Some part of him was glad of this conversation, glad he was able to finish and lock away whatever had once stood between them.
“Now get out,” he commanded. “When Altair returns, there will be a line. Join it.”
But Kulsum didn’t move. She only looked at him, dark eyes bright. Regretful, almost … hungry. He imagined what she would say, had she been able to speak. Perhaps, despite her vengeance, some part of her had loved him, in the way that only time spent isolated with another could foster.
Nasir looked away.
And as if—as if—his day wasn’t going terribly enough, he heard the creak of his door and a sharp draw of breath, because no one thought of knocking in this forsaken house.
Khara.
Zafira was frozen in the doorway, hair mussed, mouth swollen. The sight ripped him to shreds as she looked between Kulsum and his shirtless state, her brows falling in two shattered slashes.
It isn’t what it looks like, Nasir wanted to say, but when did anything ever go his way?
CHAPTER 21
Sweet snow below. If she had only held the door closed when it accidentally slipped open, she wouldn’t have had to see that. Nasir, without a shirt, without the shadows of Sharr to cloak him. The lantern light painted him in strokes of gold down to the low, low band of his sirwal, igniting something in her veins.
And her: the slender girl in the yellow shawl who was more beautiful than Zafira’s broad build and unwomanly height could ever dream to be. When had the idea of beauty ever bothered her before? Her eyes began to burn.
Jealousy darkened the heart, and Zafira was not jealous. She was pure of heart.
Her mind flashed to the Lion’s mouth on hers. Nasir without a shred of cloth on his back. This was it. She was going mad.
She had only gone there to check on him, to tell him about their plans. To tell him how she had lost the Jawarat and explain that, yes, he had been right not to entrust her with the hearts that were now being taken away. Because some stupid, naive, childish part of her had believed he would care, he would understand.
How wrong she had been.
She slipped soundlessly back down the hall, running her fingers along the paneled walls, aware she’d never stepped so deep into the house, where many of the High Circle roomed. Were there more of them now that nine had departed? She didn’t know. But most of the doors were closed, and the last thing she needed was to pry one open to another sight she shouldn’t see.
And now footsteps were hurrying after her. Perfect.
She rushed beneath an archway and into a high-ceilinged chamber. For banquets, likely. She wouldn’t know. The largest space they had back in her village in Demenhur was the jumu’a, and that was daama outside.
“Zafira.”
She froze, the stone cool beneath her bare feet.
“Why are you running?”
She turned. He had thrown on a shirt but hadn’t had time to close it up. The muscles of his torso coiled with his breathing and she imagined her hands on his skin, his voice in her ear. Turning her mouth to his. The Lion’s hands on her thighs. No.
Anger. That was what she needed to feel right now. Not … this. But the flickering sconces lit the anguish in his eyes, making it hard to focus.
“I was giving you privacy.” Steel rang in her voice.
He backed her toward the wall, uncaring of the doors that could open at any moment. He pitched his voice low. “The only privacy that I want is with you.”
“No, you don’t,” she said breathlessly, ignoring what the words could mean. She wasn’t half as beautiful as the girl in the yellow shawl. Khara. She wasn’t supposed to daama care.
He stepped closer, pressing the tips of his bare toes against hers. His eyes were downcast. She felt his confusion and the heat of his body as if it were her own.
“What do you want?” she whispered. Their time on Sharr had wound a string between them, knotted and gnarled, the edges fraying even as it tugged them closer.
He made a sound that could have been half of a sob or a laugh, and that was it. Tell me, she pleaded in the silence. The darkness stared. This was as far as they ever got—she would ask, and he would retreat.
“The Jawarat is gone,” she bit out. Because they were a zumra, and she owed him that much. “The Lion came to me, disguised as … someone he wasn’t.”
Nasir’s eyes snapped to hers, but she looked away in a stir of embarrassment and anger. Her mind flitted to the girl in the yellow shawl with her golden skin, shapely features, and full lips. Did he struggle with words when it came to her? Her posture had been at ease, as if she knew his secrets. Her dark eyes had roamed his bare chest, as if she knew the feel of him beneath her fingers.
