“It is why I am your father, isn’t it? To guide your hand. Have you any plans on how to find him?”
A bell sounded in Nasir’s skull. “We will find him,” he said carefully. “By whatever means necessary.”
The sultan studied him.
“I should not have to tell you to avoid the use of dum sihr. It has cost our family too much.”
Nasir shook his head quickly. Too quickly. This was his father. Trust was meant to be second nature.
“The Sisters forbade such acts. If we do this, what difference is there between us and the creature we seek to defeat?” Ghameq asked.
Blood magic was forbidden. The use of it did distort the line between them and the Lion. But there were plenty of differences between them and their foe, and the use of dum sihr didn’t negate that.
Still, morality was decidedly not a topic Nasir wanted to discuss with his father.
“Even if we planned to, dum sihr requires si’lah blood. Which we do not have,” Nasir said.
Ghameq grunted his agreement. The sound echoed relentlessly in the silence.
“Perhaps,” Nasir dared again, changing the subject, “we can call off the feast. For now. Until magic is restored and the Lion is no longer a threat. Do you … remember sending out the invitations?”
Where did that line end and begin? There were questions about events where his father would blink emptily and others from long before that he could recount word for word almost immediately. It left Nasir unable to decipher just how much Ghameq remembered from when he was under the Lion’s control over the years, for his memories were clearly unaffected by time.
“Two nights prior,” Ghameq said after a thought. “It is too late to stop them, unfortunately. Besides, we have more reason to celebrate now, do we not, Ibni?”
“Yes,” he ceded softly, fighting dismay. At least the dignitaries would no longer be walking into a trap.
“What of the Huntress?” Ghameq asked, looking down at the sheaves in his hand. “She has not come.”
He knows. A curl of darkness slipped from Nasir’s fingers. For whatever reason, trust was impossible to summon. But nor could he lie.
“I’ve angered her,” he admitted.
A half-truth was enough. Three words that held a multitude would suffice. For truth held emotion, and lies held deception. It was how one knew which to believe.
I miss her, was what he wanted to say. He was alone without her, a soul-deep desolation. Drifting in a world where no one really saw him.
Ghameq laughed, proof that not even the man who fathered him could see him, understand him, know with merely a glance. Perhaps Nasir had been too young the last time he’d heard that laugh, too smitten, too innocent and unburdened by death, but it sounded different now. Harsher. Sharper. Less happy and more calculating.
But people changed, didn’t they?
* * *
“You seem troubled, Prince.”
Aya dropped the hatch and joined him on the rooftop. She had come from the infirmary, and blood stained her roughspun abaya, the pale brown ashen compared to her normal attire. He watched a falcon sweep behind a date palm and saw the gathering in the distance, where a man clad in black cried of the Arz’s disappearance with foreboding.
The hours were waning. He hadn’t realized bringing his father up to speed would require so much time, though it was likely because words were slow to find. There was much the sultan already knew, for he had been alert throughout the Lion’s control, and so Nasir filled him in on the events of Sharr and everything since, skirting the whereabouts of Zafira and Kifah, and the High Circle traversing Arawiya to restore the hearts.
“Where’s Lana?” Nasir asked.
“Still helping at the infirmary. I left to come see you, but she is safer there than here.”
Nasir snorted a breath, wondering how dangerous Aya thought the palace was if she left a young girl amid angry strangers who rioted on the streets.
When the riots broke out again today, a score of the Sultan’s Guard had run from the palace, and Nasir had frozen, half expecting an order from his father. Go. End this.
They had merely exchanged a glance.
If only the people knew rioting did nothing to the sultan. He had barely blinked. He had barely considered Nasir’s proposal to appoint that merchant in Sarasin, Muzaffar.
He pressed his eyes closed for a beat. Aya’s dubiety was bleeding into him, making him suspect his father’s every gesture. Making him wonder if the Lion was still there, mocking Nasir at a level more cruel than ever.
