We Free the Stars

by Hafsah Faizal

  “The seamstress didn’t want a wide skirt,” Reem braved as Zafira adjusted the waistband of the matching, form-fitting pants. The dress had slits, invisible among the pleats, so she could run if she had to.

  “Akhh, it’s incredible!” Lana looked more delighted than Zafira did.

  Sanya crouched and strapped a sheath around Zafira’s leg.

  She froze.

  Reem looked anxious. “Sayyida?”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Zafira said softly. “I don’t—”

  Sanya nodded in the mirror. “The seamstress didn’t think you would want to go without it. She called you a gazelle.”

  “But I don’t—”

  “I see it now. Don’t you, Sanya?” Reem interrupted, canting her head in that birdlike way, oblivious to the ache of Zafira’s heart, the emptiness filling that sheath against her leg. “Innocent to the bone, even as she outruns the beast.”

  Zafira swallowed her protest once more when someone rapped on the door, sharp and sure. Sanya hurried to the receiving rooms to answer, chattering all the way, and Reem laughed as she gathered her array of cosmetics and other things for Lana, shooing her away when Lana moved to help. Zafira stole another glance in the mirror.

  “Yasmine would die,” Lana whispered by her side, and Zafira allowed herself a wistful smile. If only Yasmine were here. And Umm and Baba. And—

  A shadow fell in the doorway, and then her heart was stuttering, her gaze lifting up, up, up, then crashing into a gray abyss shrouded in kohl.

  Reverence. That was in the look he gave her. It was the same look from that night on the rooftops outside the palace. The same look that caused something strange and bold to blossom in her veins, more powerful than any magic the world could lay at her feet. The look she had feared she would never see again.

  The feast was this evening. Tonight, he would be bound to another. Tomorrow, the Lion could come and sweep them all into a den of shadows.

  Now, this moment, she would steal for herself.

  “You—” He stopped and glanced at Reem and Sanya, dismissing them even as he commended them. “You did well.”

  “Sayyidi,” said Reem.

  “Sultani,” murmured Sanya.

  “Wait!” Zafira said, and the girls ran into each other. “What about Lana?”

  Lana started for the door. “Okhti, this is a palace. I can get dressed in the hall if the rooms are full. You, on the other hand…”

  She attempted a wink but closed both her eyes, then followed the servants into the hall. Zafira laughed shakily when the door closed, her neck burning. She floundered, and finally looked up at him through hooded eyes.

  She watched the shift in his throat. If only he knew how much she loved the silvery lilt of his voice. Would he ever stop speaking then?

  “I have something for you,” he said.

  He handed her a box, long and slender. She took it, discreetly testing its weight. Providing for her family meant gifts were few and far between with her on the receiving end.

  “Shukrun,” said Zafira, containing herself. Fighting against the emotions lodging in her throat because he had come. He was here. Truly here. Not to slit her palm. Not because he was required to be.

  That yearning, missing, emptiness in her soul vanished, gullible as it was to know what tonight entailed but not to allow herself to care. Not yet. This was her moment. Hers alone.

  “Open it,” he insisted, standing close.

  She had never thought herself shy until she was the object of his gaze. The box was wood, simple and hinged, and she lifted the latch. The lid fell back with a soft creak, and a pang shot through her.

  Tucked into a bed of silk, a blade glinted back at her, sharp and tapering at its curve. Black filigree ran along its blunt edge, matching the line of onyx set into the flat pommel and burnished hilt, the silver dulled and dark with age.

  A jambiya. It was lavish, more so than anything she had ever owned.

  “It was my first dagger,” he explained. “My father gave it to me when—when he was still himself. I could have commissioned a new one, but I know that you, well, you favor sentiment, don’t you?”

  That drew a smile from her. “I do.”

  “Don’t say shukrun again,” he said before she could thank him.

  “What should I say, then?”

  “That you like it,” he said, and worked his jaw, “or that you don’t. Or that you don’t want an old castoff. Then I’ll find you a new one.”

