She comes into the room and the door bangs closed behind her. The click of the lock is audible. She looks around at all of us, her gaze lingering on each of our faces. When she gets to Taraana, her eyes widen and her composure slips for a brief second before she forces her features back into the pleasant mask she is wearing.

“I am Tabassum Naaz, here at your request. What do you have to say to me?” She moves over to a chair in front of the narghile and drops down on it. She picks up the narghile pipe and breathes in deeply before exhaling the smoke.

Her every move is designed to broadcast her fearlessness, but what she doesn’t realize is that all of us present are fluent in the language of fear. We recognize the pulse of it in her throat, in the tic under her ear, and in the little tremble in her fingers that she doesn’t think we see.

“What terrible deed have you done to deserve exile from your family?” Valentina asks.

As an opening gambit, it might be a bit harsh, but the girl doesn’t flinch. “Why do you think I owe you any answers?”

We look at Paheli, waiting for her to enlighten all of us. “Well,” Paheli says, “we can’t run from your grandfather forever, so we have decided to fight against him.” Paheli picks up a drink as pink as her hair used to be and sips it before wrinkling her nose at the sweet taste. “One of the ways in which we can do that is to change the patriarch of your family. So, um, considering your current persona-non-grata status in your family, we’ve called you here to ask whether you’d like to help us.”

All artifice falls away from Tabassum Naaz. Her eyes sharpen. “What exactly do you mean?”

Paheli awkwardly scratches her cheek. “Was I not clear? We are going to keep Taraana safe. To achieve that goal, we need Baarish without power. From what we’ve observed, the majority of his power comes from his title as the Dar. So, if he’s no longer the Dar, he won’t have as much access to power.”

Tabassum Naaz is shaking her head long before Paheli finishes talking. “You do know that my grandfather is but one person who seeks to exploit the keeper, right? So even if you manage to disable the Dar, there will be someone else to replace him.”

We don’t trust Tabassum Naaz yet, so we won’t tell her that we plan to find a way for Taraana to bond to the Between before we have to worry about the other middle worlders who desire him.