Because that was what the Lion had always done—mocked him out of hatred. Ridiculed him out of loathing. When he branded Nasir with the poker. When he carved out Kulsum’s tongue.
When he stole into Zafira’s rooms.
Aya drew closer. “Tell me what troubles you.”
He let the silence stretch until he couldn’t hold it anymore.
“I was the one she saw.” He paused. He didn’t say her name. Slants of light and shadow bled through the latticed screens, eight-pointed stars painting his skin. When he blinked, he saw her at the door to his room, mouth swollen, hair coming undone. He wondered if she had enjoyed it. Whatever it was. “When the Lion came for the Jawarat.”
“She told you this?”
He pursed his lips. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? She could barely look at me.”
And she had always looked at him. Even when she had called him a murderer. Even when he had pressed her against the column on Sharr and captured her mouth in his.
“From what I understand, that should be somewhat flattering, laa?”
Nasir scowled, ready to fling himself off the rooftop. “What are you getting at?”
“Why does it upset you?”
Aya touched a hand to his shoulder, and Nasir stiffened, feeling the thrum of his blade against the inside of his wrist.
“Because,” he said after a steadying breath. “She already sees me as a monster.”
Now she would see the Lion.
Aya considered him. “She does not see you as such. Nor does she see a boy to love her. You are her prince. It will not be long before your father’s reign falls, and you must pick up the shards of Arawiya as sultan.”
Her words settled on his shoulders. “I can make her my sultana.”
Aya’s laugh was like chimes in the gentlest wind. “Quite a heavy sacrifice to ask.”
That isn’t a sacrifice, he was about to say, but wasn’t he the one who had likened the palace to a cage? Laa, a tomb. It would be different with her in it.
“She can command,” he countered. She commanded him well enough. “She would live a life of luxury. Want for nothing.”
The words rang hollow, even to him.
“Spoken like a true royal,” Aya said with a detached smile. Then something caught her eye and she dashed to the left ledge, shawl fluttering. “Aha! They return! Oh, I must change.”
Nasir swallowed as she disappeared down the hatch. Three travelers waded through the crowds on the Sultan’s Road. Seif held the note Aya had left for them back at her house. Kifah sported the crooked half smile she usually did when she was thinking anything mildly humorous.
And there she was, the light in the darkness. Something bubbled up his chest and throat, squeezing the crevice that held his heart, thrumming faster. Her gaze drifted to the palace, and rose up, and up, and up. Crashed into his.
Empty. Her eyes were windows, and in them he saw loss.
CHAPTER 36
Zafira wanted to believe he had been waiting for her, but delusions were for dreamers. She’d gotten quite friendly with the wide mirror in their room in Alderamin, and equally annoyed with herself for even caring about how she looked, but being back in Sultan’s Keep meant she’d see Nasir, and seeing Nasir reminded her of the girl in the yellow shawl.
When he leaped his way down from the palace wall, dropping in a crouch and a stirring of sand, it was delusional to believe he made his way to them without once lo
oking away from her, dressed in luxury only a prince could afford with an onyx-hilted dagger against his thigh and a scimitar sheathed at his hip. Armed, always armed. Inside and out. It was delusional to think he would let himself be seen without his mask, his gray eyes apologetic and rimmed in sleeplessness.
Because when he spoke, he didn’t look at her, he didn’t direct words at her, and it certainly felt like he spoke at her.
Still. Sweet snow below, the ache in her chest. The fervor in her blood.
She couldn’t care less that she was here, standing before the Sultan’s Palace, a place she had seen through Baba’s tales and never expected to witness herself.
The ornate gates swung inward, granting them entrance. Each of the guards swept a bow as Nasir passed. Zafira tried to ignore their scrutiny, at once insignificant and powerful. The path to the palace was set with interlacing stones that swelled and tapered like the scales on a marid’s tail, umber glittering gold. Under the watchful gaze of the stone lion fountain in the center, Nasir told them he had broken the sultan’s medallion.
