We Free the Stars

by Hafsah Faizal

“Chaos?” Lana asked.

  Kifah nodded. “Bloodbath.”

  Zafira didn’t doubt it. Wearing the crown of sultana held no merit if it meant sitting beside a mostly mortal husband. Even if he was half si’lah.

  “You can’t let him do it, Okhti. You can’t let him marry anyone else,” Lana murmured, gripping her arm. Anyone else, as if she were a contender in a roster of royal women. She, a peasant from the poorest village of Demenhur.

  Zafira shushed her.

  Like the rest, the calipha, her daughter, and their circle remained standing. No one smiled. Their ears were in full display as if to say Look at my immortality and bow.

  “Caliph Ayman al-Ziya min Demenhur!”

  Ice flooded Zafira’s veins. Her caliph strode down the row with his hunched shoulders and fading hair. Lana made a sound akin to a growl. Haytham was close at the caliph’s heels, wearing a checkered keffiyah held by a black rope, a sword sheathed by his side with a brilliant moonstone pommel. He was the picture of a dutiful wazir, except for his haunted eyes, hollow circles beneath them.

  Zafira remembered his sorrow from when they’d stood before the missing Arz, how terrible it had been. What his face showed now was infinitely worse, and she couldn’t understand what would cause it. Death? More secrets?

  He had known all along that Zafira was a girl, and never said a word. He had recognized in her what he had instilled in the caliph’s daughter, discarded for her gender. If not for Haytham, the girl would have lacked the tutelage of an heir.

  White-hot rage shot through Zafira’s skull as she recalled that no one in Arawiya, aside from Haytham and herself, even knew that the caliph of Demenhune had a daughter.

  Kifah gripped her arm. “Oi, stay calm.”

  Zafira swayed back with a low breath and ran her gaze across the gathered crowd.

  She hated Ayman. She hated how angry he made her feel, rekindling the rage born from her bond with the Jawarat. The surrounding noise blurred into one, her blood rushing through her ears. The burning rage seared her gaze.

  This isn’t like you.

  The Jawarat was gone. It couldn’t continue influencing her. But as she fought her anger and her darkening thoughts, she blearily recalled its promise, smug and sure: We will align with time.

  “Caliph Elect, Muzaffar bin Jul min Sarasin!”

  She exhaled slowly at the sound of the announcer’s voice.

  The man, middle-aged and well dressed in a finely spun russet thobe, looked every bit the merchant he was presumed to be. His skin was the same olive tone as Nasir’s, and as if testament to the improvements he was spearheading in Sarasin, his face was pleasant. He was a reminder that there was good in this world. She hoped the sultan would see it and appoint him, and quickly.

  The announcer’s voice rang one final time, and not a single guest dared to breathe.

  “Esteemed guests, the Sultan of Arawiya, once of Sarasin, and Crown Amir, Nasir bin Ghameq bin Talib.”

  Zafira’s heart slowed, pulsing in time to the sultan’s steps. He grasped his gold-banded black cloak in one hand, a white thobe flashing beneath it. How he could spend time and coin on clothing and feasting instead of searching for the Lion and the fifth heart was beyond Zafira. Laa, it made her as angry as the Caliph of Demenhur did.

  Lana nudged her.

  Behind the sultan, a wraith in the night, was Nasir. His features were stoic, eyes trained at his father’s back. Someone had contained his hair in a checkered turban, neat dark folds held by a silver circlet, though the stubborn strands didn’t want to stay put and a lock curled boyishly at his temple. His thobe was immaculately fitted to his lithe frame, tailored sharp enough to cut. Dark damasks embroidered the panels, the high collar trimmed in silver. He looked smart, princely, and unarmed, but she knew that last one was a lie.

  He looks beautiful, her heart whispered to her.

  The sultan settled onto his throne. Nasir remained at his side, eyes sweeping the room as the dignitaries took their seats.

  “There’s that look,” Kifah muttered beneath her breath, and Zafira met the fervent flint of his gaze with a suppressed shiver—almost, almost missing the way his mouth quirked at one corner with the faintest smirk before his mask returned.

  Cannot all three be one and the same?

  A silence fell over the room when the sultan lifted his chin.

