He used to come here, before. A fresh burn on his back and blood from his bitten tongue dripping down his mouth. When his mother would cry and his father would grip the poker, gray eyes far too ancient for a mortal man. He used to come here before that, too, with a man he called Baba who would hold his hand and look at him with pride.
Nasir had known love then. He could still remember the way it filled his chest to near bursting.
It was why, as soon as Nasir spotted the telltale form from his window, he had hurried to Zafira, for it was either that or relive his memories as shadows bled from his fingers. He was home, at last, the place he never wanted to be, but when she was near the darkness receded, curious wisps slipping from his hands like the final puffs of steam from a cooling dallah.
When she was near, he had more to focus on. The notch between her brows, the tilted tuck of her lower lip beneath her gnawing teeth. The brush of moonlight on the angles of her face.
“I can’t believe I have to make the trip back after this,” she muttered, and he added the lilt of her voice to his list.
We can stay here, he almost said like some sort of hapless fool ignoring reality.
Nasir used the scalloped edging to pull himself up, brittle limestone clinging to his palms. The minaret’s balcony was overshadowed by a jutting eave, so the best view was from above it, on the small, sloping roof. He helped her up.
And the breeze stole her gasp.
The clear sky unfolded in shades of purple peppered with silver stars. Sconces lit the overarching angles of the palace, setting the sprawling structure alight in gold-and-orange magnificence, shadows playing across the intricate carvings.
His home. His cage of gossamer and glory.
Curved around the palace, like the crook of a mother’s arm, was the Great Library, paned windows dark and glinting, protectors of the endless enlightenment within. Every ounce of Arawiya’s history, and every last scrap of papyrus worth anything at all, was stored inside. A sanctum for those like the Lion who hoarded knowledge as a miser with coin. Nasir was no hoarder of knowledge, but those shelves had been a haven once. Escapes wrought into the bound sheaves of papyrus. Minds were meant to be kept as sharp as swords, his mother had said, and so he would spend as much of his day reading as he would training, guilty that he enjoyed it.
The surrounding houses boasted domes of copper and obsidian, facets greedily gorging on the moon’s abundance. Arches were bathed in a battle of light and shadow, the rare lantern swaying sleepily. Sand dunes dotted the land, hollows lit blue, the occasional bedouin campsite ablaze like fallen stars.
“It’s beautiful,” she murmured, and standing here beside her, he agreed. The moon crowned her in starlight and cloaked her in magic. The stars faded in envy of her radiance. There truly was nothing—no one—more beautiful.
So why, then, was he filled with a sudden and harrowing sorrow?
“I’m sorry,” he said again, “about your mother.”
The words fell from him without warning, guilt gnawing at his caged heart.
She quirked her lips. “I thought of going back to look for her, but it’s obvious—”
“You can’t,” he said before she could finish. She grew still, a hunter in the wild, and his heart took command of itself, pounding between his ribs as if he were racing across rooftops. “You can’t leave.”
“Why not?” she asked carefully, and he dully realized what she’d been saying: But it’s obvious she’s dead. She had thought of going back. She wasn’t actually going to. Rimaal, and now her question hung between them, demanding an answer.
There were a thousand and one ways to answer, and so he chose the words he favored least. “We need to restore the hearts.”
She scoffed, because that was not the answer she wanted, either. The breeze toyed with her hair, and he wanted to tuck the wayward strands behind her ear. His fingers closed into a fist.
“I’m not going to leave. Not until we find Altair. Not until magic returns and the Lion is dead,” she said. “My sister is here, and my friend is safe. I’ve got no one else.”
You have me, he wanted to say.
She turned her head, as if she heard his unspoken words. The moonlight gave him glimpses of the emotions shifting in her eyes. Anger. Sorrow. Pain. It was the yearning that gave him hope. The obstinance that filled him with dread.
“My village is gone, my life upended.” She barked a laugh. “My mother’s dead, and I didn’t shed a single tear. That’s how heartless I’ve become.”
