Nazir remembered the day they met. Every boy remembered the first woman he slept with, the experience pleasant or not, willingly or forced. She had come to him in the middle of the night, carrying with her a scent of cedar wood and jasmine that clung to every inch of her skin, a smile that dripped like honey as she stepped into the room, and a presence that didn't allow one to object whatever it was she might propose. Not, at least, for a boy of sixteen who had yet to experience a woman. Not when the woman was as experienced as Shreya Devi.

He remembered her making her way toward him, her arm extended like a dancer, pausing to glide her fingers on his table, on the fabric of his chair, on the robe he'd carelessly tossed, on his sword, his belongings. She'd paused where the moonbeam shone at its brightest, made a show of removing the pigeon blood red robe she wore as he watched and stared, words, breaths, and heart imprisoned somewhere in his throat, squeezed together into something he could no longer control or tell apart. The foreign pressure in his chest had escalated, had grown in intensity, in speed as it pulsed, led and lured forward by the slightest rise and fall of her limbs, the way her hands, her fingers, untied the strings on her chest, stretching minutes into hours and hours into eternity. The knot came loose, and she pushed the robe back over her shoulder, allowing it to slip off her frame onto the floor, revealing a sheer white dress that nearly glowed in the dark and the warm honey skin it failed to hide.

He remembered that dress too, how it clung to her body, her hips, on her chest upon which the fabric draped loosely, covering only half of her breasts and just enough to conceal the hardened, visible buds underneath. The silk moved as she breathed, offered a glimpse of her breast as she exhaled, taking the view away when she filled her lungs, and his control with it.

There had been no words spoken, not before she'd slipped into his bed with that dress, that scent, not when he tasted her lips, her skin, or when she took him inside of her, none during everything that happened thereafter.

She had left quickly when it was done, her limbs moving more efficiently on the way out, touching nothing but her clothes as she put them back on, ignoring that table, that sword, those belongings that no longer held significance. It hadn't occurred to Nazir until now that he'd never actually spoken to her, not once. He had avoided her summons since that night, and they'd stopped coming since she became ma'adevi. Not that it surprised him. It was his seed she'd always been after and the power that came with it. Not his words. Never that.

Not today either.

He'd known it the moment he entered the chamber, when he saw her in that high backed chair, wearing the exact same white dress she had worn coming to him that night. Only now a silver snake pin gleamed over her left breast, and behind her, displayed against the gold veined white marble tiles, wrapped around a staff of pure silver, the larger version of the same snake made entirely of blue-tint moonstone gave her presence an authority as jarring as the enormous amber amulet trapped behind the serpent's fangs.

It was all symbolic, of course. The white snake was the symbol of Ravi, amber was said to be the color of her eyes, and silver that of her hair. The white staff of Citara, passed down to every ma'adevi in office, underlined and etched as if in stone the elevated status all trueblood Shakshis were entitled to. A privilege, one could say, for being born with the same appearance as the goddess herself. Purebloods who had been born close–––with lighter hair and eyes––shared some of those privileges, while the commonbloods' dark eyes and dark hair left them scraping for their own fortune.

'Why would I want to fight for people who judge others by the color of their skin, their hair, their birthplace, or the god they worship?' the Prince had said. A hard truth to swallow, that. A truth no one wanted to see. In many ways, no other society in the peninsula sorted its citizens as strictly as theirs did by appearance. 

It didn't help that the woman he had come to see had also chosen him for these things.

He shook free from that thought, forced himself to meet those eyes he still remembered, only now they seemed sharper, colder, and more ready to strike. Not a glimpse of the delicate, enticing woman of that night. No reminder needed as to who ruled over Citara and every life in the White Desert. She ruled over him here, for what had happened one night, five years ago. The way his stomach turned the moment that scent hit him was a testament to that fact. The sight of that dress, too, made him feel sixteen again. She had, he knew, worn both the scent and the dress on purpose, and with both, gained her position of power before he even spoke his first word.