  CHAPTER 50

  The malodorous scent of blood clung to the room, transporting Altair to the plains of the battlefield. Anywhere that was not here. The Lion’s tenacity was endless, for more than once, those amber eyes rolled to the back of his head, but not one time did he lose consciousness. He was bleary but alert as Aya cut and hacked at his body, healing him as she went along.

  It was better than Altair was doing.

  “He will kill you,” he said. No matter what transpired, the Lion still loathed safin a thousand times over.

  Aya only smiled, as dreamily as ever. The same way she had smiled years ago when she ran her fingers through Altair’s hair. The same way she had smiled when her son was born.

  “Think of what you’re aiding,” Altair pleaded, uncaring that the Lion was witness.

  “The ignition of a new world,” Aya said. “Had it not been for the Sisters, Benyamin would live. My son would live.”

  “Listen to yourself,” he roared, wrenching against the ifrit again. His legs trembled like a daama fawn’s, his strength diminishing. “The Lion killed Benyamin. Right in front of me.”

  The Lion merely blinked at her. “Do not believe the musings of the mad, fair Aya. Benyamin was akin to a brother—he brought me into your fold. Cared for me as no one else did.”

  Altair stared in disbelief. “Then ask him how Benyamin died on the island where the Lion was our only foe.”

  Aya paused, fingers poised above the Lion’s chest. She turned to Altair with the barest hint of sense.

  “Protecting yet another descendant of the Sisters,” the Lion said simply, and Aya exhaled slowly, reaching for one of her tools. “You see? They will always be the cause of our troubles.”

  Sultan’s teeth. “Yet here you are, Aya, giving him power that even the Sisters themselves venerated.”

  “A power I will wield well, for I have suffered as you have, as the Sisters never did.”

  Aya looked at Altair, wide eyes soft, and he dared to hope. “It is truth, is it not?”

  No. Her hands closed around the heart. The heart the Sisters had entrusted to them. To him. The ifrits’ clawed hands dug into his skin.

  “Aya, please,” Altair begged. She ignored him, tongue between her teeth in concentration.

  And there was a moment like a sigh when the pulsing organ was fitted into place.

  Altair’s sob was soundless. The Lion’s chest rose and fell rapidly as he struggled to acclimate. Aya’s hands were steeped in red and black, magic aiding her along, connecting arteries and valves with sickening precision.

  But she was not yet finished.

  And Altair was not yet dead.

  He emptied his mind, wiped away the pain, and collected what remained of his strength. But even if he could break free, he had no access to a weapon. He couldn’t blast her with a beam of light because of the daama shackles. He couldn’t stab her with a scalpel, too far out of reach.

  No—he would wring her neck with his bare hands.

  He wrenched forward and fell to his knees with a force that rattled his teeth. The ifrit chittered. The Lion’s eyes flashed. Aya pressed the back of a bloody hand to her mouth at the sudden ruckus.

  “Aya, my sweet,” the Lion prodded gently, an edge to his voice, “finish what you’ve started.”

  A crackling stave came rushing for Altair’s stomach. He twisted away, slamming the weight of his shackle into the ifrit’s chest. A second stave rammed into the wall behind Altair’s head, and he wrapped his fingers around a scrawny throat until the ifrit ran away shrieking.

  The other two ifrit dug their claws into his arm, drawing blood, and
Altair yanked them off with a hiss, needing an extra moment to orient his one-eyed self. Forget Aya. The Lion was supine on the bedroll. He lunged, stumbling back from a sudden blast of shadow.

  Magic.

  The Lion’s sigh was a sated sound. Beneath Aya’s sure fingers, his skin knitted itself back together again, beads of black blood streaking his golden skin.

  “Such zeal, Altair,” he rasped. “Did you really presume I would lie here without precaution?”

  Altair didn’t waste time with a retort. He scrambled toward Aya, prepared to pull her away, when terror froze him in place.

  Blood poured from her mouth. She coughed, looking at the spray of blood in her hand in dismay. The scalpel was lodged just beneath her breast, the Lion releasing it from his grip.

  “The irony,” he said with a soft laugh. And then he stood, swaying as his newfound power countered the loss of blood. “What was it that Benyamin used to say?”

