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

gifts, even when sealing alliances. They conferred far too much power, and they tended to be far too closely tied to their masters. Zahhak eggs were different; they were the most valuable of all trade goods, and a single zahhak egg might seal an alliance lasting decades.

“I am,” Karim told me. He leaned forward, reaching out to take my hand, but I snatched it away before he could touch me. He forced a smile to cover his irritation. “This is to be a real marriage, Razia. You will be my first and primary wife. You will be my queen. Has any man ever offered you so much?”

I felt bile rising in the back of my throat, but managed to choke it back down before I gagged. Karim wasn’t wrong—no man had ever offered to make me his queen—but being Karim’s queen was an offer it was all too easy to refuse. Just the thought of it made my skin crawl.

“Have you forgotten what you did to me?” I hissed.

“That was six years ago,” he said. “We were different people.”

“Yes, I was a different person then,” I agreed. “I was a helpless child. Well, I am not that helpless child any longer, Karim. I have zahhaks, and I have soldiers, and I have power now, and I will use it if I must.” I looked my father straight in the eyes and said, “I will not marry him. Either we fight to the death or you go back to Nizam and leave the management of my province to me. It’s your choice, Father.”

My father shrugged. “Fine. We’ll shout to our soldiers to start the shooting. Your sisters can be the first casualties in this war.” He got up and headed for the door.

I managed to roll to my feet, putting myself between him and the doorway, stopping him from getting out of my chambers to give Sikander the orders that would see my sisters killed, but it was a mistake. He was wearing armor, and I was wearing a silk blouse and skirt. He grabbed me with both hands and threw me up against the wall hard enough to rattle my brains in my skull.

Arjun was up in an instant to defend me, but Karim was just as quick. The pair of them drew their swords, but I could already see that it was hopeless. Karim was between Arjun and my father, and my father had my arms pinned up against the wall to keep me from getting to my katars.

“If you were a man, you could stop this,” my father taunted, his gauntleted hands locking around my forearms until I felt like the bones would snap. He was leaning all of his body weight against me, pressing me against the cool marble wall. If he’d wanted to end this fight, he could have driven a couple of knees into the pit of my stomach and left me gasping for air on the floor. I’d seen him do it to enough men in training. But he just held me there, his face tight with anger. For all his taunts, he wasn’t enjoying this. I wondered what that meant.

“Let me go, Father.” It wasn’t an order, but I wasn’t quite begging either. When he didn’t listen, I said, “You’re right, I’m not going to sentence my sisters to death, so let us sit and talk.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” he told me. “You will do your duty as a princess of Nizam and that is the end of the matter. I will tolerate no more of this nonsense from you. Your whole life you told me you were a princess and not a prince. You minced around in skirts, and you shamed me.” Those last two words came out with so much pain that it made my own heart hurt.

“And you told me that if I’d just treated you like a woman, you never would have shamed me, you would have been the perfect little princess.” His hands squeezed tighter around my arms, forcing me to clench my jaw against the pain. “And now I have recognized you as a princess, and you are going to shame me again by refusing to act the part? Maybe the problem wasn’t how you were born. Maybe the problem is you.”

Those words hit me like hammer blows. Some part of me wilted inside. It was my worst fear made manifest. He was right. I’d always held on to this idea that if I hadn’t been born a boy, I’d have been his perfect little princess. I’d always believed with my whole heart that but for the circumstances of my birth, my life would have been charmed; I would have had a place in the world and a family that loved me and treasured me. But what if that wasn’t true? What if I was just a terrible, worthless child, whatever form I took?

“Don’t listen to his lies, Razia.”

I glanced up to see Arjun holding his khanda at the ready in case Karim attacked, but he was looking at me, and there was a warmth in his amber eyes that I’d never seen in another man’s.

“Your father is a fool and a coward,” Arjun declared.

My father looked back at him with hate smoldering in his eyes. “Is that so, boy?”

“It is.” Arjun met his glare without the least sign of fear. “A real father would never marry his daughter to her rapist. He would gut the man for his crimes. You’re no kind of father to her, and no kind of man either.”

“If my daughter put herself in a position to be raped, then how can I fault a man for doing it?” my father asked.

“She didn’t put herself in that position,” Arjun replied. “You failed to protect her, and then you punished her for your own failures.”

“He was a boy!” my father roared back, his face reddening. “And his conduct afterward, whoring himself out to any man he met, makes plain whose fault it was!”

My