We Free the Stars

by Hafsah Faizal

  “He thieved and pillaged. Deceived without abandon. He took from me my Sisters, my kingdom, my husband, and my sons.”

  She turned to him, and in her face, Nasir saw his own. He saw Zafira, and Altair. Kifah, and Benyamin. He saw those whose lives were forced onto paths they should not have had to tread.

  “He took from me my life, and now I will take from him tenfold.”

  He felt the chill of her words in his bones.

  How did you find me? he wanted to ask, but pride refused to let him. It was magic, he knew. Zafira had slit her palm to find Altair, but his mother’s magic wasn’t restrained to the volume of blood in a vial when it was her own that fueled it.

  “Did you receive Altair’s note?” he asked.

  She frowned. “Note?”

  CHAPTER 81

  When Zafira woke, she barely blinked at the Silver Witch sitting on the cushions against the wall. After everything that had happened, the appearance of a witch who wasn’t deterred by doors or locks felt like child’s play.

  “How strange it is to be loved by the one who hates all else,” Anadil said softly.

  Was it Zafira she spoke of, or herself?

  She looked at the Jawarat. “It is changing you.”

  Instead of the anger that raged whenever anyone accused the book, Zafira felt shame. Because Anadil was different. She had been witness to Zafira over the years, even before Baba’s death.

  “What should I do?” she asked.

  The Silver Witch tilted her head. “You are the pure of heart, not I.”

  Was she still pure of heart, when she had split a man in two? When she had given the Lion the means to embrace the si’lah heart as if it were his own? When her night had passed whispering things to the Jawarat she could barely remember moments later?

  “You recall what I said of you, once—that you are very much the people’s queen?” the Silver Witch asked. “It remains true, Huntress. Now, more than ever.”

  “What does that mean?”

  The door opened with a soft knock, and the true king stepped inside with Zafira’s washed and dried tunic. He handed it to her awkwardly before he stepped back and flicked his gaze between her and the Silver Witch, guarded and hesitant.

  “We have to leave,” Nasir said unceremoniously.

  The Silver Witch rose. “As do I. It seems I’ve a falcon to find.”

  Nasir lowered his head in respect. “It is good,” he said, “to have you with us again.”

  She smiled, and Zafira remembered Umm when Anadil’s face changed. Perhaps it was a gesture true to all mothers, when their children humbled themselves in such ways.

  * * *

  Sarasin was frightening. Darkness at every turn, ifrit shrieking into the night that would have been day, had the sun not been a coward. They came across remnants of riots in small towns as ghostly as her own, where buildings lay in shambles, glass smashed and glowing in the light of bonfires. The lazy breeze carried leaves of papyrus.

  Zafira snatched one from the air.

  On it were lines and lines of Arawiyan letters scribed by a reed pen, the letters smoother with each new pass. It was a child’s. A practice sheet meant to be taken to school the next day. Her mind tucked the sheet into Lana’s small hands, when she was young, not yet six. Skipping home from the old schoolhouse, eager to share the happenings of her day.

  She saw her eager footsteps turn panicked. Her skipping turned to fleeing. A child should not have to fear for her life in such a way. With a reed pen in hand, letters in her head, dirty sandals on her feet.

  Death before her eyes.

  This, because Zafira wanted magic, because she had braved the Baransea for the hearts and brought back Arawiya’s greatest foe. Lives had been upended by the Lion’s madness. While he practiced order in Sultan’s Keep, an entire fifth of the kingdom was falling apart, the rest well on their way.

  The Jawarat watched it all through her eyes.

  Do you see what happens when chaos unfolds? she asked it. The aftermath of mayhem.

  It was silent, but it heard her—she knew by the contemplation pressing against her conscience. It was a new emotion, one it had been stumbling toward since she’d killed the caliph and felt her soul tip empty.

  As if, perhaps, it no longer wanted control and a malleable will.

  We have learned from you.

  “Zafira?” Nasir’s voice rumbled through her back, lighting a fire across her neck. He steered Afya away, as if turning one’s back on ruin made it less real. “You’re speaking to it.”

  “Does it speak to you, too?” she asked with some hesitance.

  She knew his brow furrowed at her question. His silvery lilt stretched when he was confused or uncertain. “I didn’t say that.”

  “It—” She paused, and she wondered if he took her silence as reluctance to speak to him or reluctance to speak of the Jawarat. Knowing how ready he was to disparage himself, it was likely the former, but he didn’t know the whole of it. Candor was never quite as bitter with him, because he had more than enough monsters of his own to ever judge her.