  She laughed. “That’s not how gifts work.”

  He didn’t have anything to say to that, and she wondered if gifts were rare for him, too. It was no small act, parting with the dagger one had received from the loving father who became a monster. It made this more than a jambiya—it was a collection of memories and moments, a culmination of experiences. If there was any dagger worthy of replacing Baba’s, it was this. His.

  “I love it,” she said softly, testing it in her palm. It fit as well as Baba’s did, though the blade was lighter, finer. Made for a prince. “It’s beautiful and old and perfect.”

  She lifted the hem of her dress and slid the dagger into the sheath, forgetting how well the pants clung to her skin and suddenly aware of his gaze following the movements.

  Silence stretched between them, and she wondered if Kifah had told him, or if he had asked. Or if he had noticed her empty sheath and surmised the rest.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered, and though they were two short words that could be meaningless, she knew they were anything but. Not from him. Not from the boy who rarely spoke at all, making each word that he uttered worth a thousand from anyone else. He lifted his hand and his fingers splayed before he dropped it. “For all that I’ve done. For all that I never said.”

  She might have remembered what she said if he hadn’t been so close. If they weren’t both struggling to understand. With a strangled sigh, he slipped his fingers into her hair and she let him draw her closer, closer, until their foreheads touched. Five finger pads to the back of her skull, the smallest at the nape of her neck.

  Somehow, this moment felt more intimate than their encounter on Sharr. It was an emotion stretched raw. Her exhales became his broken inhales. Their hearts pounded as one.

  “I can’t—”

  The word tore from his throat, and then some part of him retreated. She pulled back, finally understanding why. She saw it in the way his brows furrowed and his jaw worked. It wasn’t that he was too proud to speak, he struggled to. He assumed no one cared for what he wanted to say.

  “I know what it’s like,” she said softly. She had Yasmine, but her friend had a knack for asserting her opinion more and listening less. She’d had Deen, until he began to love her in a way that was different from the way she loved him. And then there was Lana, whom she had wrongfully believed too young to understand, too new to burden.

  Yet from the tightening of his shoulders, she knew she was wrong. She could never understand the extent of what he had endured. She had been given a glimpse when he had met his father on Sharr. When the sultan barely allowed his son a word, when nearly every sentence hurled at him was some form of ridicule.

  “I understand in some way,” she corrected. “To have words collect on your tongue, but feel as if they aren’t worth voicing. To feel as if no one wants to listen.”

  It was his truth, a lie ingrained into the fibers of his being: His words were not meant to be voiced. No one cared. He looked away, and she knew she had struck true.

  “I want to,” she said.

  His head lifted, and the last of the sun lit his eyes in gold. She wanted every word he would give her. She would listen for as long as he would let her. But he looked at her as if she were a knife to an already bleeding wound.

  “I can’t—I don’t want this,” he breathed. “I don’t want to pick one of them as my bride.”

  “Then tell him,” she said firmly, though knowing it was not so easy. “Tonight, at the feast itself, tell him. Do as your
soul desires.”

  CHAPTER 46

  Altair had spent the entire night searching for clues and racking his brain for why the Lion might need Aya, to no avail. He hadn’t been able to talk to her again, either, for the Lion had kept her secured. Precaution, in case his son decided to kill her. It spoke to how little the Lion truly trusted him, but Altair didn’t mind.

  He knew what he needed.

  The door opened for the Lion and several ifrit. In the center of the room, one unfurled a bedroll generous enough for a sultan. Another set out a tray of tools, instruments meant for a healer. A third brought in yet another tray, empty and pristine.

  Upon it, the Lion set down an organ, crimson and pulsing.

  The final heart of the Sisters of Old, the embodiment of Altair’s mistake. Because he had planned and schemed and plotted, but he hadn’t even considered he might be kidnapped himself.

  “Well done, my kin,” the Lion said, the Jawarat in his hand. He met Altair’s confusion with a staid smile. “Are you ready, Altair?”

