Obsidian: Retribution (Book 2)

Ten: The Tiger and Tigress

There were times, when Zahara thought she had seen it all, that she knew his strengths and weaknesses and what he was capable of. Had thought that, now stripped of his title and power, he would be at her mercy or fall victim to someone for once in his life. But even now, with a man from the past looking to exact his revenge, a hand still wound tight around his throat, Muradi would demand submission.

And he would have it. She could already see the change in Qasim's expression. For all the hatred he harbored for Muradi—or Ranveer Borkhan—and for whatever wrong had been done to him, the temptation to bend to Muradi's grand design, his unbreakable confidence, his ruthlessness in getting what he wanted was not easy to resist.

'A tiger will always be a tiger,' her father had said. 'If you engage one, expect it to die trying to sink its fangs in your throat.'

He is worse than that, she thought.

'I'll make you the new Grand fucking Chief of the Rishi,' Muradi had said. It meant overthrowing Saracen and Sarasef. Big words for a man with no army, no power, and being pinned helplessly to the ground at this very moment. She took it as a bluff. It had to be a bluff.

Qasim sat still as a rock, as if those words had turned him into one. He was thinking now, carefully, attentively. "Think you can do all that, do you?" Qasim taunted. Words of mockery that didn't match his expression, and lacking weight.

"I have done it," said Muradi, as-a-matter-of-factly, precisely. "Should be easier the second time."

And he had. Everyone knew the stories of how he'd climbed his way to the throne. It was a part of his legacy as salar––a prince, thrown into Sabha and branded for life who became the undefeatable ruler of the Salasar. The brand was still there on his back, kept untouched like a reminder of what he had survived.

And he intends to do it twice, thought Zahara, to climb his way to the throne again. She felt like she was going to be sick.

Qasim's slow, shallow breaths told her he, too, shared her thoughts. "You are just one man," he said.

Muradi stilled at the question, and the world stilled with him. The sound of insects from outside died down. The wind stopped blowing as if waiting for permission or instruction to change course. Muradi looked up at the man pinning him down, the same confident, petrifying sense of danger she had come to know wrapped around him like an impenetrable armor, like protection from a god, like an unforgiving storm forming with him at the center promising death and destruction to those who did not run for shelter.

"It takes only one to sit the throne, only one to lead," he said, the words rumbled in his throat, filling the cave like thunder, like a hammer coming down to strike a mark into stone. "I am no man nor one of you pathetic, powerless beings that waste the grains you eat. I am the fate of this peninsula, the hand that will save or burn it to ashes, the force that turns the world or stops it. Go ahead and kill me if you can name another, on earth or in heaven, whom you believe can give you the Rishi. Make a decision, Qasim, but make it carefully, with a clear understanding of who it is you are talking to."

A hush echoed in the cave, made it sound as if a hundred men had drawn their breath at the same time and held it afterward. Zahara had a vision then, of him standing, once more, at the top of the Tower upon a bleeding ground littered with corpses, looking down on the world as it burned. It felt like a prophecy, like the will of a god, like fate written long ago no mortal could alter.

Have I created a bigger monster by letting him live? The thought gave her a chill, lingered in her mind like a dark spot she knew would continue to grow unless she did something about the situation.