This woman isn’t Tazerwalt. This isn’t his wife. This is her handmaid, Hada, dressed in her lady’s garments. He stands, trembling, an image flashing through his head, a slave girl rushing him. A horrid intuition. A sickness unto death. A stone in his gullet. He finds the room. Tazerwalt. His wife, disguised as a slave. She’d been alive, unharmed by the Tiru attackers, hidden, until he’d come. A slave girl had rushed him. A slave girl, loyal to the Tiru, surely. Thinking it an attack, he’d slashed her neck as she threw herself at him, and he’d moved on, heedless. Her eyes are open, questioning,
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