We Free the Stars

by Hafsah Faizal

  “Altair?”

  Nothing.

  “Altair!” he shouted.

  The snap of fingers came from a distance, and the ifrit vanished. Nasir stumbled, coming face to face with Kifah and her spear. Seif halted with his twin scythes in midair. The ground was littered with fallen ifrit and hashashins alike, a graveyard stretching between Nasir and the Lion.

  The Lion.

  Zafira’s arrow was in his hand, dripping black blood while he stood unaffected, almost unharmed.

  To his right stood Aya. To his left was Altair.

  Altair. Unchained. Content. Barely concerned. Nasir should have known the moment he saw his brother lounging with a book. Still, he felt something crushing inside him.

  To what end?

  The clouds finally parted for the sun, steeping the street and buildings in gold. Perhaps they were destined to be opposites: Nasir the dark to Altair’s light. The night to his day. The monster to his greatness. And now, once more, they were on opposing ends. Nasir with the forces of good, and Altair with the growing forces of evil.

  The Lion tsked. “Such violence, Nasir. What will the people think when they see how little their crown prince has changed?”

  “Altair!” Nasir roared, but the general turned with the Lion, and Nasir cursed the pain flooding him.

  “Aya? Aya, this isn’t right,” Kifah yelled, frantic. “Altair, stop her!”

  But her voice cracked with the same truth the rest of them had already gleaned—they would receive no help from Altair. Nasir’s fingers shook as he felt along his belt, empty of knives. The blades at his gauntlets were of no use at this distance. There was only one way.

  Nasir looked to the rooftop and shouted.

  CHAPTER 42

  Shoot.

  Nasir’s command encased Zafira in a tomb of ice. As if the Lion pulling her arrow out of his chest with a frown hadn’t been unsettling enough.

  This was Aya. Benyamin’s wife. Her ally and Arawiya’s greatest healer. It didn’t matter that she walked shoulder to shoulder with the Lion, her pale pink silk like petals of a flower withering in darkness.

  I can’t.

  She couldn’t shoot, despite knowing the Lion needed Aya for something important if he was stooping to the level of safin. Despite knowing she could bring ruin to them all.

  “Zafira, shoot!” Nasir shouted again, a note of desperation in his voice.

  Baba, help me. She stared down the shaft of the arrow, felt its pulse at her cheek, but she couldn’t. Fear crammed in her throat when someone else’s arrow struck bare paces from Aya’s dress. Zafira tried to find that dark voice in her blood. The newfound whisper that reveled in killing and destruction. But it lived within the Jawarat, far from her reach and easily overpowered by something else. The harsha in Aya’s hand. The word “roohi” from her lips. The pearls in her hair. The way she looked at Lana.

  Zafira lowered her bow.

  With a curse, Nasir ran. Gold flashed in the gloom as Kifah bounded after him. She pulled her arm back, hesitation freezing her form.

  But she did it. She launched her spear, her aim true.

  It landed on the stone with a whistle and a thump as the Lion disappeared, taking Aya and Altair with him.

  CHAPTER 43

  The Price of Dum Sihr is Always Great. Zafira had known this, and yet she’d done it anyway. If only Benyamin were here now, maybe he would help them make sense of what had happened. He would tell them why the Lion had barely flinched though her arrow’s aim had been true. Why his wife had chosen the Lion over them. Why Altair, the brother of his heart, had stonily turned away.

  There was only so much betrayal a soul could handle.

  They’d fled the people’s rising murmurs about the Lion and the crown prince who had tried to kill him, and finally made it back to the palace. Zafira looked among them, their ever-shrinking zumra—herself, Nasir, Seif, and Kifah. Numb, and broken.

  “Why?” Kifah asked hoarsely, spear whipping her leg and adding to the echo of their footsteps down the palace halls.

  Zafira returned again and again to the defining moment when she realized Aya would not use her staff against the Lion. The moment she knew Benyamin’s beloved was no longer one of them. She couldn’t decipher which hurt more: that, or when Kifah had begged for Altair’s help and he hadn’t batted an eye.