“And you presumed it something to boast about?” Seif dismissed with no shortage of scorn. “Merely removing a chain while we were out there neck to neck with death?”
Zafira knew no one else understood Nasir’s pride. It wasn’t for what he’d done, but that he’d done it at all: Taken control. Acted of his own accord.
She opened her mouth, blood burning, but Kifah beat her to it, spear flashing in the early light.
“Enough,” Kifah snapped. “Did it work?” she asked Nasir, ever practical.
“I tho—I think—” Nasir stopped.
Seif scoffed. “You think.”
Zafira knew no one saw his bare flinch either. The world could be remade, but abuse could never be undone.
“He suspects we’ll use dum sihr to find the Lion, and he was not pleased. He’s forbidden it. The man I killed—”
“You’ll have to be more specific.”
Nasir didn’t respond, and Zafira saw the exact moment when his mask fitted back into place. His back steeled, his jaw hardened. The Prince of Death.
“I’m hungry,” she said suddenly.
The tension snapped like a bowstring. Kifah snorted. The palace doors groaned open beyond the arched entrances.
“Mortals,” Seif muttered, crossing his arms as Aya joined them in a flutter of lilac.
“You need this mortal, safi,” Zafira bit out. She felt Nasir watching her, now that she wasn’t watching him. “And if I’m to slit my hand and find Altair and the heart, I need to eat.”
Oblivious, Aya ushered them inside the palace as confident as if she were its queen. She took one glance at the vial of blood hanging from Zafira’s neck and beamed, quickly hiding a warble of her lips. “We must mark this occasion, my loves. Every victory must be celebrated, however small.”
Zafira couldn’t smile back, not when the sheath at her thigh hung achingly empty. Why was it that victories were forever riddled with loss?
That, and the palace made her feel out of place. The halls were bathed in golden light, heaving with shadows that danced, eager for the Lion. She saw extravagance at her every glance, dripping from the suspended lanterns, gilding the intricate, arching walls. Columns twisting with interlacing florals, pots overflowing with greenery too lush to be real, gossamer curtains fluttering shyly in the dry breeze of the wide windows, and beckoning balconies.
People filed in and out of the great double doors, dignitaries arriving for the ominous feast. Servants polished the ornate floors to a shine, and majlis after majlis was readied by nimble-fingered needlewomen. Chandeliers were brought down and lined with fresh oil wicks, and goats bleated from deeper inside where she presumed the kitchens would be, oblivious to their impending slaughter.
Servants led Zafira away from the others, and like a fool, she glanced at him, to see if he’d turn. Look at her. Acknowledge her.
He continued on, deep in conversation with Kifah. And it was as if, suddenly, they were strangers again. The cloaked Hunter, the aloof Prince of Death.
She didn’t think it was possible to stand footsteps away and miss him even more.
Zafira hurried after the servants to her quarters, as large as her and Yasmine’s houses combined, spacious enough to host an entire village for a feast. The ornaments alone could feed them for a year. There was a mirror wider than any she’d seen, an assortment of vials in front of it that Zafira deemed useless because she never understood what ointment was meant to accentuate which part of her face and in which order. Another low table held lidded bowls, one with almonds, another with pistachio-studded nougat, and the third with dates.
She stepped farther into the room and knelt to touch the stupendously large platform bed, softer than the fur of the supplest of rabbits. Her mind flashed to the Lion wearing Nasir’s face and her head spun, weariness tugging at her eyelids. But she was too guilty to climb beneath the covers knowing he was out there and that she could find him, the Jawarat, the heart, Altair—daama everything by losing yet another part of herself.
Sweet snow, she was tired. She lowered her cheek to the sheets, and didn’t think she had ever felt something so glorious in her life.
“Huntress.”
Zafira turned. The room was dark, unfamiliar.
The Silver Witch greeted her with a twist of her lips. “The first time is always the hardest.”
Umm had once said that about something far more mundane than what she was going to do. Ah, right. To Yasmine, when she’d snuck away with a boy once. A pang ripped through her heart.
