'There are things you cannot have in this world, and my heart is among them,' she had said to him once. 'It is beating to see you die, never for you to claim.'

And it was beating now, heavily, violently, as he lay dying in that cave. Standing a few steps away, Zahara watched, as she had promised herself she would, the process of his death with too many questions she hadn't been prepared to answer. There was a finality to that promise that went both ways she couldn't deny. What happens to my heart, my life then, when he is dead? Would it still beat or would it end with him? What do I live for, after this? Would there ever be a reason as powerful for her to draw her strength from again?

He was breathing more faintly now, the three arrows still embedded in his body rising and falling more and more slowly the longer the day stretched on. The arrows that should have been dipped in Zyren which would have killed him in less than an hour somehow hadn't been. By sheer luck or fate or divine intervention, they also hadn't penetrated the organs that would cause him to die quickly. But he was losing blood. A lot of blood. People died from that, slowly, unless someone were to interfere. Someone who knew how.

She did know how. Had been trained for it long before her capture. It was how she knew the arrows hadn't penetrated important organs, how she knew they hadn't been dipped in poison, how she also knew that he would die eventually if she did nothing.

The chance of someone doing something about it was why she was still here, with him and Ghaul who had taken them out of the city and hid the salar in this cave near the border of Samarra. Being a Samarran himself, Ghaul knew the terrain; where to hide them, where to get water, and likely where to find help. There had been opportunities for her to run, plenty of them, in fact, given how Ghaul had been more concentrated on saving the salar than to keep her in sight as per his master's instructions. He could be expected to do that to make sure she was safe. Muradi didn't like to fail, and he had come to save her, after all.

Zahara didn't take those opportunities. She, too, didn't like to fail. He might live, and she had to be here to make sure he died, to see it, as she had promised herself.

The reason why he'd come to save her at all was irrelevant. It didn't matter. It shouldn't.

Muradi was resting against a wall, breathing slowly but steadily and wincing every time his chest moved. The pain must have been great; she could feel it in her own chest watching him, in the satisfaction she gained from it. Somehow, the air around her felt rigid, barely breathable. It must have been something in the cave, or the anticipation of seeing him dead was getting to her. Eighteen years of suffering was about to come to an end. This pain, this anger, this wound that seemed to be tearing open now in her heart would be gone when he died. If only she had one moment alone with him, it would end sooner than later.

"Ghaul," he said in almost a whisper and even that much was an effort. "Go find water...food... some firewood."

Ghaul looked at her, all forms of hatred and distrust on his face. She didn't blame him. All this had happened because of her. He might kill her after this. She knew he wanted to. "Yes, my lord," he said, then took her wrist and began to pull her along with him. "You're coming with me."

"Leave her," said Muradi, command seeping back into his voice despite the state he was in.

"My lord," the giant Samarran grimaced, "it isn't safe."

"Ghaul." The tone was final, leaving no room for objections, implied no further explanations were to be given. When he did that, you obeyed without question or you suffered grave consequences. He might not be in a shape to offer that consequence, but someone who'd known him as long as Ghaul did would know there was no point in arguing with him when he used that tone.

There was a tearing of flesh, a sense of a wound being cut open and left to bleed on Ghaul's face as he looked at his salar. An understanding passed between them in the silence of the cave, an awareness so real and concrete one could almost reach out to touch it. Ghaul knew, as well as she did, what was truly being asked of him, what his salar wanted. You couldn't serve a man every day for more than two decades and not know the content of his heart.

Or refuse his last wish.

It took all the strength he had to offer that nod, but he nodded and obeyed. Ghaul walked toward him, knelt down by his side, his hand-picked up the hem of Muradi's robe, and kissed it as he placed his forehead on the floor. He stayed like that for a time, his whole body trembling from fists clenched painfully tight, from hopelessness, from the loss to come, from the struggle to draw air into collapsing lungs resulting from what was being asked of him. A very large man, fighting desperately to hold on to a small end of a larger fabric, wishing he didn't have to let go.