  “Deception was always the Lion’s gift,” Seif said, pain softening his lofty tone. “Aya has been known throughout the years for two aspects: her unnatural beauty and her skills as a healer. It is obvious which of the two the Lion claimed her for, but I cannot perceive why.” He looked at Zafira’s bow, seeing that moment when Zafira could have—should have—fired it. “Aya was my companion and my charge, or I would never have come here. I would never have left my calipha’s side.”

  “She’s still alive,” Zafira reminded him.

  What did it mean to be evil? The Lion’s message could have resonated with anyone, especially someone as troubled as Aya.

  Seif cut his gaze to her. “She is dead to me.”

  “Until she’s truly dead, none of us can rest,” Kifah said. The words weren’t cruel, only fact.

  Dum sihr. It was easy—slit her palm and meld it with the blood of the most powerful beings in Arawiya. Her compass would rise back to life, and she could find them again: the Lion, Aya, Altair. She bit back against the temptation. After what had happened, she knew that blood magic was not the answer.

  “And here we thought we’d be smart stowing the hearts away. He clearly doesn’t need them. He didn’t even look for them,” Kifah said with a sad scoff. A group of white-thobed emirs stared as they passed. “But why Aya? Maybe he’s injured and needs her to heal him?”

  Zafira shook her head. “I shot him. Every one of us saw the outcome of it.”

  “It should not have been possible,” Seif agreed. “But it serves as further proof that with the Jawarat, anything is possible.”

  Anything, indeed. Even splitting men in half. Zafira wondered if it was happy now. If she would ever be able to fill the gaping hole it had reopened by leaving her.

  Seif continued. “Altair is no longer—”

  “He left us.” Nasir, who hadn’t been fully present since the Lion disappeared, finally broke his silence.

  She felt his pain as if it were her own.

  Her limbs wanted to propel her toward him, to comfort him, but her heart held her in place.

  “Maybe he had reason to,” Kifah offered helplessly. “I refuse—I refuse to believe he left without a reason.”

  But her usual ferocity had been dimmed by what they’d seen. Nasir clenched his jaw and dropped his hood, running a hand through the wayward strands of his hair, tightening his fingers and tugging, inflicting pain upon himself. “He was lounging in that house.”

  Kifah shook her head, adamant but quiet.

  Zafira’s cup of sorrow had run empty, a strange numbness taking its place, denial lacing her edges. The haze of shadow had made it hard to see, but she could have sworn there were shackles around Altair’s wrists.

  An angry shout drew their attention as one. A scribe narrowly avoided colliding with an emir and darted down the hall, stumbling to a halt before Nasir.

  “Amiri,” she said breathlessly, brushing two fingers from her lowered brow. Her lashes fluttered. “The sultan requests your presence.”

  * * *

  The throne room glowed like something out of a story in which honor and justice and love prevailed. Zafira almost laughed at the irony.

  People like her looked at a place and wondered how to furnish it with the least amount of coins. The rich did the opposite, and the Sultan’s Palace was no exception. Decadence spilled from everywhere. The cool tiles kept the bulk of the desert heat at bay, the dark rug leading to the throne’s dais cutting a stark contrast. On the Gilded Throne, a structure as magnificent as the stories described it to be, the sultan lounged, tall and proud.

  Zafira could see why Seif had decided not to join th
em.

  She had only seen the man through the fiery summoning Nasir had done on Sharr, but he didn’t look any nicer now that the medallion was gone. A stern countenance was only part of a leader’s charge, Zafira knew, but she couldn’t imagine the sultan ever being fatherly, even if he was handsome enough that she could see how the Silver Witch fell for his dark beauty.

  What bothered her was Nasir, and how he looked like a man whose fortunes had turned and he had yet to believe it. She worried he was less attentive, which led to the worry, too, that she had begun to rely on him. He wore his wariness like a cloak, his fresh turban and thin silver circlet making her heart race a little too quickly, despite the defeat weighing heavily across them.

  Men of the Sultan’s Guard stood statue-like along either side of the room, their silver cloaks complementing the ornately paneled walls. How anyone could live under such constant vigilance was beyond her.

