Gifting Fire, Alina Boyden [books to read for self improvement .txt] 📗

heart ached far worse than my body, in spite of the way my father was pressing me against the wall until it felt like my bones would snap. There was a part of me that believed him, whatever Arjun said to the contrary. I had run away from home to become a hijra, and I had sold my body to the highest bidder for years. Any princess who had done such a thing would have so disgraced herself that she would have been killed at best, left to live in the gutter as a common whore at worst. She certainly wouldn’t have been entertaining marriage offers, not even from men as slimy as Karim Shah.

“It was your fault,” Arjun said, his fist clenching around the hilt of his khanda until his knuckles turned white. “You knew who she was, you knew what she was, and rather than protecting her, you beat her, and tormented her, and left her exposed to men like Karim. You did it on purpose. You let him rape her on purpose.”

More than Arjun’s words, it was my father’s reaction that shocked me. His eyes widened; his grip slackened. It was true. It was all true.

“You let him do that to me on purpose?” I asked, tears threatening at the corners of my eyes. Never in my whole life had I imagined that my father had orchestrated what Karim had done to me, but now I saw what I’d been too young and too blind to notice before. I had screamed. I had screamed in a palace full of servitors. I had fought as best I could. No guard could have failed to hear me. But no one had come. And when I had told Sikander what had happened, he hadn’t been surprised, he’d just beaten me for being such a weakling, but he had never once asked me for details, never once asked me where and when it had happened. Because he’d known all along.

My father let me go with a snarl of frustration. He stood there, his face reddening, whether from shame or anger I couldn’t have said. At last, he threw his arms wide. “I thought it might teach you a lesson! I thought if he used you as a woman, you wouldn’t want to be one anymore!”

“And this lesson?” I asked, gesturing to Karim, and to him, with arms that were already turning purple from where he’d grabbed me. “What is this meant to teach me, Father?”

“This is a political decision,” he said, his tone actually softening for once. “Ahmed Shah holds Kadiro. You won’t be able to take it back from him. I cannot afford a war with Mahisagar, as it would only embolden Virajendra. So, we make peace. The price of peace is your marriage to Karim. It will strengthen both of our kingdoms, and it will ensure the safety of Zindh—and your safety too.”

“You think marrying me to my rapist ensures my safety?” I gave a hollow laugh at that, wondering how the man could be so deluded.

“I’m sorry for what I did six years ago, Razia,” Karim said, “but things are different now. You will be my wife. I will care for you, and for your sisters. They will want for nothing. You will want for nothing. And with my armies and your brains, we can conquer the world together.”

“Ah.” That was what Karim wanted. With me as his wife, he would eventually be sultan of Nizam, the most powerful man in Daryastan. And with me at his side, directing his every move, he reckoned that he would grow the empire even more than my father had. The worst part was, I wasn’t sure that he was wrong. I was ambitious, maybe more ambitious than I wanted to admit. For all the talk of living with Arjun in Bikampur, I’d chosen to become the subahdar of Zindh. Why? For freedom? Or for power? I didn’t even know anymore. If this was freedom, it certainly didn’t feel like it.

I walked past Karim to where Arjun was standing, and I embraced him tightly, pressing my face into his chest.

“Razia,” he warned, one arm going around me to protect me, the other still keeping his khanda pointed at Karim.

“He’s not going to hurt you, my prince,” I told Arjun. As if to prove to me how reasonable he could be, Karim sheathed his firangi and held up his hands to show Arjun that they were empty.

Arjun pulled me back toward the far wall of the chamber before sheathing his khanda and holding me in his arms. We just stood there for what seemed like both a long time and no time at all. My mind was racing, struggling to find a way out of this mess, but I wasn’t seeing one. Not unless I could convince my father that this was wrong, that whether it was politically expedient or not, it was unfair and horrible and cruel. I didn’t think those arguments would sway him, but I had to try.

I turned to face him, surprised to see so much uncertainty on his face. Maybe there was a chance after all. “Father, please don’t do this to me.”

He reared back, shocked that that was the angle I would take.

“We have Karim here; we have nearly half of Mahisagar’s zahhaks at our mercy,” I told him. “Let us take him prisoner and make a bargain with Ahmed Shah. He leaves Zindh, and never comes back, and his son gets to live. They will be too busy fighting Safavia in Ahura to strike back at us. And I will have united the Zindhi people by then. I will be able to hold this province. With Arjun’s help, I already have seven zahhaks to fight against their twelve, and more could be brought from Registan. They won’t take those odds, not against me. And Safavia would rather fight for its own island than for my province. It would be far easier for them to risk a