“Let me tell you about cowards,” Inaya said. “Let me tell you about the cowardice I saw among you when I first came to Ras Tieg.”

That, at least, gave him pause. For a few moments they stood in silence, two renegade shape shifters in the last place any of God’s Angels would think to look for them. What foolish animal crept into its enemy’s house to hide?

“Tell me,” Inaya said softly, “how many more have come over to our cause since I joined you?”

“Impossible to say.”

“And who brought us the girl?”

“I still think—”

“I have not asked your opinion of my methods. Not in some time. Yet you still continue to offer up the same tired strategies. The same ones that nearly brought you to your knees before I joined you. I am done arguing with you on our path. It has been decided. Fly back to Nasheen tonight and bring her back.”

“This is a foolish course.”

“Do it, or don’t bother coming back,” Inaya said. She turned, and made to move past him, gaze lowered.

He grabbed her arm, jerked her toward him, made her look up. The space was narrow, and she did not have enough clearance to pull away.

She met his gaze. It was what he wanted, of course. Some acknowledgement of their intimacy. But there was no smile for him, no bowed head, no words to soothe his bruised ego. He was a grown man, and she would treat him like one.

“You were nothing before I found you,” he said, biting. “How long would it have been before you and the boy took to whoring yourselves out? He was a thieving cur, and you his little bitch.”

“How quickly your words curdle when you no longer have power,” Inaya said. Her skin prickled, and she felt a subtle ripple slide across her skin; her body’s desperate desire to be free. She was not a fool. She had been raised in Ras Tieg. When Michel followed Eshe back to the alley they shared in their first days in exile in Ras Tieg, she expected the worst. But he had remembered her from a diplomatic dinner in Tirhan, where he had posed as a servant in order to gain access. She thought him sly and moppish then—not trustworthy. Someone—her old contact, Elodie, perhaps—had told him she was a sympathizer. When he discovered who they were, when he understood exactly how they could be used, he invited them to join the resistance in Ras Tieg, the Fourré. She was under no illusions that he offered his hand in selfless friendship. They could eat and sleep there so long as they were useful. But one night, all of that changed, and in the morning, she was the leader, and he was second.