  “Er,” said Altair, “for what?”

  “To live forever,” he said simply. “We will be at the forefront of a new Arawiya.”

  Altair opened his mouth, dread stealing his ability to make light of the moment. A frenzy bubbled in his veins, and his pulse quickened when he noticed that beneath his open robes, the Lion wasn’t wearing a shirt.

  “Now,” the Lion said to the ifrit near him. “Bring us Aya.”

  A healer and a heart.

  Altair wished his mind didn’t work so quickly. To be blissfully unaware was a blessing of its own.

  I would need a heart to claim otherwise.

  The Lion was half ifrit, half safin. Born without a heart, but with the cavity for one. There was an actual hole in his chest. What better way to fill it than with the object he desired more than anything else?

  Altair struggled for air. With this, his father would be as powerful as the Sisters of Old. Limitless in his capabilities. Unmatched by anyone else.

  The Lion set down the Jawarat.

  Altair didn’t think. He lunged, slower than he should have done, which only made his triumph blaze brighter when his hands closed around the Jawarat. The Lion remained still even as the ifrit scrambled.

  As power shifted in a single, dividing moment.

  The book hummed in Altair’s hands, a low, almost imperceptible sound akin to that of a content cat. It was connected to him in a way his father might soon be, as it was forged with the blood of the Sisters of Old, the very same that coursed through his veins.

  And Altair was going to destroy it.

  He opened the book to its middle, its worn pages rough.

  “I should have known,” the Lion remarked softly, almost sadly. “We are mirrors, you and I. Only you cannot see it. Go on, my son. Tear it apart.”

  He listed his head, and Altair paused at his calm.

  Sultan’s teeth—Zafira. The daama thing was connected to her life. If he tore it apart, she would die with it.

  “Is that concern I see?”

  Altair clenched his jaw.

  “You betrayed your zumra by telling me where they were. You’ve killed and mutilated and betrayed to rise up Arawiya’s ranks. I’ve seen the atrocities you’ve committed under the name of the kingdom’s well-being.” The Lion lowered his voice, temptation in his words. “What’s one more life to ensure your people’s future?”

  Nothing.

  Everything.

  The fight bled from him when the Lion pried the Jawarat out of his grip, and four ifrit wrenched back his arms.

  The Lion gloated, knowing Altair could not harm him, not when he had used Altair’s own blood as protection. Or Altair would have lunged for far more, gouged those unnatural eyes from their sockets, ripped the man to shreds with his bare hands.

  The Lion set down the Jawarat with a soft, dawning laugh as Altair fought against the ifrit. “You love her.”

  Altair was not like his mother. He loved freely, abundantly. It was admiration that came rarer, for him. “Only a fool wouldn’t love her. After all that she’s endured and all that she’s lost, she still fights for a world that failed her.” The true definition of a lionheart.

  The Lion only hummed.

  “Unlike you,” Altair said with anger.

  The Lion’s gaze shot up.

  It was a warning, a sign he should stop, but he did not. He couldn’t. “You endured loss and turned into a monster. You suffered, and now you want others to do the same.”

  Stop talking, sanity whispered in Altair’s ears. The Lion’s eyes were like flint; his mouth a straight, hard line; his body as still as when Altair spoke of his days in the palace, abandoned by his mother.

  “Isn’t that right, Father?”

  In a burst of speed, the Lion flicked his wrist and Altair was wrenched back against the wall, arms flung to either side. He let out a splintered breath, unable to move. The man must be terribly furious if he was wasting magic on Altair’s insolence.

  “I need you alive, Altair,” the Lion said as he stepped close, his voice low. “I need your blood, and that, too, for merely a while longer. I do not need you whole. I kept you unbroken because I believed we could be together. Work together.” Sorrow flitted across his gaze. As if he lamented the lies they had shared together. “Did you consider that before your tongue ran loose?”

