Page 98 of Heir

Treat.As if Quil could make peace with the man who’d destroyed Navium and Silas. Murdered thousands. As if anyone who had done such a thing, for whatever reason, would say anything that Quil was willing to hear. The prince shook his head. His hatred was stronger than his desire to understand.

“He’s not the one we’re making deals with,” Quil said. “He’s the one I’m going to kill.”

Loli Temba disappeared into a back room, and Arelia and Sufiyan slept not long after. Suf tossed and turned, troubled by dreams. Quil put a blanket over him, and put his hand on his friend’s shoulder, as Tas used to do for Quil. When Sufiyan finally went still, Quil slipped into Sirsha’s room, unable to sleep knowing that she was alone.

Loli Temba had placed a low stool beside the rope pallet, and Quilperched on it, feeling slightly ridiculous. He thought about taking Sirsha’s hand, but he wasn’t sure if she’d want that.

“You should wake up,” he whispered. “I have a plan. You might even like it.”

He didn’t mean to touch the pallet. In fact, he hadn’t even realized what happened until he looked up, and noticed the light in the room had shifted drastically. The change happened so seamlessly that, like before, Quil didn’t understand he was in the past until it was too late to leave.

The girl in the bed wasn’t Sirsha.

Or rather, it wasn’t the Sirsha he knew. This person was a child. Twelve or thirteen at most. Scrawny and short, with bruises on her arms and neck. She stared straight up, unblinking.

Loli Temba appeared behind Quil, leaning through him as if he wasn’t there. She laid her hand on Sirsha’s brow.

“You have to sleep, little one,” Loli said with a quiet tenderness. “You cannot heal unless you sleep.”

“When I sleep,” Sirsha the child whispered, “I see the village. I see everyone I—I—”

Tears trailed down into her hair. Loli Temba’s eyes were red-rimmed and her scars were darker. She looked much younger, barely older than Quil now.

“Tell me what you see,” Loli Temba said. “Expel it from your mind.”

“I see them,” Sirsha whispered. “The mothers and daughters. The lovers and the s-s-s-sisters. I see everyone I killed.”

“You are a child,” Loli Temba said. “It is not your fault.”

“Should have listened to the Raani,” Sirsha mumbled, and Quil wondered if she meant her mother. “I deserve it, what’s happened. Let me suffer. Let me feel the pain, Loli Temba. I deserve it.”

“You don’t, child—”

“You don’t understand,” Sirsha whispered. “I’m alone now. I’ll be alone forever.”

That shift again, like a breeze drifting past. Quil didn’t know he was back in the present until he found himself staring into Sirsha’s open eyes.

She reached out a hand, resting it against his cheek. His face was wet, he realized, but there was no question in her face about why.

“I’m here,” he whispered. “You’re not alone, Sirsha.”

For once, she didn’t have a quip or a comment.

At his throat, their oath coin burned.

27

Sirsha

Sirsha still had a raging headache when Quil stood to fetch Loli Temba. She felt the hum of her Karkaun friend’s magic, which lay like a protective net over the cave.

Try to get through that, R’zwana.

Sirsha didn’t know why R’z had attacked—or how she’d managed to creep up without Sirsha realizing it.

But for whatever time Sirsha was here, in Loli’s home, she was safe from the Jaduna. More importantly, if anyone could tell her about the killer she hunted, it was Loli.

Loli Temba strode into the room then, one of her odious drinks in hand.

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