"Ma'adevi Shreya." Nazir dipped his head in a show of respect and straightened. He ought to have bent at the waist as per tradition, but he was kha'a now, of one of the largest khagans for that matter, and he was here to negotiate, not to bend, seduce, or be seduced.

She took her time to look up and down his form. He wondered if she remembered any of it. He wondered how much he'd grown since then, if it was enough to impress, or was that sixteen-year-old boy still there.

When she finally spoke, it was with a tone that gave no indication of the intimacy they'd shared, perhaps even laced with resentment. "You have avoided my summons for the past five years, and now you wish to see me. What changed, Nazir izr Za'in? May he rest in peace."

Nazir izr Za'in. A deliberate drop of title, underlined by a reminder that his father, who had power here, was dead. He drew a breath, found the air contaminated, and his lungs wanting. "What changed, Ma'adevi Shreya," he said with some authority, despite the growing sense that his control was slipping, "is that I am now kha'a and there are important matters that need to be discussed. I've avoided your summons over personal issues, and for that I apologize." He made a point to not dip his head the second time. He should have.

Her eyes studied his face, his hair, his zikh and how he wore it, made him feel like a kid being asked to show his cleaned hands before dinner. "You have grown," she commented, her expression neither approving nor disapproving. "What can I do for you, Nazir Kha'a?"

He could almost hear the word 'child' echoing behind that bone of a title she'd tossed, could sense his own anger flaring somewhere in his stomach, held it down with a clenched fist as he went on with it, "I believe you've been informed, my lady, that I carry an offer of alliance from Sarasef of the Rishi?"

She nodded, expressionlessly. "I have."

"And that I've been sent a hostage to solidify this alliance?"

She placed her hands on the armrest, ran her fingers along the velvet as if discovering it for the first time. Her nails were painted red, like that night. "I am aware."

And you made me wait three days to be summoned. "Do I have your permission, then, to accept this offer?"

She sat back in her chair, drummed her nails against the arm rest. "I'm waiting for you to tell me why I should," she said. "That is the reason you've been given an audience."

Why? Nazir bit back a retort that would have ended the conversation, reminded himself she had the power to take his life, at anytime, for insolence, and that anger would solve nothing here. "We need Sarasef to win this war, you know this."

"What war?" The question was light, simple, spoken as easily as an old relative asking out of obligation how one had been. "Salar Muradi is dead. The Salasar had problems to deal with. The Rishis are divided. Our settlements will not be raided for a long time, perhaps never again if their problems persist. We are at peace, Nazir kha'a, not war."

"What war?" It slipped out of him before he could help himself. "There has been war for as long as I've lived, my lady, long before I was born, before Salar Muradi took the throne, and there will be war for as long as the Salasar and its allies believe they can raid us and take our land without a fight, without consequences." He paused to breath, knew he had to stop before he lost it. Didn't.

"We have lost thousands of men, women, and children in the past twenty years. My mother had been raped, mutilated, and left to die, here, on our own land as a part of it while you sit here protected and pretend there is no war outside of Citara. They will come, believe it, and they will keep coming until the khagans unite and fight back. The Salasar is at its weakest, there is no better time to fight. If we do not make a move now we will lose that chance and nothing will change. It is your responsibility to protect this land, as a ma'adevi, not just Citara, not the White Tower. Not the chair you're sitting on."

I am going to die for this, Nazir thought as he stood gasping for air he couldn't seem to breathe. The rage was still there in the room, in his chest, along with the scent that felt like a hand clamping down around his windpipe. It could have been handled better, and it should have, only here and now he felt like a boy trying to become an adult, and failing miserably at the task.

The ma'adevi sat still as a statue, her expression polished smooth like the marble wall behind her, her yellow eyes matched the amber between the fangs of that serpent, seemed to draw power from it. She drew herself up off the chair, rounded the corner of her work table, and glided down the two steps of the raised platform, coming toward him. She wasn't smiling. Her hands, he saw, hung opened, and still.