“We have no choice,” Zafira replied.
Anadil canted her head. “You are the girl who triumphed without the forbidden.”
Zafira smiled sadly. “Times are desperate.”
The Silver Witch studied her. “Very well,” she said. “Dum sihr in its base form will allow you to use your affinity. You will be a da’ira again. And while you may easily use your own affinity, you must locate a spellbook should you require another, as dum sihr requires an incantation in the old tongue. Established centers, such as the Great Library, may have some in their collection, though I’m certain the Jawarat contains a few of its own.”
“I’ve lost it,” Zafira said softly.
“So find it.”
The words were so simple, Zafira wanted to curl into a ball and laugh.
“Have a care,” the Silver Witch continued. “Too much magic outside one’s affinity, and some part of you will pay the price.”
She touched a lock of her unnaturally bone-white hair, and before Zafira could say once was enough and that she would never practice any magic other than her own, Anadil shook her head. As if echoing what the Lion had said about brash promises.
“Okhti?”
Zafira bolted upright. Faint sunlight slanted over her, a breeze stirring the gauzy curtains. Noon. A dream. The Silver Witch wasn’t here; Zafira had daama slept. A dreamwalk?
Lana peered down at her.
“These are my rooms, but now we can share! Can you believe I slept in the prince’s chambers last night?” She lowered her voice, brown eyes glittering. “In a little room dedicated for his lady friends.”
There were a thousand words she could have said then:
Hello, or
Bait ul-Ahlaam does have everything, or
I found the vial at the cost of everything, or
How are the repercussions of the riots?
But she said none of them.
“Lady friends,” she echoed. Like the girl in the yellow shawl. Like the women whose gazes followed him shamelessly through the palace.
“You know, when they want to—”
“I know what it’s for,” Zafira snapped. Her neck burned. Other parts of her burned, too. In ways they’d never done before.
Lana grinned. “I missed your grumpiness.”
Zafira folded her legs beneath her and reached for the vial shimmering in the light, the geometric patterns reminding her of
the Silver Witch’s letter from forever ago. That’s it. Focus on what needs to be done.
“Sweet snow, it’s beautiful,” Lana exclaimed. “Did it cost a lot?”
“Yes.”
Not of coin, she didn’t say, but something else. Something no amount of dinars could ever buy. But Aya was right: This was a victory. For Lana, too. They had traveled to Alderamin and Bait ul-Ahlaam because of her suggestion. Because of Lana, Zafira might have lost the last she had of Baba, but they could find Altair and the Lion. Track down the heart and the Jawarat. That was what mattered.
Lana moved to a corner of the room where she had been poring over a sheaf of papyrus on a low table with a tray of tools and an array of ointments along the edge.
“There’s an entire section of the palace dedicated to medicine,” she explained. “I’ve been transcribing remedies for Ammah Aya.” She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t think she needs them any more than she hopes I’ll commit them to memory.”
Only then did Zafira realize what Aya had taught Lana that their mother never had: confidence. A surety that Demenhune women lacked, even those who had fathers or brothers like the Iskandars once had Baba.
“Oh, and Kifah came. She wasn’t happy to know you were asleep, but I took care of it. None of us are any use half-dead.”
Zafira pursed her lips at the word “us” and the reminder that her sister was no longer a little girl. She hadn’t been a little girl in a long time, but that was all Zafira saw: Her small figure tucked against Baba’s side. Her eyes wide in wonder, her nose in a book.
And yet she had kept their Umm alive. She had kept herself sane when Zafira disappeared into the Arz for hours on end. She might not have wielded a bow, but she had done just as much as Zafira. She had gone through as much as Zafira had.
“You didn’t have to do that, you know,” Zafira said, rolling off the bed. She tossed her one of the coins Kifah had given her.
Her sister gave her a half smile. “No one ever has to, and yet someone always must.”
“Lana, the philosopher,” Zafira teased, disappearing into the adjoining bath. She poked her head out in the silence. “Lana, the pensive?”
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