Though she wished his tale was a lie, she could not bear to be without him.

“I’m sorry, janaan,” Saifullah said, wrapping an arm around her. Durkhanai was frozen in his arms. She did not want to be touched, did not want to be consoled. She wanted to rage.

She pushed Saifullah away.

“I need to go,” she mumbled, voice foggy. She bit her tongue, holding back the cry that was rising within her. If she started crying then, she would never stop.

Durkhanai left Saifullah, not stopping to wonder what he was doing there, at that time.

All she could think of were her grandparents. Everything she knew suddenly seemed murky. But how could she doubt her own blood? Surely everything Asfandyar had said was a lie. Surely, he was trying to turn her against her kin.

But Durkhanai had believed him. Why did she believe him? And if she did, what did that mean? That her grandmother, who had always picked up little spiders from Durkhanai’s room and set them free in the outdoors, who had held Durkhanai close to her every night when she had first arrived—she had murdered her own grandchild?

If he was telling the truth, it meant the Badshah had allied himself with the Kebzu Kingdom, and not only that, but he had alerted them to the summit attack. He hadn’t officiated the attack himself, but he must have known what would happen.

Head spinning, Durkhanai began walking to her grandparents’ rooms. They would be awake for the morning prayer; she would clarify things immediately. There had to be some sort of in between, some space in her heart where she didn’t lose all those she loved.

But—wait.

Durkhanai stopped in her tracks, heart seizing with the slow, creeping feeling of shame. It was iron hot on her cheeks, pressing into her ribs.

How could Durkhanai go to her grandparents now?

After the guards had arrested Asfandyar on the charges of loving her—and she had been seen leaving his room in the middle of the night? With what face would she speak to her beloved grandparents?

She couldn’t bear the shame.

She couldn’t bear to disappoint them, thus. She would have told them, eventually, would have made them understand, but there was no use now. All they would see in this circumstance would be her sin.

But she needed answers. And she would have them.

Durkhanai went to her grandparents’ rooms. She avoided the stares of the guards, of those who were awake. How had news travelled so fast?

But the tribunal was always thus, for all the people in all the lands came to watch the spectacle.

Her people.

They would all know—what would they think of her? The Shehzadi, fooled by the foreigner, fooled by a lowly ambassador. The Shehzadi who had so easily forgotten her blood and her people and for what?

For a man. The Shehzadi, the whore.