Page 65 of Sinadim

He, with all his wealth. All of his endless fucking privilege, reduced to a vague idea of hope for something… more.

Freedom.

The very idea of it sent his heart soaring, as if on the wings of a raptor. Flying so high above them all, he could feel the desert sun baking his face, his back. Roasting his skin as he was wrapped in throbbing luxury from mane to tail.

And when he blinked, it was to find himself looking down. Upon a battlefield littered with carnage. Mayhem. Destruction the likes of which would make the Nine proud. Except…

Except it was… wrong.

He saw her, then. Through the fog of memory.

Teliah.

Standing beside his mother at the very top of the gates—high above the fray below—she was a shrunken version of the proud warrior he’d been made to abandon. Her face was a blank canvas. Empty of everything that had once enticed him.

A glorious Anhur female reduced to little more than a vessel.

He hadn’t seen it, at first.

Not while she was standing beside Samina—his mother’s belly was enormous in late pregnancy. Eclipsing the gentle, damning bulge of Teliah’s curves for those who didn’t know to look.

But he had.

He did.

And now he couldn’t tear his gaze away from the talisman placed to catch his eye and incite madness.

It was a taunt, to place her just so. To dress her in silky ribbons that left little to the imagination. Bronze skin marked by claws and teeth was left exposed. Nipples bruised by vigorous, rough attention poked through sheer gauzy silk that crisscrossed over her chest. And her belly—it was naked. Oiled to gleam, meant to draw one particular set of vibrant green eyes.

Teliah was pregnant.

And the Sultan was nowhere.

Everywhere.

Exactly where he needed to be—his mark of supreme dominion already growing inside Teliah’s womb.

It was there on the wind.

The scent of gravid female hung heavy in the shimmering heat. And just beneath it, the scent of an ambush poorly laid, for what need had the Silver City of subtlety, when the gates had never been breached?

Still, they came from the desert. Driven by something pitiful, marching toward certain doom, Sinadim’s army had dared to fly a banner called hope.

A sneer crinkled the cold side of his face, then. Rotten with fury, it was a twisted, ugly thing. A reflection of the mutiny festering in his chest, for this was what he’d wanted, wasn’t it?

This was freedom.

The chance for something more. To be something more.

To suffer.

To endure.

Freedom was the lie whispered among the downtrodden and the wretched. A poisoned chalice filled with lies, gulped down by those unfortunate masses who’d known nothing but the cruel lash of fate. Those too stupid and deluded to understand that more could be worse. More could be suffering endless punishment for daring to reach.

Such was the toxic nature of that cursed prayer.

Hope.