looked at her then, taking in the sight of her as he lowered himself against her torso, watching her bite down on her lip, bracing herself for what she knew would come. She wouldn't look away, she never had. Zahara wasn't the kind of woman who shields her eyes from a disturbing sight or tries to escape a reality too painful to bear. She would stare him down, as she was doing now, as he entered her, inch by remorseless inch, as if to remember every moment, to write down and add to her growling list of why she wanted to see him dead.

And he had always enjoyed it, like staring death in the face, like being driven breathless and aching all over from a fight, like that shiver running down your spine when you plunge a sword into someone you've longed to see dead. She ground her teeth as she watched him, her small muscles corded and trembled at his thrusts. It drove him further and closer to the edge, forcing his body, his hands, his impossibly hardened shaft to dive harder, deeper into her, pushing them forward along the floor, and feeling the cold marble scraping at his forearms, his knees. He could feel it all under his skin—the pulsing, relentless ache smashing itself against his limbs, rising and rising in intensity as she strained harder in his grip, her breathing falling in rhythm with his, her heart flinging itself against her ribcage and his answering to it, matching it in speed, in force powerful enough to kill them both, to rip them apart at the seams if it were allowed to go on much longer.

And then, when she let out a small whimper, as her teeth sank deep into the skin on his right shoulder, drawing blood, every muscle in his body went rigid, turned stiff as iron as they froze, and all the aching, agonizing pain that had accumulated in that brief battle between them shot down his torso, throwing him off, threatening to snap his spine as he bent back in his release. The growl she dragged out of his throat came with the thunder that shook the entire Tower underneath them, destroying them both as they lied spent and exhausted on the cold, wet floor.

Eighteen years, and she could still drive him so close to death, so close to breaking.

But it wasn't done yet. Not by far.

That realization came with a different kind of pain. He pushed himself up to face her, planting a soft kiss on her forehead, her cheek, breathing in her scent for one last time.

"Tell me something, Zahara," he asked, trailing his hands up her chest, brushing her collarbone, panting still. "What did my son promise you? What is it that you think Azram could offer you that I can't?"

Her breath came to a screeching stop at those words, perhaps also her heart. "What—"

"Don't," he hissed, moving his hands up to her throat, cradling it in his loosened grip, "even try. You know me too well for that."

She swallowed, pressing her lips together so tight he could see the blood draining from them.

"Did you think I wouldn't know?" He brushed his thumb along the smooth ridge of her jawline, coming to rest on her throat and felt the pulsing in her veins. "How much of a fool do you take me for? I know what you do. Everywhere you go, every turn you take. I know every man you so much as speak to. What did Azram promise you to get you to finally knife me in the back?"

She was trembling now, so hard there was no concealing it.

"Speak, Zahara," he rasped, his anger rising at the confession already on display, "the lives of thousands depend on it, so is your son's."

She closed her eyes then, squeezing the one drop of tear down her cheek. When she opened them again, there were no more tears to fall. Her eyes were filled with hatred, with spite, with a hundred knives collected over the years coming out of hiding.

"Freedom," she said, stabbing him with the knife's point of each syllable she uttered, "of my people, of me and my son. But you should know," she smiled then, more triumphantly than she had before and covered with enough poison to kill every living thing in that room. "I would have done it in any case, if only to see you die."

It went through him like a spear, cast eighteen years ago only to arrive at its target just now. He knew it, of course. Had known for a long time. He knew what she wanted, what he had done, how improbable, impossible it was for things to have turned out any other way. It was always going to come down to this. She would have to die, or he would.

He could feel her pulse in his hand as he squeezed, could feel something else in him dying every time she struggled to breathe. Her hands came up to grip on his arms out of instinct, her legs thrashing next to his thighs as her body convulsed more and more violently under him. He waited for the same numbness to spread, the same voice to call for examples to be set, for sacrifices to be made.

It never came. All that was there, the only thing he could feel then, was the suffocation that matched that of the woman he was trying to strangle, and the pain, the excruciating, burning pain that kept on growing and growing until there was nothing else he could see but darkness. The only sound he could hear besides the rain pouring in through the window, the one that kept on ringing in neverending repetition, was that of his own scream the night he'd slit his mother's throat.

***