Ahsan cracked open a bleary eye. It felt like his lids had been pasted shut with wheat glue, dry and crusty and thick. Where he expected to be met with searing daylight, he was met instead with chill darkness. The tang of blood in the back of his throat told him his vague memories were not fever dreams, so how was he alive? Or was this the afterlife, gray and dreary?
Both eyes now open, Ahsan surveyed the room in which he awoke. Was he still in the palace? If so, it was nowhere near as grand as the wings he had seen. It looked like an attendant’s quarters. The straw stuffing of the cot beneath him—the only furnishing in the room—poked into his back. There was no window, not even a rug to cushion the floor. He tried to sit up, then groaned. Pain lanced down his throat and through his stoma