Muradi placed a hand on his shoulder, resting his weight on it gently yet firmly as if to make sure it would be felt through the armor. "You have served me well," he said. His face, Zahara thought, had never been milder. A face he'd never had for anyone, not for as long as she knew him. A face reserved for the one man he'd trusted the most who had yet to fail him. The one man who was still not failing him at this very moment, even when what he was asking would leave too great a wound to ever heal. "Now go."

And despite how he appeared to be carrying the weight of the whole world on his shoulders, despite the feeling that he was dragging along a hundred corpses behind him for every step he took, Ghaul stepped outside of that cave and did what he was told.

Muradi looked at him as he walked through the entrance, he looked until the figure of his bodyguard disappeared from view and lingered long after. His breathing altered a little as he closed his eyes afterward, as silence settled upon the two of them for a moment.

"Do you have a knife or do you need mine?" He said as he opened his eyes to look at her.

Short. Right to the point. As always. The man who had become her husband wasted no time, even with his own death.

She nodded, untied the ribbon around her hair and loosened the knot. The small knife fell into her hand. She gripped the handle and unsheathed the blade.

He smiled, with pride, with the satisfaction of being right, of always being one step ahead of her. Even now, on your last breaths, you insist on winning, on trying to conquer me.

"Best do it quickly," he said, let slip a small groan as he forced out the words. "Ghaul will be back soon. Have you decided how?"

"I've had eighteen years to think about it," she said, stepping toward him with the knife in her hand. "I still can't decide which would satisfy me more."

The smile widened. Whatever she did seemed to please him, to her irritation. "I could have given you a perfect solution if you had discussed it with me."

She was standing above him now, looking down at the weakened form of the man who had locked her in his cage for almost two decades, on top of having slaughtered her entire family, and yet she still didn't possess any power to make him suffer. "Only you," she said bitterly, "will go so far as to dictate how I take your life. You insufferable, arrogant, entitled prick."

He laughed and coughed blood as soon as he did, his face crumpled for a moment as another wave of pain hit him. The grin did return soon enough, however. "I've waited eighteen years to hear you swear at me again. I should have made that an exception."

It made her feel like a child, like something small and harmless he'd never considered a threat. Even now, this close to dying, he was still considering her a plaything, an entertainment. Only Muradi would go so far as to take this opportunity to kill him and make it a gift, a favor, a bone tossed carelessly at her feet. She was the one holding the knife, and he would not allow it to give her power over him. It should have fed more fire to her rage, only she felt too exhausted, too used to it to care. "Must you try to make me hate you until the very end?"

His breath stumbled at that question. This time it seemed to have gotten under his skin. He parted his lips to speak, pressed them back together, and hesitated. Then, with an effort, he gave her a half-hearted smile, like someone trying to compliment a food he found inedible. "How else, Zahara," he said, short, painful breaths in between, "could I get you to look at me? How do I get your attention otherwise?"

It tore open a wound, forced her to acknowledge a tumor that had been growing in her chest; an ugliness she had tried, and tried to cure and cut out of her chest. "Don't you dare," she said through gritted teeth, gripping the knife in her hand harder, needing to feel its presence. "Don't you even dare go that far." There were dangers in those words, weapons hiding in each syllable. Even now, you will take more.

But he was not done. He wasn't even close to being done.

"Do you really not know what I've always wanted, Zahara? After all this time?" He said easily, carelessly, as if the implication held no such things as consequences. "There is no other way I can have you, not for what I've done. I know this, and so do you."

And there it was, the cold, cold, realization crawling up her spine that he had been right. That she had known what he wanted, after all this time, and knew that there had been no alternatives, no possible way for her to forgive him for what he had done. That she would not have lived or stayed for a second longer if he had not bound her to him in this way. "It is not," she said through heaving breaths, through the searing pain in her heart, pain she didn't understand from where it came, "for you to choose."

"I never did, Zahara," he said, grinding her name on his teeth like something he had been fed without consent. "I've spent my life trying to build an empire, to unite these lands. I've had to kill thousands of my men, thousands of yours. Do you think I wanted to? That I don't have to live with what I've done every day of my life? Do you think, that I would sacrifice so much to have it end this way? To even risk it?" He paused and groaned at the pain, his chest heaving from the rage, the disappointment he had been holding back.

