Page 58 of The Wishless Ones
Rohan sat down with a gulp, not the least bit hungry anymore.
“How did you sleep?” Jafar asked, as if nothing were different between them.
“Fine enough,” Rohan replied. There were still bits of red under Jafar’s fingernails, remnants of the dungeon’s horrors.
Jafar caught him looking. “Apparently, the false prisoner is fine. They were able to reverse everything I’d done.” He looked down at his hands. “Can’t say the same for myself.”
False prisoner?Rohan couldn’t hide his confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“Oh, did the Sultana not tell you?” Jafar asked. He seemed to be enjoying this. “It was all a ruse. She’s been testing us because she wants one of us to replace her dead son.”
Iago laughed, and Rohan wanted to throttle him and those vermillion feathers.
“Just throw it all on him at once, I guess,” Iago said.
Jafar smirked.
Everything made sense now: the Sultana’s telling them about the prisoner and materializing at the door to the dungeon in the dead of the night. Asking how and why and every questionbesidewhat the secret truly was.
Sickening. That was the only way to explain it. Rohan had never felt closer to Jafar than when Baba had died, and the Sultana had stepped between them and torn them apart, and for what? Something they had no say in, something that would serve only her in the end.
And her people.The people oftwogreat kingdoms were counting on the treaty, on the marriage, on the prince. Rohan wondered if Jafar knew of the marriage treaty, or if the Sultana had only given them the information that she knew would speak to each of them more.
Jafar had shared his half. For whatever reason, Rohan decided not to do the same.
A sound drew their attention to the servants’ door at the far end of the dining hall. A man walked through, and Rohan thought nothing of it at first, but the man wouldn’t stop staring. Fidgeting. Edging toward the main exit.
Something glinted under his sleeve.
Rohan recognized the look in his eye and his dubious movements. Jafar did, too.
“Thief,” Jafar whispered, rising to his feet. “That man is a thief.”
Rohan didn’t move. He scanned the room, only to find it empty of guards. Strange, there had been a number of them here just a moment ago—where had they all gone?
“Stop!” Jafar shouted.
The man startled and began running for the door. An odd kind of run, as if his body didn’t quite match his movements. Jafar rushed forward, and Rohan felt a moment’s confusion thinking Jafar might throw himself at the man. That wasn’t Jafar. That was—
The man froze in place.
Jafar’s right hand was raised, his brow creased. He whispered a long string of words, and the man fell to his knees, gasping for air and clawing at his throat until Jafar released him from an invisible hold.
Rohan watched as his brother walked toward the thief, chin high, nose turned in a look of disdain that was eerily similar to the way Harun regarded the two of them. Iago settled on his shoulder with the same level of scorn on his tiny face.
“You could lose a hand,” Jafar drawled at the man. “Or die as pitifully as you live.”
He kicked at the man’s arm, and an ornament coated in gold slipped out of his sleeve.
“N-no,” the man stuttered. His headdress was dirty, his robes tattered. He was clearly a servant escaping for a better life, and he reminded Rohan of the prisoner, in a way. “It won’t be missed.”
Jafar laughed. “And who are you to decide that?”
Rohan couldn’t understand why Jafar was behaving as if he’d never done the same. As if their childhood wasn’t shaped by the pair of them running through the streets, stealing all that they could in order to keep themselves and their parents alive.
“Let him go, Jafar,” Rohan said, and cursed the warble in his voice.
“Let him go?” Jafar asked, turning his scorn to Rohan. “He stole.”
