Ahsan sipped on his orange peel tea, a dash of cardamom added in for a new layer of complexity, as the king’s attendants combed back his hair and tried to force it to hold a uniform curl. The steam wafted into his nose and opened his sinuses, another one of the many things that had nursed him back into the land of the living these past few days. Despite his shock at Nirah’s repeated water-splashing and his panic at her advance, he’d slept well that night. Or, as well as one could on a stone floor. The next morning, he felt even better.
It was not Nirah’s actions, but her words that reassured him. She had to be right. If his mother was so insistent as to ask her only son to risk death, she must have a reason. He had always known her to have a sharp mind. In his youth, he’d always resented