"Who do you think have been raiding us for centuries, Nazir kha'a?" She closed the distance as she spoke, her words filled the room, added weight to the echos of her steps. "Is it not the Rishis that have preyed on our settlements, took our women and children to be sold as slaves to the Salasar? They may not have raided your khagan because of your father, but they have done so to others, do not forget. Those khagans will not stand for this decision. They will call for blood when they hear of it. Tell me," she said, pausing at the proximity that took him all the effort to not back up a step, "how do you intend to convince them to fight along side the Rishis? To not create an uprising against me as the ma'adevi if I were to accept this offer?"

The invisible hand around his throat clenched tighter. Nazir searched harder in the room for air and found none. "We have to try," he told her, chest heaving with the need to fill his lungs, "to lay down our difference, to move on from the past. It's a risk we have to take."

'And we have Djari,' he'd almost said it, stopped himself before he did. Few people knew about that prophecy, and they had tried to keep it that way as a safety precaution. Chances were that the White Tower had no awareness of it, or they would have tried to use her to gain power and influence a long time ago.

The time would come, however, when he would have to expose her to the world, to unite the khagans. Just not yet. Not now if he could help it.

"To move on, you say." She took another step forward, pinned him with her eyes, her presence, against a wall that wasn't there. "Have you, as khumar, as kha'a, as the ruler of your khagan, moved on from the past? Are you not doing this in the name of your mother? To seek your own retribution? Your own peace of mind?"

"This isn't about me."

"Isn't it?" A drawn sword, in a room that echoed every sound, twice. "What then? Tell me. Why do you seek war during a time of peace? Time we can use to grow in wealth, in number, in prosperity, to strengthen our defenses? I'll tell you what I see. I see a young man trying to fill his father's shoes, to prove his worth, to amend his past mistakes, someone who will bring us to war and create an internal conflict that will kill us all for it."

I can't breathe. "You are mistaken..." He ought to have said more, but the words weren't coming. Around him, the walls seemed to be closing in, the ceiling pressing down to trap him in that small space she insisted on taking.

"Am I?" she continued, forcefully, greedily. "What have you done in the past five years? What have you sacrificed for your land, for your people? I've given you an opportunity to bring change. I've offered you power, an access to this council that dictates the fate of the White Desert you say you want to protect, and yet you threw it away without a thought, and for what? So you can hide in your little corner and save your own khagan, so you can run and keep your peace of mind? You can talk to me about taking our people to war, Nazir kha'a, when you have decided to place the fate of this land you call yours above your family, your khagan, and whatever it is you don't want to lose. That," she speared the word with her finger pointing down, anchoring it deep into the white marble floor, "is what we do here."

The room seemed to have collapsed upon him all at once, and when she was done, he saw himself standing amongst its rubbles, in the middle of an ugliness he couldn't escape.

What have you done? What have you sacrificed? Have you been hiding, after all this time, to save your conscience, your own khagan, when you could have saved more, done more? He could tell himself a hundred times it wasn't true and it would have been a lie. Have you not said it out loud, just last night?

'My place is with my khagan, my family...'

"You are dismissed," she said, turning away to climb back up those steps, to sit behind a desk backed by the white serpent of Ravi, the Mother of them all.

He stepped out of that chamber in a haze, didn't know how long it took him to walk out of the door. Somewhere by the entrance he could hear Kaal saying something, couldn't make out the words with all the noises yelling back and forth in his head, didn't have the energy left to care. His steps quickened as he rushed past the outer door, through passages too long, too bright it hurt his eyes, through the scent of cedar wood that seemed to fill every corner, down the flights of stairs that felt like too much effort, too far to climb. He needed to puke. He needed to be outside. He needed the sand, the sun, the smell of horses, the wind on his face, in his hair. Most of all, he needed to breathe. Or at the very least some khizrar. I need—

The sun blinded him for a moment as he made it out into the courtyard. And out there, as his vision returned, leaning against an arch that led into the garden, cutting a definite shape in the light coming through from behind, a familiar silhouette he could trace anytime, anywhere with his eyes closed.