  “Ibni.” The sultan greeted him with a smile, but it was clear Nasir had gotten so accustomed to the terror the sultan had become that he didn’t know how to react to the man his father once was. “How is your progress?”

  Kifah’s jaw clenched, and Zafira agreed. What was the point of Nasir freeing the sultan if the man wasn’t going to help them?

  “Decent,” Nasir said without elaboration.

  It wasn’t decent, they were failing. Terribly. And yet he revealed nothing. Laa, his tone was shaped to please.

  Zafira held steady against a shiver when the sultan’s gaze fell to her. She saw him through Lana’s eyes, and it wasn’t hard to imagine ripping her blade across his neck, his blood so poisoned it ran black.

  “—and we will delegate more resources,” the sultan was saying.

  “I think we should delay the feast,” Nasir said slowly.

  The sultan considered him with a heavy exhale. “We spoke of this, Ibni.”

  “Yes, and the feast is to celebrate the return of magic,” Nasir insisted. “A feat we are far, far away from.”

  The words stung. How close they had been at one point, on Sharr when the battle was in their favor. When they had salvaged the five hearts from the Sisters of Old, before the Lion had taken Altair and the heart he protected. Her thoughts clattered to a halt.

  Altair had the last of the hearts.

  What if—no.

  She refused to connect the thoughts. She refused to believe he had betrayed them so early on, with the corpse of Benyamin at his feet on Sharr, his friend whose soul was still bound with Altair’s own.

  “The banquet is tomorrow, and the delegates have already begun to arrive. It is too late; we cannot delay it. Are the maids and kitchen staff assisting in your efforts?”

  Nasir’s brow furrowed. “No, but—”

  “Then they will continue preparations.” Mirth played in the sultan’s eyes as he looked to Kifah and then Zafira. “Your friends will attend as well.” His next words addressed them directly. “I will have the tailors take your measurements.”

  Zafira inclined her head as if this were the greatest blessing a man had ever bestowed on her. “Shukrun, Sultani.”

  “And that merchant in Sarasin—Muzaffar, yes? I’ve invited him, too. It would be good to make his acquaintance and learn his views on certain measures so that we may possibly implement him as caliph.” The sultan smiled. “As you suggested, Nasir.”

  He tapped his scepter on the dais, and caught Nasir’s flinch.

  “Worry not, Ibni. All will be well.”

  His words made Zafira think of her own father, whose every word came from the heart.

  “You may leave,” the sultan concluded.

  Nasir paused. But even ridiculed and likened to a dog, he had wanted his father’s approval, and he acquiesced, the three of them slowly backing away, as if the sultan would die if they turned their back on him. Who knows? You should try it, Yasmine said in her head.

  Spite will turn your hair gray, Zafira shot back.

  Fancy necklace or not, he’s responsible for thousands of deaths.

  Zafira closed her eyes at the painful reminder. He was responsible for more: the tension across Nasir’s shoulders, the fear knotting the words on his tongue, the scars on his back. Abuse. Years of it.

  “There is one more matter,” the sultan called, and her eyes flew open as they stopped with their ridiculous backtracking.

  She kept her head low, every bit a humble peasant.

  “Neither of us will ever know why the Lion sent out the invitations, Ibni,” the sultan began.

  Zafira paused. Nasir had said that the sultan retained his memories from his time under the Lion’s control. How could he not remember something as concrete as a reason?

  “And in order to make the occasion worth such a strenuous journey,” he continued, “we will need to provide for Arawiya’s dignitaries.”

  “Yes, of course,” Nasir said slowly.

  “As such, you will project your best at the feast, for you may meet your future bride.”

  If it were possible for a person’s entire body to slowly blink, Nasir’s did just that. Zafira’s own chest stirred oddly. She could have sworn the sultan was watching her as he spoke.

  Nasir opened his mouth with a parched wheeze, but the sultan wasn’t finished.

  “The Arz is no more, thanks to you. Now we must strengthen ties between caliphates, and as you are aware, the Pelusian calipha, as well as the Zaramese caliph and several wazirs, all have daughters of marriageable age.”

  “A bride,” Nasir repeated hollowly in the expectant silence.

