The Rose and the Dagger by Renee Ahdieh

Author:Renee Ahdieh [Ahdieh, Renée]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780698185906
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2016-04-26T04:00:00+00:00

TO SLEIGHT AND FEINT

SHAHRZAD WAS AT A LOSS.

She’d tried for three days straight.

For three days, she’d feigned interest in her father’s book. She’d sat alongside him in his tiny tent and listened while he explained the origins of its magic. She’d smiled as he’d tried to tell her how he’d gone about painstakingly translating its pages. Painstakingly memorizing its contents.

All under the pretext of saving her.

Saving her?

A likely story.

Especially now that Shahrzad knew his reasons for prizing the book so highly. For protecting it, even through his fog of delirium. Now that she realized how its evil paled in comparison to its possibilities.

The power to smite a kingdom.

To lord over others with impunity.

Before, Shahrzad would never have believed her father could be so enraptured by the thought of power. But the proof sat before her, day in and day out. Her father’s eyes pooled with a feverish light, his scarred palms stroking over his bare scalp, as if seeking a reminder of all that had occurred.

All that his actions had brought about.

Though Jahandar had said he did not intend for such death and destruction to strike at the heart of Rey—that all he’d intended to do was save her—Shahrzad could not shake the feeling of doubt that settled upon her.

For her father could not meet her eyes when he said these things.

As such, it had taken all her efforts to conceal her horror when her father revealed that Reza bin-Latief had requested his help with future endeavors.

Future endeavors? Of what sort?

Her skin crawled at the thought.

Tariq’s forces had already managed to secure two nearby strongholds along the border between Khorasan and Parthia. Shahrzad had warned Khalid last night, and though he’d begun to rally his bannermen to Rey several weeks ago, the city’s beleaguered state made the possibility of organizing a force to retake the border a difficult one. Rey’s standing army remained in shambles. It would take time for Khalid to launch a counteroffensive.

Time they did not have.

So Shahrzad continued to try to inveigle her father to turn over his book.

To rectify the curse’s blight in advance of the war.

Alas, Jahandar refused to let it out of his sight. He slept with the book pressed to his chest and its key hanging from a thin chain around his neck.

How was she ever to take the book from her father and deliver it to Khalid if he would not part with it, even for a moment?

I should simply tell Baba the truth. And ask him to give me the book.

Shahrzad had considered this many times. Especially that first day. A part of her had wanted to believe her father would be willing to do anything to give his daughter the love and happiness life had so often denied him.

But when she looked in his eyes as he spoke of the book in such reverent tones—as he discussed the sense of purpose its magic had given him—she knew he would not easily part with it. Even if it cost Shahrzad her happiness.

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