Baaku turned to him, his green eyes searching for something in Nazir's face and found it. He reached out a hand and waited, planting his feet on the ground, as always, with that same conviction, the same promise to never move from the spot if the entire world would come crashing down for it.

Nazir made his way toward the arch, to someone who happened to be waiting there in the wind, the sun, under the blue sky, toward what had always been the light at the end of his dark tunnels.

The world around him faded, the invisible hand around his windpipe loosened. He touched his forehead on that shoulder, felt the warmth of it on his skin, and found the one thing he had been needing.

Air.

"Take me away from here," he heard himself say, against the thin layer of dust and sand that had accumulated on Baaku's sikh for having been out there for some time.

"Come," Baaku said. "There's a something I've been meaning to show you."

***

There was a mysterious weight on Baaku's shoulder Nazir couldn't quite pinpoint. There had always been weight, no matter how hard Baaku had tried to ignore its existence. This time it was something new, something different Baaku couldn't seem to brush off, and he was carrying it with a rigidity that felt foreign to Nazir. The weight had been there from the moment they'd left the Tower, when they were walking down the streets, when they'd reached the entrance of the newly excavated tomb. It was still there, when they were standing in front of the sarcophagus of a woman whose name had not survived the test of time. He hadn't asked why or what had happened. A part of him wasn't ready to know.

The tomb of the mysterious woman had been discovered for some time, and Nazir had yet to give it a visit. From the thick layer of dust that covered it, he figured not many people had. A nameless tomb without treasure didn't hold much significance. Life was remembered––or forgotten––that way whether you were dead or alive.

Baaku settled down the lantern on the raised platform and blew a lungful of air on the faded lid of the sarcophagus. It filled the room like smoke, made both of them cough for some time as they covered their mouths and noses. The chamber had no ventilation, save for the small shaft they'd crawled through that brought a dying breeze to the room. Everything screamed death in that small space––the deafening silence it held, the smell of old paint, ash, and dried linen, the sense that everything would all crumble and turn to dust if one were to reach out and touch it.

He helped Baaku push the lid off the sarcophagus and lean it against the side, waiting for Baaku to initiate the conversation.

"Do you remember the journal of Eli?" Baaku said, looking down at the woman covered in white linen that had turned mostly grey. "Before he was crowned the King of Kings?"

He had read that book a few times, everyone who had been born into power most likely had. "He did mention passing through a white city in the desert," Nazir recalled and nodded. It would have been centuries ago, and no one knew what Citara had looked like then. Without more information, it could very well be some place else entirely. "You believe he has been here?"

Baaku smiled and reached under her hands that had been laid neatly on her chest, pulling out what looked like a necklace of plain silver chain holding a small pendent and handed it to Nazir. "Look at the carving on the back, where the tail of the snake curls. Can you see it?"

The moonstone pendent glowed blue when Nazir held it to the light. There, under the tail of the serpent that wrapped from one side of the teardrop stone to the other was another engraving, a mark so small one might have mistaken it for an imperfection, only Nazir had seen the symbol too many times to have missed it. This is... "Eli's cartouche?"

Baaku turned, leaning his weight back against the sarcophagus, watching him from a distance. "Everyone talks about how passing through the White City had changed him, how his goals, his way of thinking, his tactics had changed dramatically after he'd left. I think," he said, catching Nazir's eyes, "that it wasn't the city at all. It was this woman who changed the peninsula. The secret lover of Eli."

There had been talks about the switch in Eli's personality in that journal. It was still being talked about today. This evidence that it had been Citara he'd written about in his journal alone would change many things, even without the existence of this Shakshi woman who might have carved his name on her moonstone––a marriage binding in the White Desert. Only the cartouche here had been carefully hidden. "Have you told anyone?"

Baaku shook his head. "I figured there was a reason he'd left her out of the journal."

"Or it could be all in your head." Nazir smiled, surprised he could do that now. "I never took you for a romantic, to be honest."