No, Zafira decided. He did not.
“If you can’t even speak of what you want, then perhaps—” She stopped and tried again. “Perhaps you don’t want it hard enough.” She slid away from the wall. His hand dropped to his side. “Perhaps you don’t deserve it.”
Was he the one the Silver Witch had warned her against? Her own son?
She left her heart at his feet and locked her brain safely away, and she was almost to the doorway when he spoke.
Soft. Broken.
“What do you want?”
The Lion’s death. Altair’s safety. Magic’s return. Baba’s justice. You. You. You. He was a rhythm in her blood.
“Honor before heart,” Zafira said. What work there was to do, she would do herself.
As always.
CHAPTER 22
It was dark when the Lion returned, triumph carving a smile that glittered like the night. Joy in his gaze that tripped Altair’s heart for the barest of beats before he at once felt a deep, numbing nothingness and a bursting, tumultuous everything.
From the folds of his robes, the Lion pulled free the Jawarat with a delicate hand. Green with tattered pages and a fiery mane embossed in its center.
Not only had the zumra—with their ancient safin, shadow-wielding prince, and dum sihr—not found Altair, but they had been careless.
The Lion watched him carefully, but what was there to see? Altair’s disappointment at their incompetence? Altair’s contentment at a plan gone right?
“Unlock his chains,” his considerate father said, and an ifrit came forth with a key.
A tiny, insignificant bit of molded iron that would grant his freedom. The Jawarat, memories of the Sisters of Old incarnate, for his freedom.
So that he would never be forgotten.
Neither father nor son spoke until the chains were detached.
“I don’t suppose you can remove the shackles, too?” Altair ventured, a little hoarse, his gaze fixed on the book.
The Lion smiled. It was quite something, to be the cause of another’s joy. To be the pride of someone’s eye, if only for a fleeting moment.
Altair matched it. “Akhh, I knew it was too much to ask.”
“You have done me a service, Altair. For that, you are free to roam the house as you would like.”
Some freedom.
“Ah, Baba. Quite the weight off my shoulders—er, arms,” Altair drawled, flexing his muscles. He dallied a beat before he said, “What do you plan to do with it?”
“Learn it,” the Lion said simply. “I’m never one to shy away from the thralls of a book.”
Altair considered that. “The Great Library would kill you, then.”
The Lion laughed, low and thoughtful. “I would not put it past the place. There is nothing quite like entering a door that promises to open onto the infinite.”
They were in a different house now, one that had belonged to a safi with a skill set that would be sorely missed by many.
“How were they?” Altair asked before he could stop himself. He found his limbs seizing in anticipation of the answer.
The Lion paused. It was eerie, for he had no pulse, even as he buzzed with excitement. “Alive. Well. They seemed to be in no hurry. It is for the best, is it not? I’m beginning to savor our all
iance, Altair.”
Altair dropped his gaze to the shackles around his wrists, suppressing his power, endlessly chafing his skin. What more did he need to unveil for them to be gone?
CHAPTER 23
By the time Nasir had found a string of words to suffice a proper apology, it was too late. She was not in her room. She was not in the foyer. She was nowhere in the house, and when he ran outside, too hurried to wear his boots, he saw the servants calming the two steeds left in the stables where he’d seen fourteen before.
His pulse had never raced as quickly as it did now. He had never felt such searing lament, such bone-deep rue. He should have worn his shirt, he should have sent Kulsum away, he should have answered Zafira’s question. Regret was Nasir’s dearest friend.
The moon tucked herself into the clouds, despondent, and a chill descended from the skies, sinking teeth into the city. He returned to his room, relieved to find it empty, and snatched his weapons before washing his feet and slipping into his boots, nearly wearing the right on his left and the left on his right, and then struggled with the servants to placate one of the angsty steeds, even as they claimed it was the worst of the lot.
