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

didn’t have room for the realization that I’d made both of my sisters completely miserable by accepting this stupid position from my father. I’d been forced into it, sure, but I hadn’t tried to argue, had I? I hadn’t negotiated when I’d had the chance. And now . . . now look at the mess I’d got us in.

“Razia?”

I looked up and saw Karim coming up the steps toward me, followed by his mother. Great. Just what I needed. He’d been making himself scarcer for the last couple of days, though he hadn’t stopped taking me to breakfast and kissing me good night. And Asma had been even worse. She’d been keeping close tabs on me, rotating her handmaidens frequently to get reports on every word I uttered and everything I did. And now I had to pretend like everything was fine. I stopped in my tracks and bowed my head, and said, “Good afternoon, your highness, your majesty.”

“Is everything all right?” he asked me, because I must have been looking pretty harried.

I decided to be honest, because he was going to hear the truth from Asma’s handmaidens anyway. “My sisters are bored, your highness. Well, Lakshmi is bored. I think Sakshi is just homesick for Bikampur. She’s Registani, after all.”

“Well, I might be able to help with that,” Karim replied, hefting a pair of cloth-wrapped bundles that I hadn’t even noticed in my distress.

“What are they?” Sikander demanded. He’d been keeping watch with his men, and now he was standing right behind me, one hand on the hilt of his talwar.

“Gifts for Razia and Lakshmi,” Karim answered. “I would have got something for Sakshi too, but I don’t think these would suit her.”

“What sort of gifts?” Asma asked, and I saw then the reason she was following Karim. She’d seen the bundles and couldn’t resist sticking her nose where it didn’t belong.

“You’ll see,” was all Karim told his mother. He gestured to the chhatri where my sisters had lately been sitting, but both of them had gotten up and were rushing over, now that I was standing near Karim. “May I?”

“Yes, of course, your highness,” I replied, bowing and stepping aside so that he could precede me.

He didn’t get two steps before Lakshmi came running up, though. She took my hand, protectively I thought, and stood between me and Karim. “We should go to the courtyard together, Akka.”

“In a minute,” I told her, because much as it warmed my heart to see her taking this turn against Karim, I needed her to play along at least a little bit longer. “Prince Karim has brought us presents.”

“I don’t want a present,” Lakshmi declared. “I want your face to go back to the way it was before Karim hit it.”

My hand flew up to my nose in spite of myself. It had taken a suture to close the wound after all, though the surgeon had assured me that there would be no scarring. I just wouldn’t be able to wear nose rings for a while. I dropped my hand as quickly as I could, and put it on Lakshmi’s shoulder instead, but the damage was done. Karim was standing there, grinding his teeth, and he looked on the point of leaving. I couldn’t have that, not when he was clearly trying to make amends. I needed to be above suspicion when Ahura was attacked, or they might well just kill me, or my sisters or Hina, just on the off chance it had been my doing.

“Your highness, I’m sorry,” I said. “She’s young, and it’s difficult to make her understand the situation.”

“I understand everything,” Lakshmi growled, tears filling her eyes as her black brows scrunched down over them.

“Come on.” I took Lakshmi’s hand with one of mine, and Karim’s elbow with the other. “Let’s sit down and see what Prince Karim brought for us.”

“I said I don’t want to!” Lakshmi protested.

“Well, we’re going to,” I replied, my voice a touch sterner, though I hated myself for it. I didn’t want to teach my little sister that it was okay to let a man hit her. I didn’t want to teach her that it was important to let him give you gifts afterward to make up for it. She was watching all of this, and she was learning, and I feared that she was going to take all the wrong lessons from it. If my plan succeeded, I was going to have to have some very long and honest conversations with her, but that could wait. For now we just needed to survive the next few days. If we lived through all of this, then I could worry about undoing the damage.

“But Akka . . .” Lakshmi protested.

“No more,” I warned.

Sakshi showed up to help, taking Lakshmi’s other hand. “Let’s sit down and listen to what Prince Karim has to say, all right?”

Lakshmi scowled, but she stopped complaining, which was what I needed right then, even though she was absolutely right to point out that Karim’s gifts were the hollowest of apologies for his actions.

I sat us both down on cushions beneath the chhatri’s umbrella-like dome. Karim sat across from us, still looking uncomfortable, his mother claiming a seat right beside him. I forced a smile and said, “I’m sorry for all of that, your highness.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, and he even sounded like he meant it, which surprised me a little. How could he be sorry for beating me, when he wasn’t sorry for forcing me into this marriage, or killing Hina’s brother, or any of the other awful things he’d done?

“I know, your highness, as am I,” I answered, because that was the right thing to say. Even Asma couldn’t find fault with my words, though she did roll her dark eyes to the sky and snort with derision.

Karim set the bundles in front of me and Lakshmi. My little sister crossed her arms in front of her chest and looked away, making Karim frown, which I thought was well deserved, but I reached out and