Gifting Fire by Alina Boyden (read my book .TXT) 📕

too, little sister,” I said, and for once I couldn’t summon up any words of encouragement at all. For all Arjun’s talk of excitement and adventure, I knew that he opposed this journey as strongly as any of us. I was lucky he was coming at all. Most princes wouldn’t have followed their lovers to new lands when they had perfectly good ones already.

“We’ve all started over a lot,” Sakshi said, her mahogany eyes moving from me to Lakshmi and back again. “But each time we’ve started over, things have gotten a little bit better, haven’t they?”

Lakshmi gave a cautious nod of agreement, and though I thought that Sakshi’s lecture was ostensibly for our little sister’s benefit, there was a part of me that suspected she was talking to me too.

“When you ran away from your father’s palace because he was mean to you, that was hard, wasn’t it?” Sakshi asked.

“Yes . . .” Lakshmi admitted, and I could have given the very same answer, because it had been hard. It had been the hardest thing I’d ever done in my whole life.

“You gave up so much,” Sakshi said, her arms going around Lakshmi, but her eyes looking right into mine. “You gave up your family, and your zahhak, and your place in the world.”

I bit my lip hard to keep from crying as Lakshmi buried her face in our sister’s silk kameez.

“And when you came to Bikampur, you found a new family, but that was hard too. You had to learn so many things. You had to become a totally different person. But it was better, wasn’t it?”

Lakshmi nodded, and I found myself nodding right along with her. It had been so hard, training to be a courtesan, learning to please men, to temper my words, to keep my guard up and my mind active at all times lest I find myself in their disfavor and lose everything. And that was to say nothing of the secret training, learning to steal gold and gems in the dead of night, learning to guard my tongue lest I lose my head. It had been such a heavy weight on my shoulders that there had been times when I thought my body would just give out and crumble beneath the burden. And yet, somehow, it had still been better than being a boy in a palace.

“And then you had to leave that family too,” Sakshi said, her voice going quiet, because it was a pain she shared with us. “You had to come to this palace, and at first that was hard. People weren’t always nice to us. We had to be careful how we behaved and what we said so that we didn’t get thrown out.”

Arjun’s arm fell across my shoulders and I leaned against him, taking some comfort in his warmth, reminding myself that as hard as things had been here in the palace of Bikampur, he had never once let me down.

“And you had to fight to save this home,” Sakshi continued. “You had to do some really scary things to keep it from being destroyed. But you did them, didn’t you?”

Lakshmi nodded again, and my guts twisted. I’d forced her to do those scary things. I’d recruited my eleven-year-old baby sister to fight in a battle, because it had been the only way to ensure victory. God, what was wrong with me?

Sakshi patted Lakshmi’s back gently, though her eyes were still staring unwaveringly into my own. “We survived that too, and things got even better for a while. But now we have to go to Zindh, and that’s hard because we’ve never lived there before, and we don’t know anyone, and it might be scary or even dangerous. But I think if we work hard and we persevere, we’re going to be even happier there than we have been here.”

“I know,” Lakshmi said, “I’m just sad to leave.”

“Me too,” Sakshi told her, “even though I think Prince Arjun is right. I think it will be fun to see new things in Zindh. We’ll get to see a whole new palace and eat new foods and wear new clothes and fly to new places. But more importantly, we’re not really going to be starting all over again.”

“We’re not?” Lakshmi asked, and I too wondered what Sakshi was talking about, because it seemed to me that we would be.

“No, sweetheart,” Sakshi replied. “We’ll never have to start over again so long as we’re together.” She reached out and took my hand and pulled me close to her and to Lakshmi, and Arjun was dragged right along with me.

“We’ll stay in my bedchamber tonight, the four of us,” he said, ruffling Lakshmi’s hair with one hand, the other encircling my waist.

“Like a family?” Lakshmi asked, the hope on her face hitting my heart like a dagger.

“Like a family,” I promised, letting my determination replace the tears that had been threatening in my eyes.

CHAPTER 2

My last visit to Shikarpur had come in the dead of night, the pitch darkness of a new moon hiding the splendor of the city from my eyes. Now, by light of day, the glittering cobalt-and-turquoise-glazed tiles of the city’s palaces and temples told me why it had been called the Indigo City by the poets of Zindh. But as beautiful as Shikarpur was, it was the danger that awaited me there that lingered strongest in my mind. As Zindh’s new subahdar, I would soon find myself the target of many jealous rivals, both within the empire and without. And that was if I even survived the coming meeting with my father, which was no sure thing.

“It’s going to be okay, Razia.”

Arjun’s voice shook me from my thoughts. He was riding behind Sakshi atop Padmini’s back. The beautiful fire zahhak was soaring almost wingtip-to-wingtip with Sultana, my thunder zahhak, her yellow belly scales and flame-colored wing feathers making her look like the living embodiment of a desert