  The price of dum sihr is always great.

  Aya fell into Altair’s arms with a surprised oof. How many times had she lain just like this?

  She lifted red fingers to his face. Her pink abaya was drenched in blood, both hers and the Lion’s. “Did I do well, sadiqi?”

  No, sweet Aya. Twisted Aya. Beloved Aya, who had ruined everything.

  “Shh, don’t speak.” He was angry with her—so terribly angry—but the despondence was greater. “Heal it.” His hand shook as he reached for hers, dragging her prone fingers to her breast. “Aya. Heal yourself.”

  She didn’t move. “You must know.” Her breath wavered. “I never stopped loving you. I tried, but the pain was too much.”

  He felt it then. That box in which he had stored every dark thing of his past swelling too heavy, too big for his soul. Pain rent the latches that kept it shut. It flooded him, tearing one single sob from his throat, hoarse and aching.

  “An empty life is a fate worse than death,” she whispered.

  The words sank bitter and desolate before the light vanished from her eyes.

  The Lion hummed softly.

  “Chain him up,” he commanded, and turned to leave as ifrit flooded the room.

  Altair blearily wondered if he was next. No. He did not want death. He would not welcome it the way she had. He rose to his feet. He was Altair, son of none, gifted by the sun itself, and he would fight the throes of death before letting darkness triumph.

  CHAPTER 51

  Nasir had forgotten how it felt to be on display like a prize goat at the butcher’s. It had been years since the crown had last held a feast. Scores of eyes crowded upon the sultan, and Nasir caught each furtive glance as it slid his way with a bit more discretion.

  Being the Prince of Death was akin to being the sun, he supposed. Hard to look at, but, rimaal, did everyone want to look.

  “Luminaries of Arawiya,” his father called, genial and welcoming. “Less than a fortnight ago, Arawiya was struck with change. The Arz retreated into the bowels of Sharr, history reshaped and remade in a single act. Magic was salvaged from the ruins of the dark island and transported across the Baransea with vigilance.”

  It was foolhardy, this feast. Unwise to trumpet magic’s return when it still hadn’t returned. There was much about his father Nasir could not understand, even more than what he hated.

  But Ghameq was never rash or reckless.

  “You may wish to know whom to thank for the impending return of magic, for vanquishing the Arz and uniting us after decades of separation. It was none other than my son: the Prince of Death.”

  Nasir’s breath caught. Troubled murmurs meandered from person to person throughout the hall, fear stirring the expectant air. It was a title given to him by the people. A moniker never meant for official use. It wasn’t a name to say in front of every ruling power in Arawiya.

  Suspicion roiled like a storm at sea, and Ghameq rose as the doors at the far end swung open on weary hinges.

  “Such a feat is deserving of a reward,” he said warmly. “My greatest one yet.”

  Nasir met Zafira’s eyes as panic flitted across her features. Two cloaked men of the Sultan’s Guard stepped into the room. A third figure slumped between them, the rattle of chains branding him a prisoner.

  Whispers thickened the air as the trio began a slow march to the dais.

  The guards stopped with matching bows at the foot of the white steps as the prisoner rose to his full height and lifted his dark head.

  And Nasir stared into the amber eyes of the Lion of the Night.

  Ghameq’s voice was thunder in his ears, unfamiliar. Velvet. Dark. “Are you pleased with my gift, Ibni?”

  The Lion was adorned in finery, his turban the color of sunset. He was not dressed like a prisoner. He did not stand like a prisoner, despite the shackles at his wrists and the collar around his neck.

  It wasn’t defeat that stirred in the beastly depths of his eyes, but something else. As if he played a game Nasir still didn’t understand.

  Zafira shot to her feet.

  A slow smile curved the Lion’s face.

  The chains disintegrated into smoke. Shadows. The guards morphed into the shapeless forms of ifrit and drew to his either side. Ghameq stared into nothing.

  Like a puppet, cut loose from its strings.

  “Human hearts are like glass,” the Lion said softly, rising up the steps of the dais, each one bleeding into black as he passed. “Fragile, delicate little things.”

  The hall doors slammed shut, a vise of shadow barring them in place. Panicked shouts rang out, but not a single person moved, afraid of being the first to fall.

