Arran awoke groggy and disoriented in the most beautiful room he had ever seen, with the exception of Inna's apartment. Painted flowers and thorny vines decorated the cream-colored walls, creating a tranquil atmosphere of nature and openness. A gentle breeze drifted inside through the open balcony doors on his left and rustled the white curtains of the four-poster bed. The bed was made of a dark type of wood, expensive by the looks of it and undoubtedly imported from the Illaeryn Continent, especially because of the faerie-like creatures that danced around the pillars. According to the few stories he knew about them, faeries only lived in the north.

His fingers stroked the clean, white sheets. Soft, almost delicate, like the brush of a woman's hair against his hand. Silk. He had only slept in silk sheets once.

He bolted upright at once, yet his stomach protested at the abruptness of the movement. His teeth chattered; his fever had returned as well. When the nausea had receded, he swung his legs out of bed and shuffled to the balcony. It overlooked a smaller courtyard, though it was still large enough to cover an entire block of houses in the Copper District. Gray flagstones wound a path between rose bushes and other plants that seemed to have been plucked straight from the Lelian Jungle. A group of men in long, purple robes, the cuffs embroidered with silver, strolled in the shade of the arcade that ran along the courtyard's borders.

Arran leaned his forearms on the wrought-iron railing of the balcony and put his face in his hands. He was in the royal palace. Slowly, as though reluctant to shatter the remnants of sleep muddling his thinking, the memories of what had happened returned to him. His body bent double as the grief at Zohra's death rushed back in, unfathomable and heart-wrenching. He wanted to curl up on the ground and cry until every tear was spent, but another memory drew him up short, filling him with dread.

Hush now, big brother.

"I see you're awake. It was about time."

He swiveled around, immediately regretting doing so. Adira stood in the doorway, her dark hair snapping around her face. Her eyes twinkled at the sight of him, just as they had always done, but now her irises were cold frost instead of a welcoming pool. How could she smile at him while her hands were still sticky with Zohra's blood?

Her face fell. "Are you all right?"

"How long?" he croaked, bunching his hands into fists. "How long have you been conspiring with them?"

Her chest swelled with a deep breath. She took a cautious step forward, as if she was dealing with a wild animal that would run off at the first sign of danger. It wasn't so far-fetched a thought. "Do you remember why baba tried to steal from that merchant?"

The question threw him off guard. "Why would you ... He stole for the same reason why I steal, Adira: because we hardly have enough to fill our stomachs."

She shook her head. "We were both so young at the time. Yes, we were poor, but he'd never taken the risk before. Their combined salaries were enough for our parents to feed the four of us, if only barely. No, Arran." She stopped mere inches from him, craning her neck to look him in the eye. Arran found it hurt to look back. The image of his sweet little sister clashed with this cool young woman before him. "You were the reason he made that fatal decision."

"Me?" Humorless laughter that bordered on hysterical erupted from his mouth. "All right, I'll take the bait. Why?"

"You had just discovered your magic," she explained. "The magical blood in maia's family had skipped a generation and chosen you as the next worthy heir. Baba was elated, certain that your gifts would be our way out of poverty."

Arran swallowed. His chest constricted at the thought of where this was going.

Adira passed him and leaned on the balcony railing, looking out over the courtyard below. "Students at the School of Sorcery and Magical Arts are accepted as young as fourteen years old. Baba figured he would be able to scrap enough money together for the tuition fee if he were careful not to steal too much at once. So he began smuggling small portions of the spices away from the merchant's deliveries, to sell them for a slightly lower price on the black market later."

He wanted to clamp his hands over his ears. His knees buckled beneath the weight of the guilt that landed onto his shoulders.

"The day he got caught," she continued, "it wasn't because he hadn't been careful enough. Someone had snitched on him."

His heart stopped beating. "Who?" he breathed.

The bitterness in her smile swept every hint of gentleness off her face. "Our mother."

The ground reeled. He caught the railing to maintain his balance. Every fiber of his being was repulsed by the idea, clung to the sheer impossibility of it. "You're lying."

