Years ago, there was an outbreak in the city. A fever. I was young, arrogant. I thought I could cure everyone. I worked myself to the bone. I made a mistake, Zainab. A miscalculation with a tincture. I didn’t kill a stranger. I killed the provincial governor’s daughter. A girl no older than you.
Zainab felt the air leaving the room.
“They didn’t just strip me of my title,” Yusha continued, her voice breaking. “They burned my house down. They declared me dead to the world. I became a beggar because it was the only way to disappear. I went to the mosque looking for a way to die slowly. But then your father arrived. He spoke of a daughter who was ‘useless.’ A daughter who was a ‘curse.’”
He pressed his hands against her face. She felt the dampness of his tears; not her own, but his.
I didn’t take you because I was paid, Zainab. I took you because when he described you, I realized we were the same. We were both ghosts. I thought… I thought if I could protect you, if I could show you the world through my words, maybe I could get my soul back. But then I fell in love with the ghost. And that was never part of the plan.
Zainab froze. The betrayal was there, yes—the lie about his identity—but it was wrapped in a much more painful truth. He wasn’t a beggar by fate; he was a beggar by choice, a man living in a self-imposed purgatory.
“The fire,” she whispered. “Aminah mentioned a fire.”
“My past burns,” he said. “I have nothing left of that man, Zainab. Only the knowledge of how to heal. I’ve been treating the sick in the village at night, in secret. That’s where the extra copper comes from. That’s how I bought your medicine last week.”
Zainab reached out, her fingers trembling, tracing the contours of his face. She found the bridge of his nose, the dark circles under his eyes, the moisture in his eyes. He wasn’t the monster her sister had described. He was a man broken by his own humanity, trying to piece it back together with hers.
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