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Valdus returns to the backyard, his features unwelcoming. I have never seen him this mad. Not when I ran away, nor when I showed him my binding.

“What is this?” he asks, waving a crinkled piece of paper.

“Maker’s breath.” I jump to my feet and pat the empty pockets of my pants even if the missing item is right before my eyes. The drawing must have slipped out of my pocket when I stumbled over the armchair.

“This is not what you think it is.”

“Enlighten me,” Valdus says in a low rumble. “And it better be something besides some pathetic attempt at flirtation.”

My face is burning hot, and I struggle even to breathe due to the deep embarrassment I feel. I grapple for words to explain but fail to utter a sound.

“Whatever this is, you better stop now.” He crumples the delicate paper in his mechanical hand. “This can’t happen. I’m the so-called King of Rebels. A fiend stealing children from their mothers. A monster twisting metal to kill innocent people. I’m the villain of every story.”

“It was just a drawing, Valdus. It slipped from my pocket, when I…” I catch myself before the rest of the words tumble out of my mouth.

“When you what?”

I rub my brow, cursing myself.

“When you what?”

“When I was snooping around,” I snap.

Valdus closes his eyes and pinches his nose.

“It was a habit of mine back in the palace. I would explore it when everyone was asleep,” I ramble when he doesn’t answer. When he opens his eyes, burning with anger, a mirror image bursts inside my chest. “You’ve had me kidnapped, kept a prisoner to do with as you wish. You’ve had it all planned.”

I know better than to tempt a riled-up man. I’ve lived through my mother’s heated temper, tasted Ajaia’s wicked anger, and seen my father’s bloody wrath.

Valdus only shakes his head, and somehow it feels worse than any pain I’ve lived through.

“Planned? Do you think I would ever plan to have such a brat in this house? Lev got a jumpy finger. Numair risked a lot to save you. I agreed to keep you safe even when the guards came storming into our house and searched every room. Even when Inara spent nights exhausted by your bed. But now,” he shakes his head, “I regret that decision, each day a little more.”

I brush a treacherous tear away, but Valdus is not done. “You might be a princess of the empire, but this does not give you any more claim over my life than it gives the emperor. Even though you both seem to think otherwise.”

His words come as a slap. I thought he knew I was nothing like my father, but it seems I was misguided to think anyone could see past the fact that I’m a daughter of the tyrant.

22

The click of the heel of my boot on the stone floor echoes through the kitchen as my foot bounces under the table. The rebels have unearthed an old building from the mountain of sand, and I’m itching to see it. I asked Inara about it, but she was very elusive and only went back to humming a song under her breath.

The door opens, and I twirl in my seat, hoping to see Valdus. It’s been more than a week since he left me alone in the garden, his words tasting bitter on my tongue. My features slack when Numair walks into the kitchen. He puts a kiss on Inara’s cheek, and I drop the spoon and cross my arms over my chest.

“Where is Valdus?” I ask.

“Busy. I’ve been charged with taking you to our new outpost.”

It was a silly thought, but I hoped Valdus’s anger has waned, and he would be the one to drive me there.

I’m out of the house before disappointment can sink my heart further. The desert swirls around me, tugs on my clothes, and runs sand through my hair. I breathe a lungful of air, clutching my lemon tree close to my heart. With all the ethera I’ve poured into it, I want it to be the first resident of something I only saw in my dreams until now.

Numair motions to a caravan the color of the morning desert. “Hop in. People are waiting for us.”

I climb onto the stuffed seat draped with an old sunburned blue cloth. It scratches my sweat-covered skin even through the linen shirt, but I refuse to complain. Not when sand stretches boundlessly around us, teasing me with infinite opportunities and a myriad of adventures.

Numair takes his seat behind a simple wheel and, what looks like a complex mechanism of gears to run this thing. Even before he turns on the engine, my heel resumes its earlier staccato. How am I to enjoy even a moment of the desert I always wanted to see with Numair by my side?

Oblivious to my foul mood, he turns to me with a lopsided smile. “Ready to go, Rebel Princess?”