"I swear I'm not, big brother." When her gaze found his, it mirrored his own shock and disbelief, only dulled by time.

"Why would she do that? You and I both saw what became of her after baba was banished, Adira. She was a wreck."

"Our grandmother, maia's mother, liked to experiment with her magic. She could manipulate matter at a level even scientists have difficulty to comprehend. One day, she accidentally poisoned her blood with lead. Maia was ten."

"I ... I didn't know that."

She made a face. "Of course you didn't. She's never even told baba. Nevertheless, when your magic revealed itself, she feared that it would lead you to your death, just like it had with her mother."

"That makes no sense."

She shrugged. "Fear is often irrational. When baba refused to listen to her objections, she panicked. She left a tip-off in the city watch's office, informing the guards about a suspicious trade in spices at a lower price level. As you know, trade is sacred in this city, and when he was caught, our father received a punishment worthy of his betrayal to Primsharah."

"I think I need to sit down for a moment." Arran didn't even protest as Adira grabbed his arm and led him back inside, ushering him onto the bed. He scrubbed a hand over his face, then went on to run that same hand through his hair.

Apparently, betrayal was a Dir Akhta family trait. He doubted Farooq knew the truth of his arrest all those years ago. Otherwise, he wouldn't have written all those letters to Merriam, right? Maybe Merriam had burned all those letters after all. He side-eyed his sister's face, lost in thought. In fact, both women in his family could have done it. He opened his mouth to ask her, but a coughing fit squeezed his lungs out until his eyes watered.

Adira rubbed his back in a soothing fashion, almost automatically. For a moment, it was as if nothing had changed at all.

"Don't you want to know how I found out about all of this?" she asked. Only capable of shallow breaths, he nodded. "Baba's first letter arrived about three months after he had left."

Had she read his mind? Now that he knew she was a mind warper, he found himself shying away from her in a futile attempt to keep his thoughts private.

She scowled. "They kept coming after that, one every month for an entire year. Maia hid them in a secret compartment in her closet. A classic mistake."

He let out an involuntary chuckle, and Adira joined in a moment later. They might as well have sat in their shared bedroom, giggling over a successful prank on their poor mother. The discrepancy tore at him from both sides, leaving him in the middle with love and hatred seizing his heart alternately. Fever shook his body in hot and cold waves, reminding him of what the Cult had done to him, what she had helped them do to him. He fell back into the pillows, suddenly fatigued.

"I found the letters two years ago, while I was snooping around our mother's room, searching for that red shawl baba had given her on her birthday," Adira went on, her eyes glazed over with memories of a distant past. "She hadn't worn it in years, but it was beautiful and I wanted to impress a boy."

Arran raised a brow and she made an impatient gesture. "Yes, I know," she said, rolling her eyes. "Anyway, I noticed the loose board and found thirteen envelopes with our address written on them in very familiar handwriting. When I confronted maia about them, my anger caused me to lose control." She jutted up her chin. "The emotions caused my magic to rise to the surface. Her mind opened up to me and I read the truth in it, everything I just told you. I saw what she'd done. And I saw she was afraid of me."

Arran remembered the first time he had felt those mental claws skimming his mind and shuddered. He had been afraid too. To think that he had attributed his sister's bright, magic-filled aura to a gift of foresight ... How wrong he had been.

With a jolt, a fearful thought struck him. How many times had Adira slipped into his mind without him knowing it? Was she, directly or indirectly, responsible for his current situation?

Adira didn't seem to have noticed the change in his mood. She stared at the open balcony doors, at the darkening sky beyond. "I made maia forget about our conversation, about the mind reading, but I had only just discovered my magic and barely had a grasp of it. As a consequence, I took away too much, including the memories of the letters. When you told her baba was in Rasir, her reaction was real," Adira told him. "She doesn't remember he wrote to her. But I did, and I wrote back. I wrote that both you and me had developed magical gifts and that maia refused to let us learn more about them. I hoped baba could arrange for magical education for both of us in Rasir." The corner of her mouth twitched in a half-smile.

"And that's how we got to know each other," a soft, pleasant voice spoke.

