For She Is Wrath

by Emily Varga

For my dad, who loved fantasy books. I just wish you got to read this one.

Did I want to run? Or make him burn?

My sword was an extension of who I was.

“Do you have a plan?” I smiled at her, an echo of Thohfsa’s earlier one. “No, but I have a sword.”

Never show them your fear. The weak feed from fear.

It wasn’t magic that had my sword moving through the air like lightning, my reflexes quick as a cat. It was training.

I could make them pay. But what would that get me now?

But mostly I just wanted to hold my father’s hand, feel the raised scars on his palm from so many years at the forge, and remember what it was to be loved.

“You’re my family now too.”

My father was an ordinary man, and I loved him for it.

Noor didn’t have to share her power. But I wasn’t about to refuse it either.

the only thing I wanted was to have my father back. But no djinn power could give me that. Nothing could.

Baba was gone, and my peace would now have to come from destroying my enemies.

It kept my feet moving, stopped me from falling to my knees and sobbing into the earth every time I thought about my father’s death.

I had lost everything this past year and gained only pain.

Arming myself with beauty, to distract from the true weapon that I was.

And while they were busy admiring me, I’d slice their fingers off with my blade.

Will you dare speak about my father, you disgusting coward?

It was everything he valued and worked for, but he wasn’t here anymore for it to matter.

Good. He should be fucking sad.

He had improved. Not that I would tell him.

Would Mazin actually execute children?

Or was this his true self, a power-hungry tyrant who controlled the city by fear?

I really should have hired better actors.

It had been a long time since I’d been embraced by anyone except when I’d hugged my grandmother, and even that had felt wooden and forced.

This time instead of a hint of sadness in his eyes, it was pure murder.

Where had the boy I’d known gone? He never existed. He was never real.

Then why did I feel like I was still sitting in that prison, counting the days until my freedom?

We were women from a village where one of the greatest swordsmiths lived. We knew weapons.

But the women were braver than I—they rushed at the raiders, beating them with clubs and swords,

Our carriage sped away, the bonfire of bodies aglow behind us as we made our way to the emperor’s ivory palace.

there isn’t anywhere that can cage me.”

What was my life if I wasn’t honest with the people I cared the most about?

Because my only two options were either to murder the emperor, or come straight here.” And he had chosen me.

I moved as close as I possibly could to the edge of the bed to give him more room away from me. “I’ll stay over here.” “No, don’t do that.”

“It’s me who should be worried if you sleep with a dagger under your pillow every night.”

Once this was all done with, I would stop taking it.

The last time I had seen him, he’d arrested me for treason and dragged me by the hair into the palace dungeon.

it was clear he was getting joy out of this.

there is no exception to the law. You must serve in the work camp yourself. But now at least everyone knows what kind of person you are.”

The truth was, nothing else mattered if I didn’t get revenge.

I would destroy myself a thousand times if it meant getting retribution for my father.

But if we ever fought, he’d know exactly who I was.

“I’d read you like scripture, a prayer. And all the worship I felt, I’d heap at your feet.”

My heart felt like it was splintering in half, which made no sense because I thought he’d already torn it out.

Too late they realized that I wasn’t there to provide nourishment.

He felt like my match.

If I ignored Thohfsa and pursued my revenge, then my only friend in the world would die.

Finding out about his death caused my heart to crack open, the blackness spilling inside, hardening my insides with more rage than I thought imaginable.

We were broken and mending and lost but slowly we were finding our way back to who we once were