On another day, Baaku would have grinned or laughed at that comment. Today, he didn't, and that weight on his shoulder seemed to be growing the longer they were in that tomb. "What do you think would have happened if she hadn't died?"

The rigidity of that tone bothered Nazir even as he considered the question. "He might have stayed...and never left. Or taken her with him..."

Baaku nodded. "We might not have the same Eli we know today. No Eli the Conqueror, no united peninsula, or everything that resulted from that alliance." A pause. A look on his face that gave Nazir a feeling of dread in his gut. "Some people are destined to die for something great to be accomplished, don't you think?"

The tomb grew quiet and still, even the dust seemed to have paused in midair, listening.   He could feel the atmosphere changing, the wheel of Fate turning somewhere in the back of his mind. Something was off. Something wasn't right. "Something happened." He was sure of it. "What are you not telling me?"

Baaku stilled, drew a breath, took his time. He asked, "How did I die?"

It caught him off guard, struck him like a slap in the face. "What?"

"You've seen my death," Baaku said. "In your vision, how did I die?"

"You cannot ask me this."

"I am asking, Nazir." Baaku stared at him, not giving up grounds, allowing no room for him to move. "How did I die?"

Time tip toed around them like a hungry beast, turning the air solid, and the silence into a brick wall that locked them together with no way out, not until one of them surrendered and gave in. Only here and now Nazir knew it wasn't going to be Baaku. He knew that look, that stance, that jawline and how it tightened when that stubbornness kicked in.

"I don't know," Nazir said, after some time.

"Don't lie to me."

It wasn't, not really. "I killed you," Nazir said, felt the sting of those words still, no matter how many times he'd been through it. He'd had that vision for a long time, had it again when Baaku shot at his father, when Aza'ir went down. "You were supposed to die by my sword, as per tradition."

"Were?"

"Before that sword came down, I was certain of it." He had never been wrong, ever. No event, no decision, had ever changed the outcome he had seen in his visions no matter what he did. But now... "I haven't had it since then. It never came back. Something has changed, I can feel it. I don't know how you die. Not anymore. That is the truth." He looked up, catching Baaku's eyes. "Why we are having this conversation. Why are we here?"

Baaku stood very still, watching him from a distance, and keeping it that way. "She didn't tell you, did she?"

"Tell me what?"

Another pause, as if to offer him time. "The ma'adevi has decided I am to be punished for attacking my father," he said. "As of this morning, I have been stripped of my status as kha'a and I am to surrender both my title and my sword arm to my uncle."

Nazir swallowed, drew a long breath at the nightmare that had just become a reality, only something about Baaku told him there was more to it. He knew that expression, the defiant look in those eyes, the stillness that hung around him like a shield made to withstand even the most hopeless of fights. Baaku had looked like this, exactly this, when he'd shot at his Aza'ir. "Baaku," he said. "What have you done?"

The corner of Baaku's mouth lifted into a grin, one of a boy who'd done something far from right and was proud of it. "I told my uncle if he wants my seat he was going to have to fight me for it or go fuck himself."

Nazir clenched his fists at the rumbling pressure that shot up his spine, at everything around him that seemed to have collapsed everywhere he turned, at how far Fate intended to take from him everything that mattered. "You asked for a trial by combat." The words felt like acid, burning his mouth, his tongue as he spoke. He should have seen it coming. He should have known this was the only way Baaku would have handled the situation. He should have been prepared, and yet he wasn't. "You knew what it is we're planning to do and you will engage in a fight to the death knowing the risk, the cost of what happens if you die."

"I have to take that risk."

"Bullshit."

"I need control of the khagan. I need my arm to fight."

"Don't fucking give me that lie." Something inside him exploded, turned his vision almost white. "This is about your ego, your arrogance, your pride, and you know it."

"Fuck my pride and my ego, Nazir," Baaku shot back, raised his voice to match. "You need an army to win this war. You need horses, archers, men who can fight, and you won't have it unless I'm kha'a."

"I need you alive!"

