Chapter 1 One

  Let’s get one thing straight: I’m great at haggling. You want a better price on silk? I’m your girl. Spices? No problem. But sitting there while my family basically puts a price tag on my head? That’s a whole new level of disrespect, and I wasn’t having it.

  The day it all went south started like any other Tuesday in the Grand Bazaar, so hot, loud, and full of vendors trying to cheat you. I was standing in a sliver of shade between a spice stall and a rug merchant, staring down a weasel-faced trader named Rafi. He had fingers stained yellow from saffron and a smile that made my skin crawl.

  He was looking at Aisha, my silver mare, like she was yesterday’s leftovers. “Fifty dinars,” he said, sucking his teeth. “She’s tired. Look at her eyes. The spirit’s gone.”

  I didn’t even blink. I just ran my hand down Aisha’s neck. She leaned into my touch and then swung her head to give Rafi a look that was pure horse-sass. She knew he was an idiot.

  I smiled. Not a nice smile. The kind of smile that says, I know what you had for breakfast and it was lies. “Rafi,” I said, sweet as poisoned honey. “You couldn’t spot spirit if it kicked you in the teeth and stole your wallet. Last Thursday, you told Jamal you’d sell your own mother for a mare from the Southern Sands bloodline. This is her granddaughter. So cut the act. She’s worth five hundred. You’ll pay three hundred, and we’ll both pretend you got a deal.”

  His left eye did this tiny, frantic twitch. Got him. He’d been bragging all over the market about a new breeding contract. He needed a quality mare and he needed her yesterday.

  What followed was a beautiful dance. Me, not moving an inch. Him, sweating through his fancy robes, offering one-fifty, then two hundred. I just shook my head, picked a piece of invisible lint off my sleeve, and whispered to Aisha about what a good girl she was. I could see the exact moment he cracked. His shoulders slumped. He was beat.

  Ten minutes later, I walked away with a leather pouch so heavy it thumped against my hip. Two hundred and ninety golden dinars. A small fortune. Enough to make a normal person dance in the streets.

  I didn’t dance. I pressed my forehead to Aisha’s and breathed her in. All hay, sunshine, and freedom. “For them,” I whispered. The money would keep the wolves from the door for another few weeks. Maybe. It was a bucket of water on a forest fire, but it was all I had.

  The walk home was the longest of my life. Our house, the al-Kasim villa, used to be the place where everyone laughed. Now, it just looked depressing. The fountain in the courtyard was dry. The roses were brown and crispy. One lonely servant boy scrubbed the same patch of tile, not looking at me. The silence was thick and heavy, like a blanket you couldn’t kick off.

  I found them in the main room, the one Dad used for entertaining important clients. Now it just felt like a tomb.

  Mom, Selima, was perched on the very edge of a divan. She was dressed like she was expecting guests, every hair in place, but her back was too straight. Her hands were clenched together in her lap so tight I was surprised her bones didn’t snap. She looked like a beautiful statue about to shatter.

  Dad, Kareem, wasn’t the big, booming man who taught me to ride. He was standing by the big window, but he wasn’t looking at the garden. He was just staring at the wall, his shoulders hunched like he was carrying the whole stupid sky.

  On the low wooden table between them was a scroll.

  It wasn’t the normal, friendly papyrus we used for grocery lists. This was thick, creamy vellum. It was sealed with a glob of wax the color of old blood, stamped with a symbol I knew too well: a snake choking a gold coin. The seal of Malek. The most vicious loan shark in the city. The man who ate failing merchants for breakfast.

  My heavy pouch of dinars suddenly felt like I was carrying a single pebble to stop a landslide.

  “How much?” I asked. My voice sounded weird in the quiet room.

  My dad didn’t turn. My mom’s eyes flicked to me, wide and shining with tears she was too proud to let fall. So I did it myself. I walked over, the tiles cold under my feet, and picked up the scroll. I snapped the seal. It cracked with a sound like a tiny bone breaking.

  I unrolled it. The writing was all fancy legal nonsense: …wherein the party of the first part and compound interest and default penalties… My eyes skimmed over it, my heart beating faster with every line. Then I saw the number at the bottom.

  It was written in big, bold, black ink, just in case you were stupid enough to miss it.

  One Hundred Thousand Golden Dinars.

  For a second, the words didn’t make sense. One hundred thousand. I looked at the pouch on my hip. Two hundred and ninety. I did the math. My entire life, every horse I sold, every clever deal I made, wouldn’t even make a dent. This wasn’t a debt. This was a death sentence.

  “What’s the deal?” I asked, my mouth dry as sand. “What does he want?”

  My father spoke to the windowpane. His voice was hollow. “An alliance. A marriage. One that satisfies the debt.” He swallowed hard. “Malek has spoken to potential candidates. Men of influence. With deep coffers. They are aware of our situation.”

  Aware of our situation. A nice way of saying every rich creep in the empire now knew Leyla al-Kasim was up for grabs to pay off her daddy’s mistakes.

  “We have one month,” he continued, the words dragging out of him. “Or he takes the house. The land. Everything. And I go to the debtors’ prison.”

  A single tear escaped my mother’s perfect control. It carved a clean, sad line through the powder on her cheek. That one tear did something to me. It snuffed out my panic and lit something else. A cold, hard, furious little flame right in the center of my chest.

  My dad finally turned to look at me. His face was ruined with shame. “Leyla, habibti… my light… I am so, so sorry.”

  Sorry. The word bounced around the fancy, empty room and meant less than nothing. The system had won. It was built for this. To grind down proud families, to turn daughters into currency, to feed guys like Malek. I’d be sold to some old man with bad breath and wandering hands. I’d have to smile and call him “my lord.” I’d have to forever hide my smart mouth, my opinions, and the biggest secret of all: that the very idea of sharing a bed with a man made my skin crawl. That my heart had only ever stuttered for women, with their clever hands and soft laughs. A crime punishable by disgrace or worse.

  The cold flame in my chest roared. It melted the fear and forged it into something else: a plan. It was a terrible, desperate, possibly brilliant plan.

  I let the expensive vellum scroll fall from my fingers. It hit the cedarwood table with a final sounding thud.

  I looked at my mom, who was crumbling. I looked at my dad, who was already broken. And I made a decision.

  “Okay,” I said.

  The word was so calm, so flat, it shocked them into silence. My mom’s tears stopped. My dad’s eyes focused on me for the first time.

  “Okay?” my father whispered, like he’d misheard.

  “Yeah. Fine.” I uncrossed my arms and took a step toward the center of the room. I felt taller. “Let them line up. Let every rich, arrogant, boring man from here to the capital send his proposal. Let them think they’re bidding on a pretty, quiet, obedient wife.”

  I saw the flash of confusion in their eyes, then a faint, terrified hope. They didn’t get it. Not yet.

  I pointed a finger at my own chest. “But I choose. Not you, Dad. Not Malek. Not some list of ‘suitable’ old goats. Me. I pick the man.”

  I let that hang in the air. Let them soak in the sheer, ridiculous audacity of it. A ruined girl with no prospects, demanding the right to choose her own cage.

  The corner of my mouth lifted. Not a happy smile. A promise. A sharp, dangerous smile.

  I leaned forward, just a little, and let my voice drop to a low, clear whisper that carried every bit of my new, steel resolve.

  “And I swear to you both, on Aisha’s life, he is going to regret winning.”