Nasir was not surprised. Such was his luck. He pulled out the red-and-silver compass the Silver Witch had given him before he’d embarked for Sharr and brushed his thumb across its surface. It had led him to Zafira more than once.
What do you want?
More than his heart could hold. More than he could begin to know.
When at last he mounted the beast and the gates creaked open, Aya swept outside. Nasir wondered if she had stayed behind for him, since everyone except Zafira’s sister had left. She stayed for Lana, mutt. He flinched at his own thoughts, at the echo of his father’s insults.
“The night mourns.”
He suppressed a shiver at her voice and guided the horse toward the dark streets. Limestone structures gleamed blue-black. Lanterns glowed like eyes, ever watchful. Echoes of the merchants and people wading among their stalls reminded him that this city never slept. On the other end of the tangled streets and sprawling houses was the palace. He’d told no one of the plans he’d begun to form, but what did it matter now? He had to find the zumra. He had to find Zafira.
Why? a voice whispered at the back of his skull.
Aya noted his hesitance. “Where do you ride for?”
“Alderamin,” he said when the silence became too much to bear. “To join Zafira.”
“There’s no need. Seif and Kifah are with her. As you said, preparations must be made here.”
He paused at her logical words.
“Come inside,” Aya coaxed. “We can continue training if you do not wish to rest.”
Rimaal. Look at yourself. It wasn’t about the journey itself, for he still felt that a trek to Alderamin for a vial that may not exist was a waste of time. It wasn’t about the number of people she had with her; it was about Zafira herself. It was about saying the words he had not been able to say before. Even if he believed his chances of finding Altair were higher here. In the palace, to be exact.
A small figure darted through the gates. Nasir’s gauntlet blade pulsed against his wrist before he recognized the luminescent green shawl. Lana stopped in front of his horse, wide-eyed and out of breath.
Aya rushed to her. “What is it, little one?”
“A—a Sultan’s Guard,” she blustered.
Nasir was off his horse in an instant. If the man had touched her, had even tried to touch her, he would lose his fingers, then his tongue. Then his head.
“I came as fast as I could.” A scroll was in her palm.
Nasir exhaled, but he didn’t need to read the scroll to know where it was from. He was the prince, and this shade of parchment was a common sight. That didn’t stop the surge of dread through his limbs when Aya unfurled it to read before wordlessly passing it to him. Because when one disaster befell him, it was almost always followed by a barrage of others.
“How did he know who I was?” Lana asked, uncaring of what he’d given her.
Only then did Nasir notice she was shaking.
He looked past the gates. He sensed no one, but if Lana’s comings and goings were noted, it was obvious. “We’re being watched.”
Nasir returned the horse to the stable; then he and Aya took Lana inside and sat her on the majlis with a blanket. A servant brought her tea. Aya held her against her chest, murmuring too softly for Nasir to hear through the rushing in his ears as he read the missive.
It was an invitation to a feast, one sent not only to the crown prince but also to every last leader of Arawiya, celebrating magic’s imminent restoration.
Only, magic was still far from restored. It might never return, despite the zumra’s near-success upon Sharr.
“We’ll go,” Nasir said beneath the flicker of the lanterns suspended from the ceiling.
“It is a trap,” Aya said, surprised that Nasir would accept the invitation.
“It’s not a trap if we are aware of it.”
He’d already had a number of reasons for wishing to trek to the palace, theories he wished to test, but now he had ample justification. The medallion around Ghameq’s neck flashed in his thoughts. The notion that the Lion was in the palace itself, hiding in plain sight.
“We know the Lion holds my father captive,” he said. “But the delegates don’t.”
“We can send notes of our own,” Lana suggested, “telling them it’s a trap.”
Nasir imagined a missive such as that, warning the delegates of their impending doom and signing off with “Prince of Death.” He shook his head. “It won’t reach them in time.”
“You think to protect them,” Aya said.