It came out of him in a shout, and the room froze with it. His last words echoed around the tomb, seemed to linger there with the dead, the crumbling surfaces of the walls, the dust that got into his lungs as he struggled to breathe.

Baaku stood in silence, staring back at him with a grating calmness of an adult waiting for child's tantrum to wind down, and somewhere in his conscience, words he'd tried to run away from came back to him.

What have you sacrificed...

"Do you?" Baaku said, more carefully, quietly. "Do you really need me alive to do these things? You have always survived without me, Nazir, and you will survive without me long after. I will always be your shelter whenever you seek it, but I won't be your weakness. That is not what we are."

"He's bigger than you, stronger than you." A warrior second only to Aza'ir, second only  to their fathers. "You can't win this fight. You can still change your mind."

"Nazir," Baaku said, as if to call him to attention, to remind him something he'd forgotten. "I don't run from a fight I can't win."

And it had been enough. Nazir closed his eyes at the sudden disappearance of the light at the end of the tunnel, could hear the sound of that door being shut as he did. It was the end of it. He knew Baaku, knew this man better than anyone. He knew those words he'd heard so many times, words that had led them here, words that had been the only reason why Baaku had never allowed himself to be pushed away no matter how many times Nazir had tried, no matter how dire, how impossible their relationship had been.

The same words that would soon end all of it, tomorrow, tonight.

"I can't talk you out of it, can I?" A useless question, but one he wanted to try anyway.

Baaku sighed and closed the distance between them, reaching out with both hands, holding Nazir's face between his palms. "Promise me one thing," he said. "For everything I have done, for all that we've been through, if I die tomorrow, my death cannot be the force that strikes you down. It must be the strength that keeps you alive, to keep you rising when you fall, to get you where you must go. I don't want to be the biggest mistake in your life, Nazir. If dying is a sacrifice I have to make, then I don't want to die for nothing."

Nazir drew a breath, clenched his hands into fists at the memory that came back to him, could almost smell it again, the scent of cedar wood and jasmine that had accompanied the pain when she'd inserted that knife.

'You can talk to me about taking our people to war...when you have decided to place the fate of this land you call yours above your family, your khagan, and whatever it is you don't want to lose.'

This is what you will take from me? Something I can't bear to lose? He had gone into that meeting without the slightest idea of what had been done. It was the test he had to pass, the sacrifice he had to make.

And it would take that much, wouldn't it? As an oracle who had been given that vision, as the brother, the support Djari as the gods' chosen one needed to end this war. There was no room for him to hold what was dear to his heart, not for what they had to do. Baaku saw it, the ma'adevi did, even Djari.

Nazir clutched the pendent in his hand, felt it digging into his palm. "You asked me once, if I've ever needed you in my life," he said, remembering that night and the question he'd never had the courage to reply. "I've needed you then. I need you now. And I need you tomorrow. I need you alive, Baaku. I always will, whether you live or die." He reached forward, holding Baaku's face the same way his was being held, tightly, steadily, painfully.

"But I'll survive. I'll live. I'll fight to see our dreams realized. Go and take back your khagan," he said, pressing his forehead against Baaku's, feeling that warmth, that heat, remembering that touch. "But come back to me. Come back to me alive, or I will never forgive you for the rest of my life, however long that may be. Do you understand?"

And he knew exactly how long it would be, had known for a long time. He also knew it would be all right. They would leave something behind, wouldn't they? A tomb with no name could be remembered if it left a treasure behind. A treasure of time without war, of life with freedom, of one's right to live, to love, to die with honor on the land they called theirs. They would leave such treasures behind, and it would have to be enough.

***

A/N: Goddamn it I love Baaku. T_T

A gentle reminder, guys, if you have time and enjoy this book, please rate and/or leave your reviews at goodreads for book one. I may end up having to self publish and your feedback will help tremendously *_* Searching with my name (Sienna Frost) will get you to the book. Thank you so much. I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Please don't hesitate to let me know if there's anything you think could be improved.