No. Nasir knew what it was like to be heartless, to steal souls and leave behind orphans and widows and demolished futures. Yet he had cried when his mother died her ruse of a death. He’d felt so much pain that he was surprised at the silence it had left behind, a deafening quiet that broke only when Zafira was near.
“Five years,” she said softly. “She hadn’t left our house in five years, but she suddenly found the strength to venture outside when death was certain.”
When one killed as much as he did, no single mission stood out among the rest. Nasir didn’t have the capacity to feel guilt or remorse for the killing of that woman or that son or that lover. It was a collective reminder marked by his every inhale: He breathed while someone else did not. He exhaled while another never would.
Until this.
This one death that he did not have a hand in, only that he didn’t stop it.
Why? she asked in the silence.
“Because she is your mother,” he said softly, and if she caught the strain of emotion in his tone, she did not speak of it.
She didn’t blame him for the vapors, and he would be a fool to convince her otherwise. She knew he was a killer, a murderer, the worst there was, and still she had chosen to see him as human. He would not test those limits. He closed his mouth, took a poker to his heart, and seared away the truth. The world wavered in his vision.
Zafira took one careful breath, two. “Was.”
“Tears aren’t a measure of heart. We grieve in different ways.” He looked to the palace and its grand lights. Being unable to cry didn’t make her heartless. “Family is hard not to care for, I’ve learned.”
He waited for the wave of self-loathing that followed his voice, but the silence was strangely comforting.
“Do you want to see him?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, knowing full well of whom she spoke. “Even—even if he never returns to the man he used to be.” Nasir had thoughts and theories about his father, but he voiced none. “But Altair first.”
If only Altair knew Nasir would do anything to get him back. If only he could tell Zafira he would do anything to right the crimes he had lived his life committing.
There was more he wanted to do, too. Now that he knew the truth, that the Lion of the Night had been slowly sinking his claws into the Sultan of Arawiya’s mind and soul for years, he had a burning, roiling need to put an end to it.
“And magic,” Zafira said.
“And magic,” he agreed, but only because of her. Because he knew, now, the price of magic and what it had done to his father, and his mother, and he didn’t care for the sorcery that had ruined his family.
But for her and for the wrongs he had done, he would see this mission to its end.
CHAPTER 13
Light through the almost-closed curtains striped the dining room like the bars of a prison cell as the desert heat stirred from its slumber. No one was happy to shun the early sun, but the High Circle’s secrecy wasn’t fueled by paranoia—when Zafira had peeked through the window of her room, she’d caught flashes of silver at every shadowed street and rooftop.
Zafira had never thought she’d see the Sultan’s Guard in person, their shiny cloaks like beacons in the browns and golds of the desert. She never thought she’d be the object of their pursuit, either. They were vigilant, Aya had warned, searching for the zumra and their quarry.
A ruckus echoed from outside as a street vendor bargained with a woman over fruits from his
rolling cart. It was how Deen would argue, slipping the merchant extra coins afterward anyway. You have to pay them for the hassle.
“Eat,” Lana said from Zafira’s left on the fringed cloth spread out for the meal, pushing a plate of buttery harsha her way.
Kifah nodded beside her, the crate with the hearts between them. “You’ve got to keep your strength up.”
Aya watched the exchange with that strange dreamy smile of hers. “All of us do. In sustenance and unity, for we are stronger together. That was the basis of the High Circle. First, when it was a council of safin affairs under Benyamin and, later, when it was the smallest of armies under Altair.”
She looked away, jaw tightening with a memory.
Zafira didn’t know what compelled Lana to reach for Aya’s hand, but when she did, Aya turned her palm and laced their fingers. It was different, hearing about their bond through Lana’s lips and seeing it with her own eyes.
“Forgive me, my loves,” Aya said. Her eyes were wet, even as she gave Lana a tender smile. “Of all the losses I have endured, this … this is one I do not yet know how to conquer.”
“Perhaps it’s meant to be accepted,” Nasir reflected quietly. “Not everything requires a battle, least of all grief.”