This time, her surprise stung, but Lana gave him a small smile. His reputation had reached even the farmost villages of Demenhur, it seemed.
“If it is a trap, there is the likelihood that we will face the Lion,” Aya continued.
“He won’t show his hand so soon,” Nasir said, “not before comprehending the Jawarat. My father is behind the celebration.”
“And he is controlled by the Lion,” Aya said, gentle but firm. “We are no match for him on our own.”
“Unless we remove the medallion,” Nasir countered.
Aya’s features scrunched, dissent written across them, but she held silent. Nasir crushed the papyrus in his fist. The Lion played his game well, and this was an invitation no one would dare miss.
Not even Nasir.
CHAPTER 24
If Zafira was tired, her body betrayed no signs of it. Anger steeled her every vessel and vein, and she finally understood the restless energy Kifah lived and breathed.
Dawn had wrapped the night by the time the sea breeze signaled the approaching border of Sultan’s Keep. The lights of the city began to dwindle, the barrenness stretching like a shock. Which it was, Zafira supposed, for no one had expected the Arz to ever disappear.
Seif kept pace ahead of them, as if she’d begged him to come and he was displaying his ire for all to see. When in truth, he had asked her if she was ready when she had charged into the foyer with her satchel.
It was Kifah who had looked behind her to the stairs, expectant. “Where’s Nasir?”
“Preoccupied,” Zafira had replied, and her ridiculous mind sought out every one of Yasmine’s stories, making her wonder if he was truly busy.
Kifah had studied her with an ease that prickled her skin, and decided silence was the best answer.
A bird screamed in the distance now, breaking her out of her thoughts. She stared at it angrily as it swooped into the distance. Her horse whinnied, and she was angry at it, too. It was a shade darker than Sukkar but reminded her of him anyway. How attuned they had been to each other, how smooth his movements were. She bit her tongue. Better physical pain than the incurable one of the heart.
She missed the weight of the Jawarat by her side. Its cynicism and commentary. Its constant search for chaos and control—even if she did n
ot approve, it would have been a welcome distraction.
“It’s going to take some getting used to, standing around without four extra heartbeats,” Kifah mused.
“One less task for when we retrieve the final heart,” Seif reminded them curtly.
If, Zafira nearly corrected. She’d been astounded by the Lion’s audacity as much as by his presence in her room, and that didn’t bode well for her own confidence. At least she had the peace of mind knowing the girl in the yellow shawl had left the house shortly before she and Kifah did. Otherwise, her presence would have plagued every footfall of the journey.
But why? she asked herself. Why were her emotions, thoughts, and actions so visceral when it came to Nasir?
“Oi. Don’t look so glum,” Kifah said, bringing her horse near Zafira’s as they passed rows and rows of swaying barley, the crops contained by short fences on either side of the road. “If the Lion had walked through my door looking like my brother Tamim, I would have handed him the Jawarat without a second thought. And my brother’s dead.”
But the person in Zafira’s room hadn’t been her sister or dead mother or father, had it? It had been a boy she’d known for mere weeks, and yet felt a lifetime’s connection to.
“Do you still think of Tamim?” she asked. There were days when she forgot to think of Baba, when she barely thought of Deen, whose breath had clouded the cold Demenhune air less than a month past.
“Always,” Kifah said. Her chestnut mare snorted as they trotted along the cobbled road. “Though there are times when Altair takes precedence. More and more, as of late.”
“You like him,” Zafira said.
Kifah snorted. “Don’t tell me you don’t. You’re going to Alderamin for him.”
She was going for more than Altair; for her own guilt, for the Jawarat, for the heart the Lion had stolen. Still, Zafira couldn’t argue with that. “But do you … love him?”
“Trying to pair us up, eh? I’m afraid my affections don’t run that way. I love him, yes. Fiercely.” She canted her head. “I’m beginning to love our zumra—even Nasir—as much as I loved Tamim, but I’d never be with Altair in the way you think. Affection isn’t measured and defined by tangible contact for me.”
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