Page 16 of The Maiden and Her Monster

Nimrah was silent for a moment. She shifted away from the fire, dousing much of her face in shadow. “Sounds foolish.”

“I didn’t ask for your opinion,” Malka rebuked, tightening her hands around her mug.

“I didn’t request your permission.”

Malka’s eyes thinned. “I didn’t realize you were as rude as you were dangerous. They left that part out of the stories.”

Nimrah’s lips curved. “Now you understand not every story shares the whole truth.”

Malka eyed the puddle. It had grown, now trailing toward them in rivulets. She wanted to rile the golem somehow, wipe the smirk from her face. She thought of Nimrah’s creator, and the story Aleksi had shared about him. “If that’s the case, what do you think of what’s being said about the Maharal?”

“What are they saying now?”

Malka creased her brow. “You don’t know?”

Nimrah waved around her hut. “Does it look like I get much communication here?”

Aleksi had been blase in his deliverance of the news, but despite Malka’s desire to provoke Nimrah, she could not muster the same nonchalance.

“A witness came forward accusing the Maharal of killing an Ozmini woman. They found her blood in his basement when they checked the claims of the accusation. He’s been imprisoned in Valón Castle while he receives treatment for some kind of sickness. His trial has been postponed.”

The golem’s face paled, and she grew rigid. “What witness, exactly?”

“An Ozmin—Valonian… I don’t know. I only heard it from a Paja member.” One who was now dead.

Malka hadn’t questioned the information at the time, hadn’t asked more. She had become accustomed to swallowing her dissent. Minton’s screams echoed in her head. She knew what happened to those who didn’t.

“Liars as always, desperate to frame any powerful Yahad they can.” Nimrah ran a hand along her jaw. “You said they’re holding him in the castle?” Her eyes focused on a scabbard leaned against the corner of the room. A layer of dust turned the onyx covering gray.

“Yes.”

“That’s not in accordance with Ordobavian court law. Valonian Yahad accused of crimes but not yet convicted are allowed to roam freely within the Yahadi Quarter. They’re not supposed to keep him captive until he’s found guilty, illness or not.”

Malka felt a stab of grief; the words could’ve easily been Chaia’s.

She said now what she would’ve said to her best friend. “Even so, it is what it is. We are no power against the Church and crown combined.”

Nimrah shook her head. “I won’t let it happen.

I can’t fail him again. My relationship with him aside, the Yahad of Valón rely on him.

There is a reason you know stories of him even in your small village—he is a pillar of the Yahadi community in Valón.

He is a sign of strength. The Yahad replenish their hope with his sermons.

I can’t let the Church’s beguiling extinguish that. ”

“Do you truly believe that?” Malka asked. “Perhaps you are not objective when it comes to the Maharal.”

“ Please, ” Nimrah tsk ed. “You have come to save your mother from false accusations of blood cursing, yet you believe what the Church says about the Maharal?”

“My imma has not used Kefesh.”

“Tell me, village girl, why would the Maharal keep blood in his basement? If he were using it for spells, wouldn’t it be gone by now? Maybe you cannot be objective when it comes to a practitioner of Kefesh.”

Haughty, this golem was. Malka resisted the urge to scrape her fingers on the wood.

She spared a glance at Amnon, who appeared as suspicious of Nimrah as she.

“How are you planning to help the Maharal, then?” Malka asked.

“You said yourself, he commanded you to stay here, tied to the Great Oak tree.”

Nimrah leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. “I’ll find a way.”

Amnon scoffed. “You want to disobey the last command the Maharal gave you by leaving?”

“He gave me no choice.” She traced the engravings on her arm again, as if they anchored her the same way Malka’s flame necklace did.

“Fine. We’ll leave you to it.” Malka pushed up from her chair, but her ankle cried in opposition. She hissed through the pain, falling ungracefully back into the seat.

Tears began to well in her eyes, and she wiped at them furiously.

She had never felt this hopeless. She couldn’t walk, couldn’t fight.

The Rayga was a myth—there were many creatures responsible for the haunting of her village.

She had nothing to bring Father Bro ? ek.

She had failed Imma, failed her sisters. Failed all the women who lived in fear.

“What are we going to do, Amnon?” Her voice was so small, so disparaged. It made her even more ashamed.

“We’ll figure out something, Malka, I promise,” Amnon said fiercely, reaching for her. He repeated himself, again and again. As if saying it enough could make it true. I promise. I promise. I promise.

She wanted to believe him.

So much so that when Nimrah murmured her proposition, Malka thought, at first, that she had imagined it.