But it wasn’t her fault, he reminded himself. It was that accursed Asfandyar who had bewitched her—turned her into someone she wasn’t. He had performed some sort of sorcery on her, possessed her.

But in the end, when all of this was through and everything was in order again, she would heal. He would explain it all to her, make her understand everything she did not see, and beg for her forgiveness. She would grant it to him, for they were blood.

Saifullah had hated Asfandyar since the beginning, when the boy had first come to his mother and told them his suspicions about the Badshah; Saifullah would have cut off his head then had he and his mother not had similar suspicions about the Badshah’s alliance with the Kebzu Kingdom.

The alliance that would lead to the Badshah’s downfall.

In exchange for money, Marghazar had been providing soldiers to fight alongside the Kebzus against the Luhgam Empire. It was why the northern frontier hadn’t been so heavily threatened by the Kebzus as of late, why so many more garrisons of soldiers were instead dying in the east. But with the Kebzus and Marghazari allied, the Luhgam Empire had pushed back even harder.

It boiled Saifullah’s blood, that the Badshah would sell his own soldiers, his own people, to fight alongside the Kebzus. Saifullah had felt the betrayal even then, so many months ago, before the summit.

But the attack on the summit had been the catalyst. There was no better time to plant the seeds of revolution his Taya Wakdar had carefully been planning for years. Saifullah’s mother, Nazo, had stayed in contact with him throughout, and slowly but surely they had been plotting.

All they needed was evidence to prove that the Badshah was in charge of the summit attack: it was grounds for war, and when war came, Wakdar would take his rightful place on the throne. But in order to find evidence, they needed somebody on the inside.

It was Wakdar’s plan to make Durkhanai fall in love with Asfandyar, to distract her from everything else that was stirring and to destroy her public image. Saifulah knew that despite how clever Durkhanai considered herself to be, she would be a fool for love, trusting a stranger and leading him to create the evidence they needed by stealing the Badshah’s seal.

While Saifullah knew of the passageways, he did not have the key to enter his grandfather’s study. Only Durkhanai did.

Thus, they had needed someone for Durkhanai to be a fool over. With Saifullah’s advice, Asfandyar was the perfect vessel. It was Saifullah who had discreetly written Asfandyar letters all these months, divulging the secret blueprint of his beloved cousin. Though he had hated to do it, he knew it had to be done.