"I've never chosen this, to have you as my one mistake, my only obstacle, my most vulnerable flaw. I've tried a hundred times to let you go, and a hundred times more, and every single time I've failed. I've failed today. I will fail again tomorrow and likely for the rest of my life." Another cough. More blood. Shallower breaths. More pain in his chest. In hers. "Kill me, Zahara. That is the only way out of this mess, for the both of us."

And it was, the only way. She knew it as well as he did, knew it with every unspoken word, with every look in his eyes, with every smile he had held back or forced out of existence in the past eighteen years. She knew, that for all the relentless push and pull between them they'd spent a lifetime trying to deny, for all the lies they'd told themselves and each other, it all came down to this. He couldn't afford to have her, and she could never forgive him.

There had been no other way.

She lowered herself to the ground, the unsheathed knife held tightly in her grip. This was to be the ending of her pain, the start of a new life, the key to her freedom. He would die today, along with everything he'd brought into her life, into her heart she'd never welcomed. "For the both of us," she said, nodded, positioned the tip of the blade on his heart, felt a taloned hand wrapping over her own.

"Tell me one thing, Zahara," he said, reaching for her hair, wrapping it around his fingers. "Would it have been different," he asked, pausing for a breath, to swallow blood, "had we met sooner or some other way? If we had been someone else? Two farmers or camel herders maybe?"

In another place, or another time...

She felt his hand on her cheek, felt the caress of his thumb, callused and covered in blood, in soot from when he'd pulled her out of the fire.

"Would you have loved me then?" He asked.

Love, he said. The audacity of it. The cruelty of those words. Such careless thoughts flung in her direction regardless of what he would leave behind. "Do you hate me for what I've done or for the man I am?"

In another place, or another time, and given different circumstances. Her own thoughts, that night in the lights of the hurricane. She had thought then, that she might have been able to admire him, that she might have even found a man she would willingly marry, if only they hadn't been on different sides of the desert.

What did it matter now?

The knife felt heavy in her hand as she pushed it into his chest, pausing just as it punctured his skin. A voice nagged at her conscience, telling her she'd forgotten something important, yelling at her to figure it out. She forced it out of her mind, shut it behind a door as she twisted the knife, pushing it in further. "What makes you think," she said, driving those words into his heart, those sharp talons digging now, into hers, "that I would let you have such a satisfaction? That I would tell you the answer to that question before you die?"

And then, as the hand on her face moved behind her head, as she felt the warm pressure of his fingers pulling her down, the hand around her heart sank its talons into her flesh, ripped it apart as his lips parted and closed over her own. She forced in the knife, made it only a finger's width further when the voice in her head began to scream once more, screeching loud enough to split it open. His breaths were hot against her skin, his heart hammering against her chest. He tasted like blood, like salt, like ashes from a still-burning fire. It filled her chest with poison with something rotten that she knew was going to kill her.

She pushed in the blade, and he kissed her harder, deeper, groaning from the pain as he did, not giving up ground, seizing more.

Another fight. Another battle. Even here, now, with her knife halfway into his chest, aiming at his heart, he would not yield to her. And he would win it. He would die taking something of hers along with him. He was going to die content, after all that he'd done, after putting her through hell, leaving her here, to suffer the consequences. Alone.

She pulled out the knife, pushed herself away from his embrace. "No," she said, flinging the blade at his feet. "I'm not going to kill you. Not yet. Not now. You are going to live, as a fugitive, a peasant, a man stripped of everything but the life I've spared today. You will live, to watch your failure as a ruler, a conqueror, a man whose dream will never be realized. And I'm going to watch you pay for it, every day, until I'm satisfied with your pain. I have gained my freedom, here, today. From here onwards I am no longer your prisoner, no longer under your command. You are going to live with that until I'm done with you. Your turn to suffer," she said, turning to leave, "begins now."

----- End of Book I -----

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