Aya considered him. “Spoken as one who has endured.”
Roohi. That was what she had said last night.
Baba used to say it, too, and Umm would give him that one, fond smile she devoted to him.
Habibi. Hayati. Roohi.
My love, my life, my soul, the words meant, but their meanings went deeper than that.
Habibi was for friends and love that was real enough.
Hayati was when love became an all-encompassing thing. Deeper and deeper, until one became the other’s life.
Roohi was when a soul twined with its match and loved with the force of a thousand suns. When it slipped beneath the heart and tangled in the very fibers of an existence.
That was what Baba and Umm had, once. What a young Zafira had wanted, until the love her parents shared shattered them both, scattering shards of their souls into the desolation of the earth.
She had thought of them last night beneath the stars, beside a boy with unkempt hair and a question in his gray, gray eyes. She had finally seen the sprawling palace that belonged to the sultan, the lights suspended by intellect, something far more magical than magic could ever be, and yet—
It paled beside him, her prince.
“Are you all right?”
Skies. Did he have to sit so close? The harsha in his hand was perfectly halved. She had noticed that about him. The way he hung his clothes behind a chair when she was content with piling them in a heap. The way he broke his bread into neat pieces before lifting it to his mouth, whether it was manakish or flatbread or harsha.
“Never better,” Zafira said, and Lana made a sound that was dangerously close to a snort.
“He looks like he’d rather eat you instead,” Kifah whispered in her ear and rolled her eyes when Zafira shrank away. “It was a joke, Huntress.”
The front doors flew open, and Zafira clutched her satchel as Seif marched inside. Aya dropped Lana’s hand and quickly moved the dish of pickled lamb from view. Apparently, the cold-blooded safi didn’t approve of eating lamb, or even hunting animals for that matter.
He slammed something down on the side table, and Aya paled at the sight of it. Zafira squinted—it was a tiny bottle, empty, but for a smear of crimson. Blood?
“We’ve found nothing. No ships in the harbor, no sign of the Lion whatsoever. We’ve been at work all night.” Seif paced and shot a glare at Nasir. “While you were off—”
“Careful, safi,” Nasir said, voice low. “Running your mouth can be dangerous, and immortals are dying like flies.”
Aya’s wide eyes were curious. “Where were you? You were not to leave the house.”
“Surveying the vicinity from the city’s highest point.”
If only I could lie so easily, Zafira thought. Then again, it wasn’t entirely a lie.
Seif scoffed. “With her?”
“Are you implying that women cannot climb?” Nasir leveled him with a look before Zafira could lash out.
Seif’s frustration manifested in a growl, and from the ghost of a grin on Nasir’s face, Zafira could tell he finally understood why Altair treated the art of infuriation like it was his sole purpose in life. Lana struggled to hide a laugh.
“He may not be here yet,” Kifah said, “but that doesn’t negate the inevitable.”
He comes for us. The safin are unaware.
“The Lion of the Night,” Lana whispered, and Seif shot Aya a look that said We should have left her in the snow. Zafira decided then and there that Seif would be the last person she would ever protect and the first she would feed to a dandan.
Kifah studied Lana. “And it’ll be chaos on the streets as the news spreads across Arawiya.”
Chaos already clung to the air, in the dust that stirred as the people rioted, in the taxes that suffocated.
“Yet Sarasin will be fine,” Seif muttered.
“How?” Zafira asked, annoyed. “Who will protect its people?” The Sarasins had suffered ever since their caliph had been assassinated. The caliphate had always been a dark place—literally, too, with its dark sands and sooty skies—but once the throne had been emptied in cold blood by order of the sultan and the armies taken under his control, the uncertainty had strung tension tight and fearsome.
Seif ignored her. Typical.
Aya rose. “An established mortal by the name of Muzaffar. He was well-known in merchant circles, but while you were on Sharr, he began making a name for himself among the common folk, too. Placating them, providing for them. His men keep the peace, and that is more than many can ask for.”
“A fragile peace,” Nasir said quietly. “Barely enough to withstand the Lion.”