Arran twisted his head to glimpse at the unexpected visitor. Prince Rabyatt leaned in the doorway, his silver hair neatly combed as always, his ruby eyes stripped of the contempt Arran had expected to find in them as they glided to his shivering form on the bed.

The prince furrowed his carefully trimmed eyebrows. "Are you well, Arran?"

"What do you think?" Arran bit back with a cough. "You cursed me to this disease, after all. You messed with my head."

A wry smile played around Rabyatt's lips. "It is true that Adira ... aided with your final decision to steal the Amulet, but it was never our intention to let you die, Arran."

"Right." Adira reached for Arran's hands, but he batted them away, even though the gesture cost him nearly all of his energy. "Leave me alone. How long have you been invading my mind, Adira? Have you made me bitter on purpose, fed my greed until I only needed a gentle nudge to agree to my doom?" His rant left him gasping for breath, but he kept his eyes stubbornly trained on his sister.

Her gaze was troubled. "I did what had to be done. You were not ready to hear the truth yet, so Rabyatt proposed to throw you into the deep end and let you swim to the surface yourself."

"Rabyatt told you that, huh?" He shot the prince an ugly look.

She straightened her back and folded her hands in her lap. She looked so mature, then, almost regal. Like she was at home in this palace, with a silver-tongued prince at her side. "Rabyatt overheard baba plea with the Rasirian Shah to arrange a spot for the two of us in their school of magic. We both have rare gifts, so he was intrigued. He promised our father to take care of the matter, but he secretly wrote back to me instead, to determine my interest in the cause."

"The cause," Arran repeated, his tone dripping with disgust. "What cause? A cause that requires you to murder the woman who gave you shelter and food and help whenever you asked for it, without ever wanting something in return?" He had the pleasure of watching her flinch.

Rabyatt pushed himself off the wall and advanced further into the room. "Why do you cling to your belief that we are the bad guys?"

Arran scoffed, though it half sounded like a cough. His lungs ached with the threat of another fit. "Well, your people are currently out there terrorizing my people. You hypnotized our Shah so that he allows this charade to continue. Oh, and you paint your auras pitch black. That's definitely a sign of evil."

A trace of a smile played on Rabyatt's lips. Arran contemplated slapping it off the prince's face, but his fingers lacked even the strength to adjust his pillow.

"We use a cloaking spell to disguise our auras," Rabyatt explained, amused. "It's a practical habit rather than a method to instigate fear. Though, I have to admit that mine is actually black. I guess it cannot be helped."

Through slitted eyes, Arran glimpsed at Rabyatt's dark aura. In magical terms, black meant death. The hair on his arms rose as he remembered the merlord Trizidad's claim that only sorcerers with an affinity for death were capable of transferring spiritual energy.

"What do you want with the Amulet?"

Rabyatt arched a brow. "To free the god inside."

Arran's jaw dropped. Of all the answers the prince could have given him, he hadn't expected this one. "What?"

"So do you, I imagine. Releasing Onshra will restore his power, hence he will be able to break your curse. You see, Arran"—he placed his hands on the mattress, bringing himself at eye level—"our goals are not so different."

Before Arran could formulate a response, Rabyatt straightened the lapels of his long coat. "Come, Adira. Let him rest for now. Eventually, the illness in his blood will inspire a change of heart. I suspect it won't take long anymore."

He strode out of the room. Adira rose from the bed, her expression grave. "I won't let you die, big brother."

Arran ignored her. "Maia, baba, Zohra," he rasped, fighting the shadows that swirled at the edge of his vision. His chest was slick with sweat. "My curse. Those are the sins you'll have to live with, Adira." Another cough left crimson blooms on the palms of his hands. "You said you wrote back to baba, but when I spoke to him in Rasir, he seemed to believe we had banned him out of our hearts. He never mentioned a letter from you. Did you make him forget as well?"

Hurt flashed in her blue eyes. Her fists clenched and unclenched at her sides, but all she said was, "I'd do it all over again."

With that, she turned on her heel and followed Rabyatt out the door.