  The Lion’s livid eyes dropped to his mouth, and for the first time in Altair’s life, he felt it: pure, unrestrained terror. He clamped his mouth closed, blinking back against the perspiration dripping down his brow. The Lion gripped the underside of his face, nails like claws raking his skin, and held him still.

  “No, not the tongue, my dearest son,” he taunted. “We both know you value something else far more than your voice, and you’ll have much to say when I rid you of it.”

  Altair saw the glint of a small knife, and that was all he could do: watch. As understanding struck. As a distinct before and after were born in this moment. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t fight back, but he would never beg.

  He grasped the shreds of his composure as the Lion of the Night shoved the blade through his eye.

  CHAPTER 47

  Something caught in Nasir’s left eye, making it hard to see for the briefest of moments before he blinked it away. Zafira might as well have told him to leap into a chasm. That was how it felt to speak to his father.

  A bride. The mere thought weighed heavier than the Lion having the Jawarat, a heart, and Altair. Nothing in Nasir’s life ever went right, but everything seemed to be going more wrong than usual.

  “I will,” he promised softly. For you. There was something in his chest. A wild beast, perhaps, desperately trying to claw its way free. To leap into her hands and let her do with it what she willed.

  He had rehearsed an apology and an explanation when he had lifted his old dagger from the crate in his wardrobe. Words upon words that he had painstakingly strung together, things he needed to say before tonight. Before the feast, when he would have to choose a bride.

  Every last syllable vanished when he saw her.

  I want to, she had said, and he wanted to know the limits of those words. He wanted to speak every word he had jumbled inside him, but he needed—he didn’t know what he needed. Time, perhaps.

  “You look nice, Zafira,” she drawled playfully when he didn’t say anything more. She flourished two fingers from her brow with a confidence that stole his breath. “Shukrun, my prince.”

  She wasn’t nice, she was a vision.

  The girls had brushed moonlight onto her skin, leaving that splotch of darkness to taunt him. Her hair was a mane of gleaming tresses framing her face, blue eyes dazzling in a fringe of kohl.

  “Do you wish for me to scribe poetry in your name, fair gazelle?” His voice was rough.

  “Pretty words are nice sometimes.”

  He brushed a hand down the shimmer of her sleeve, touched the inside of her wrist. “Did the stars fall from the sk
y to adorn you in their luster? No—liquid silver. You are the well that forged every blade in the world.”

  She laughed, and his heart leaped at the sound.

  “On second thought,” she breathed, closing the distance between them, making him all too aware of her bed stretching out behind her, a tease and a wish, before she brought her mouth to his. “You should do more and talk less.”

  A sound escaped him. His ears burned at her intrepid advance, so unlike the blushing girl from Sharr. It was one thing to want to kiss her, and quite another for her to grip the collar of his thobe and pull him to her, the softness of her mouth capturing his. His hands fitted to her waist, the warmth of her skin pulsing through the thin cloth.

  “Nasir.”

  The pleading in her whisper drove him mad. He wrenched her closer, barely stopping a groan at the feel of her against him. Her lips parted with his, and he smiled at the tentative press of her tongue. He tasted citrus, and the roaring in his blood rushed lower, lower.

  Perhaps more than her mouth and her soft sighs, he craved the touch of her palm on his chest, the splay of her fingers on his heart. Claiming him. He pulled away to study her. Her eyes were glassy, her lips bruised and far too lovely for a killer like him. Yet he allowed himself the credit—he had done this. He was the reason the cloistered Huntress was falling apart. He was the reason her lungs worked for breath.

  He wanted to lose his fingers in the obsidian of her hair again. To knot his hands into the fabric of her dress to stop the tremble in them, to lead her back, back, back, but it would be cruel to ruin her perfection. He lightened his touch.

  “I missed you,” she whispered against his mouth.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered at the same time.

  She drew back the barest bit, and that half-lidded gaze nearly undid him. “What for now?”

  He swayed forward. “For ruining your dress.”

  “What’s the use of a pretty dress if I can’t do what I want in it?”