Neelab finally agreed to the race, maybe because she’d designed some clever retribution for me. We began at the starting point, on her count. I put my all into my start, but Neelab paced herself. She wasn’t on my heels but kept respectably close. I wanted to put more distance between us, wanting to win by more than a few strides. I pumped my arms at my sides and leaned into the wind. When I had passed the green acre, I stole a glance over my shoulder. Neelab was smiling, closer to me than I would have guessed.

As I looped around the building, Neelab was briefly out of view. I made a hasty decision to leap over a row of shrubs instead of circling around them. They were barely waist high, and I was certain I could clear them.

I was wrong.

Neelab stood over me, panting and terrified to see me bleeding. My shirt had been smeared red. I had a gash across my left eyebrow where my face had met a rock. Boba took me to the hospital, where a doctor stitched my gaping wound closed.

It is so big! I cried to Boba while we waited for the doctor to see me. I had seen my reflection on a glass door.

The wound is where the light enters you, Boba said softly.

I did remember the verse from Rumi, but did not admit I hadn’t quite grasped the meaning. I didn’t want my father to think I was dense.

When pain retreats, when skin repairs, when a broken bone becomes whole again, it is a miracle. It is grace, he explained. But you would never feel this without the hurt. I would never wish the wound for you, sweet, mischievous Sitara. But I certainly wish you the light.

Shawna fell asleep before me. On parallel beds a few feet apart, we lay curled on our sides, my back to her. Her breaths stretched long and slow as winter nights. I hoped the rhythm would lull me to sleep too. But flickering headlights came through the bedroom window, and my eyelids, heavy as they were, kept fluttering open. When I did drift off, I fell into a terrifying nightmare in which someone was searching me out in the palace basement with a flashlight. I rolled over so that I was facing Shawna and watched lights play against the striped wallpaper like a movie projected onto a screen.

I heard the television switch off and then the sound of footsteps plodding up the stairs. A distant door creaked open, and I heard Everett’s voice.

“I’m going to check on them. They’ve probably kicked their blankets off, restless sleepers.”