“Not all will fear the Lion. Even in the past, during his reign of darkness, some believed he signaled the beginning of a new age,” Aya said, pearls gleaming, and had she been anyone less pensive, Zafira would have mistaken her fervor as support for the cause. “They claimed he was the bearer of a golden era of greatness, and had the Sisters not clung to the old ways, we would never have been led to this dark point.”
“Right.” Kifah dusted her hands and rose. “We need blood.”
“There’s an infirmary nearby,” Lana said without thinking twice.
“Si’lah blood,” Kifah clarified with a note of impatience. “Blood with magical properties. You can’t find that in an infirmary.”
“What for?” Zafira asked, though the dread in her veins was answer enough.
Kifah met her eyes. “For you. For our compass to begin working again. You can easily track down Altair, the Lion, and the heart in one go.”
Easily. As if they were in a basket waiting prettily for her to snatch away.
“That requires dum sihr,” Zafira said. She pursed her lips, feeling guilt for her irritation over Kifah presuming she had no qualms about using forbidden blood magic.
“No.”
The command was sharp, the edges strung with loss. Everyone looked to Aya, who shook her head, something like madness in her gaze.
“No. No dum sihr.”
Lana stepped forward. “Ammah—”
“What he wants can never be as terrible.” Aya’s voice cut like a lash. It took Zafira a moment to understand who he was: the Lion.
The price of dum sihr is always great. Benyamin’s words on Sharr. She remembered then that he had used blood magic in an attempt to save his and Aya’s son. That he had failed. That pain made reckless fools of them all.
“What he wants,” Kifah spat through gritted teeth, “is vengeance on your kind and an Arawiya fettered by darkness.”
A home for his people, the Jawarat said.
Violence was not how one established a home.
Aya continued to shake her head, hysteria wavering in her eyes. Lana reached ag
ain for her hand, and Zafira saw Umm then, folded in her sister’s arms, fragile and lost. She murmured something too soft to hear, and Aya shuttered her gaze, collecting herself enough to press her lips to Lana’s brow.
Zafira’s limbs were suddenly restless, her eyes prickling.
Nasir sat in silence, gray eyes unreadable. He lifted his arm and dropped it. Turned away with a sigh.
“My mother feigned her own death. My father pressed a poker into the fire and branded me. Forty-eight times. Belittled me. Likened me to a dog.”
He spoke in the voice that looped with the darkness, the one that was at once quiet and imperious.
“It was magic that did it. Magic that gave the Lion a conduit to my father. Magic that made my mother forsake the Gilded Throne.” He looked to his hands, breathing tendrils of shadow. When he exhaled a broken laugh, darkness curled from his mouth. “Yet here I am, contributing to its restoration.”
Zafira knew he had suffered, she’d seen it firsthand in the Lion’s palace on Sharr. Yet she had never linked his suffering to magic.
How was it that the thing she loved so deeply, craved so fiercely, had caused him such undeniable pain?
Aya looked as if she wanted to reach for him, before she remembered who he was and smiled instead.
“This fight is no ordinary battle,” she placated softly. She drew a careful, trembling breath. “We must do what is required of us.”
Seif shook his head and gestured to the empty bottle he had brought in. “We had blood. I’ve used the last of it to protect the house, and it will wear out quickly. The Silver Witch is on her way to the Hessa Isles. In the time required to reach her and extract a vial of her blood, the Lion may very well come to us. Worse, every moment the hearts spend outside the minarets puts them at risk of perishing. An entire journey with the woman, and you did not think to ask her?”
“An eternity of magical knowledge, and you didn’t think to acquire more of it yourself?” Zafira fired back. Skies, this safi.
“What about Bait ul-Ahlaam?” Lana asked, and Zafira paused, the name familiar. The House of Dreams. Nasir had asked the Silver Witch of it on the ship, and Zafira remembered her vexed reply. She felt like an idiot, knowing nothing of it when her little savant of a sister did.
We Free the Stars Page 7