  Kifah smothered a laugh with a terrible attempt at a cough.

  “A woman,” the sultan said, and Zafira wondered if she imagined the temper in his voice, “whom you will wed and then—”

  Nasir cleared his throat. “Shouldn’t we wait until—”

  “Now is as good a time as any. Don’t you agree, Huntress?”

  Zafira started at the sudden attention. The faint lines across the alabaster tiles were suddenly the most intriguing in the world. Yes, Lana, Zafira thought. She very much wanted to kill him.

  Nasir saved her from answering. “I’m not ready for … for a bride.”

  Zafira looked up in the silence, wishing she could speak the words in her chest. Wishing she had her hood so she could stare without chagrin. The sultan leaned back against the burnished gold of the throne, considering his son. How were they to know the sultan was truly himself now, and not the Lion’s puppet?

  “You will be ready, Ibni. It is only a matter of summoning the right amount of zeal for a pretty face. You are more than capable, aren’t you?”

  The words were a dismissal delivered with a double edge, but Nasir remained rooted to the spot, even as the doors opened for a pair of emirs. The sultan’s attention drifted, though his guard continued to watch, and Zafira had the overwhelming sense of them mocking their prince in the silence.

  “Nasir,” she said softly, and because she was a fool who couldn’t stop herself, because she was hurting and he was there, right there, and oh how she missed him, her arm swung forward and her fingers brushed his, warmth tangling for the briefest of moments.

  He snatched back, blinking in a way that made her think he had forgotten she was here. He had forgotten he was here.

  The sultan saw.

  When the throne room doors closed behind them, Zafira hushed the skeins tugging at her heart, trying to steer her focus. Aya, the Lion, the heart, Altair. A bride.

  Something burned in her eyes. Fatigue, she lied to herself, ignoring what this entire conversation was: a reminder of her place.

  A sign, perhaps. She was a fleck of dust, adrift in the storm of sultans.

  CHAPTER 44

  They were gone. His zumra, his family. They had come for him, and then they had—gone. The sight of them cast Altair upon Sharr once more, Nasir at his back, Benyamin with his little vials. Their camaraderie.

  But this time, it was his fault that he was alone. His fault that the pain fracturing their gaz
es when he had turned away and strode to the Lion’s side was seared into his own soul.

  And they didn’t know the half of it: That it was Altair who had sent the Lion to them, telling his father where the zumra was hiding, because he trusted them to be competent and the Lion was bound to find them anyway. That Altair had turned back because of what Nasir had said, because though Altair had fruitlessly searched the house for the heart, he finally knew what they needed.

  When he had decided to see how far a bluff could take him, he had not expected the repercussions upon himself.

  “For a moment,” the Lion simpered, “I doubted you would return. You seem to forget who you are when you see that pathetic prince.”

  “Yet here I am, ever loyal,” Altair quipped. He had also not expected the stirrings of empathy toward his father to blossom in some delicate corner of his heart.

  The Lion hummed. “And what did you learn from him?”

  “Will I be free of these shackles if I tell you?”

  “That is yet to be determined.”

  Altair did not answer, but the Lion, he knew, expected nothing, and left without another word. There were times when he wondered which of them was truly falling for the other’s delusions.

  The two lanterns at the head of the room sculpted Aya’s slender form in shadow. The silence simmered between them, mostly because Altair couldn’t bring himself to look at her. His friend. The beloved of an even dearer friend. Benyamin would have shattered.

  “I returned to the Lion because of you,” he said to her. He knew where they were now. He knew this place like the back of his hand.

  The Lion had been right to ponder over Altair’s return. For when Altair saw Nasir, haggard but happy to see him—as happy as the grump could look—he felt a renewed sense of hope.

  With his brother and the zumra at his side, he would triumph.

  “You did not have to.” She smoothed the folds of her abaya. Like Benyamin, she was his elder by decades, but she looked like a lost child sprawled on the floor. “I do not need protecting.”

  Altair scoffed, leaning against the wall, resting his weighted wrists on the tables on either side. “Sweet Aya, you lost my care for your well-being when you linked hands with his.”