  The Lion curled his fingers and Ghameq doubled over, gasping for air with the kingdom as witness. His vow was a snarl. “Delicacy fosters death.”

  The Sultan of Arawiya

  staggered and

  fell.

  Nasir sprang forward. He dropped to the cushions and carefully lifted Ghameq’s head into his lap. Pain crossed the sultan’s features, but Nasir saw that his eyes were clear, soft, kind.

  His father’s.

  Truly, wholly. Nasir didn’t know how he hadn’t noticed the falsity before.

  “Ibni,” the sultan whispered, lifting a trembling hand to Nasir’s hair.

  Distantly, chaos erupted.

  “Forgive me.”

  The hall darkened.

  “For the days that I lived to hurt you. For the days that you lived in suffering. Tell your mother—I think of her when the moon fills the sky. Always.”

  “No—” Nasir’s voice cracked as a chilling cold swept to him, a presence as familiar as his own. Death.

  Not now, he begged as others once begged of him. Wisps of black slipped from his fingers and wound around his father, clutching him as Nasir did. The medallion swung behind his closed eyes. Aya had been right. It had corrupted the sultan beyond return. He was a fool to have believed his father could survive without the Lion’s crippling hold. To have believed his father could walk free after years of imprisonment.

  “Every day, I saw you, and every day I wanted to tell you the same: I am proud of you. He would not let me tell you, but it is true. Now, and forever.”

  Nasir didn’t care anymore. About approval, about pride. He didn’t want any of it.

  The shadows scattered.

  “Baba,” he wept, but as always, Nasir was too late.

  CHAPTER 52

  The storm had arrived, the Lion at its cusp. Dressed in splendor like a king come for his throne, with every single dignitary of Arawiya gathered like cows to slaughter.

  Zafira should have known. The signs were there: When the sultan remembered one moment but strangely not another from the same event. When he hadn’t lent a hand or thought to finding the fifth heart. When he had called his own son the Prince of Death.

  The Lion had been controlling the sultan the entire time, playing them like the fools that they were. The Sultan’s Guard drew their swords and surrounded the platform. Hashashins halted near the walls, and Zafira knew th
ere were ifrit lurking in the shadows. Both sides waited. The air was heavier than her cloak had ever been.

  Through it all, Nasir sat on the dais with his father’s head in his lap. Unmoving.

  No—weeping.

  A boy, orphaned years ago and suffering afresh. The new Sultan of Arawiya, on his knees before his own throne, a river of his sorrow drenching his finery. His brow fell to his father’s with soundless anguish, and when the Lion turned to him with a frown, a warning throbbed in her limbs.

  If she drew his attention, there was a chance he would direct whatever dark power he had at her and crush her heart with a flourish of his hand. But the Jawarat, a little voice reminded. He would still have need of it and its infinite knowledge. He wouldn’t risk its destruction by hurting her.

  Nasir, however, like his father, no longer had a purpose, and if she waited any longer, he would die.

  “Haider.”

  In the split breath it took Zafira to push Lana away and say the Lion’s name—his true name—every single member of the Sultan’s Guard turned to her.

  As did the Lion.

  “Did you enjoy my theatrics, azizi?”

  He spoke as if it were only the two of them in the vastness of the room. He looked at her as if she were his, his gaze hungrily roaming the length of her.

  “My bladed compass, sheathed in starlight,” he murmured. “Did you hope to compete for the prince’s hand? To wear the crown of the sultana? I admit, that bit about brides was improvisation. To send your heart aflutter. You looked quite pale, if I recall.”

  At his feet, Nasir stirred from his wretched stupor.

  “I have no interest in crowns,” she bit out, her voice echoing in the hall.

  “That remains to be seen, azizi,” he promised, and crossed the final distance to the Gilded Throne, the golden light illuminating an odd pallor to his skin.

  Lana whispered a sob, and Zafira knew how she felt, how everyone in this room felt, even the ancient safin. It was one thing to hear that the Lion of the Night was alive. It was quite another to see him in the flesh.

  “It won’t accept him,” Kifah murmured with razor-edged hope, banking on a truth every child knew: The Gilded Throne allows only the blood of the Sisters or the ones they’ve appointed.