Page 73 of The Wishless Ones
She looked away, her reflection distorted in the empty silver platter in front of her.
“You must think me horribly rude,” she said, and Rohan was amazed at how these royals could shuffle between expressions and emotions like they were nothing. “My name is Yara.”
Rohan,he wanted to say, but could not.
He couldn’t even give her his name. Something as small and simple and mundane as his name. His name—the one and only thing he had left of his childhood, of his life in Ghurub.
And he was to bemarriedto her? To spend the rest of his life beside her?
What was the point in being able to speak if he could not do so freely? What was the point in wearing a crown and having every dish imaginable if he had to take the history of himself, his most precious possession, and lock it away for good? What was the point in appeasing a woman who meant nothing to him and losing the best brother in the world?
Rohan shot to his feet, teetering from the abrupt movement and his thoughts alike. The entire banquet hall fell silent. Every eye turned to him and his bright robes and fancy adornments as if he were some sort of peacock.
He wanted to laugh at it all. Or possibly cry.
But what he needed was to find Jafar and make things right. Rohan, like his brother, wasn’t good at apologizing, but it was never too late to start. Every important emir in the kingdom had seen him, which meant he would never be able to right his wrongs and cede the crown to Jafar.
But they could run.
The two of them could go anywhere and be anything, so long as they were together.
“Aman?” the Sultana asked, and he heard the warning in her voice. He had seen the condition of her dungeons, seen how quickly she could turn a smile lethal.
Rohan paused, aware that there was no turning back from this moment. He would either be Aman for the rest of his life, or die as Rohan.
He glared down at her. “Don’t call me that.”
And then he fled.
Rohan’s footsteps echoed dully through the halls, growing louder as he left the roar of the banquet hall farther and farther behind him until the palace spat him out into the cold night. Wispy clouds shrouded the moon, ominous and haunting. He lowered his gaze to the sprawling building across from the palace.
He knew where he would find Jafar.
But as much as his brother loved the House of Wisdom’s library, when he was upset, he preferred to busy his hands more than his mind. As he could in the laboratory.
Rohan took off down the dusty path, stumbling to a halt in the open space between the palace and the House of Wisdom. He was alone. Nothing but him and the expanse of the night, stars twinkling above, the future just out of reach.
He could run on his own, leave the palace and the House of Wisdom and everything else behind. He wouldn’t be Aman or Baba’s son or Jafar’s brother.
He would be his own person.Rohan. He would claim his name for his own.
Not without making amends.
The House of Wisdom was deathly silent, not a guard or scholar in sight. Rohan had not expected the crimson cloud crowding the dark ceiling, strange and eerie. Heart in his throat, he navigated the blood-drenched shelves, avoiding the glinting shadows and beckoning darkness.
For a moment he was back in the dungeons, in front of those dank cells, desolation creeping up his arms and power thrumming in the air. Rohan followed flashes of red to the back of the library and an archway that he assumed led to the laboratory. He paused and looked up the short rise of steps to the platform ahead, but he had no reason to be afraid. This was his brother, and they were going to make things right between them.
Something sharp cracked across the floor, as jarring as a clap of thunder. A pair of eyes flashed in the gloom, vividly red. Rohan flinched, freezing in place as a figure emerged from the haze.
He could only muster a whisper. “Jafar?”
The shadows accentuated his height, stretching him like the plume in his headdress. His robes undulated in the breeze from the wide windows behind him. His long fingers curled around a dark gold staff with brilliant ruby eyes that Rohan could not look away from. Iago sat on his shoulder, equally imposing. Standing in front of them, Rohan felt small and droll.
“Oh, it’s a serpent,” Rohan ventured, trying for a laugh.
Jafar glided down the steps to face him, his eyes hard. It was how he’d looked at Baba, how he had begun to look at the Sultana.
Rohan took a small step back, and the words blabbered out of him. “This was doomed from the start, Jafar. I came to apologize. I—I tried speaking to the princess, and I know it’s all a big mess, but—”