  Still, she hadn’t told anyone the truth of the Jawarat for a reason. She hadn’t even told the Silver Witch, who had been like Zafira before she fell for the Lion’s silver tongue. She had shrouded the truth, but it had unleashed itself anyway. She had thought to keep its chaos a secret, but it had made itself known through her hand. Through the caliph’s death.

  She gripped the book tight and opened her mouth.

  “The Sisters created the Jawarat from and with their memories, but it was connected to the Lion on Sharr for long enough that it took some of his memories, too. It wants things. Dangerous things sometimes.”

  A cold unassociated with their surroundings chilled her spine when he finally spoke.

  “It?”

  He did not dig or pry, or regard her any differently. She swallowed her relief. “I thought the Jawarat spoke using the voices of the Sisters, and then I thought its voice was the Lion’s, but it’s … not.”

  “It’s a hilya,” he said. “Fuse enough magic and memory into a single object, and it results in near sentience.”

  She brushed her thumb down its spine. It was a comfort, even now. A part of her, as nefarious as it was.

  “Are you afraid of it?” He voiced his words slowly, as if she might startle if he spoke them too quickly. As if she might shove him off the horse and take off on her own.

  “Shouldn’t I be? You saw what it made me do.”

  “You journeyed to Sharr. You faced Arawiya’s greatest foe alone. If I were to assume anyone to be afraid of a book, it wouldn’t be you.”

  There was something more being spelled out in his words. Admiration. It warmed her to her toes, and flooded her with the feeling that she was undeserving. She had done both those things, but so had he. What made her any different?

  “I didn’t fear Sharr or the Lion that way,” she said matter-of-factly. “I’m afraid of doing the wrong thing. Again. The Jawarat blurs the lines between good and not.”

  It was what every sane person feared, she realized, but with the Jawarat, virtue had been extricated from her, separated. An entity of its own both hers and not.

  “Stealing the Lion’s memories didn’t make it inherently wicked,” Nasir observed, and perhaps it was the cadence of his words, the way he was trying to make sense of it along with her, but she was suddenly filled with such gratitude that she almost leaned into him. She held still, terrified by her heart. “It’s like anyone else now, burdened with the task of choosing between good and evil. Why allow yourself to be controlled when you can be the one in control? You can control it. Sway its intent.”

  Was she already doing as much, hence the change she’d noted? The silent rumination since they’d left Demenhur? She twisted around, pain making her flinch. He was beautiful, even in darkness. Alive, when he spoke to her. “Half of what you say to me is what you need to hear yourself.”

  Nasir emitted a laugh, a broken, hag
gard thing more contained than free, and Zafira was aware she devoured his reactions the way a rose sought out sunlight.

  As they continued onward with the phantom of his laugh in her ears and Afya’s occasional snorts, she noticed his path had begun tilting east.

  “There’s something I have to tell you,” he began hesitantly.

  “Oh?”

  “We’re going to Qasr al-Leil.”

  Qasr. Sarasin for “palace.”

  He paused when she stiffened like a board. “Not Sultan’s Keep.”

  At first, she thought she didn’t understand, but then she did—sudden and striking.

  Her fury snarled through her like an angry vine, ripping every semblance of calm. Nasir brought Afya to an abrupt halt as Zafira wrenched around to face him. Her wound wheezed a warning, and she dragged one knee up between them to ease her strain.

  He had never left Demenhur for her.

  He had never planned to take her to the Sultan’s Palace at all. He had—

  “You mocked me. You lied to me.” Her voice was a growl. Her anger was the Jawarat’s. No—the daama book was gratingly silent, and this, this was her. Where was the outrage it once used to drive her?

  His resilience broke under her accusation. “I did not lie to you. Once my work here is through, we’ll continue onward to Sultan’s Keep. To defeat the Lion and restore magic. Does that sound acceptable?”

  He spoke gently, as if she were an insolent child. As if she didn’t hold power in her hands.

  “What work?” she asked, her voice flat with wrath.

  Regret pinched his gaze. “Killing.”

  Her snort made him flinch. She wondered how the jambiya he had gifted her would look with its hilt protruding from his heart.

  No, bint Iskandar.

  She laughed out loud at the Jawarat’s dismay. The sound of her madness echoed in the dark desolation of Sarasin, the hungering breeze carrying it through the empty streets.

  This is not you, the book said with that same hesitance after she’d killed the caliph and woken beside Lana.

  Laa, this is what you wanted me to be.

  “If I pushed you off this horse, would you die?”

  Nasir’s face transformed with a slow, surprised laugh. “Perhaps.”

  He looked at her as if she were a marvel he had yet to decipher. Laa, he was mocking her, and it made her murderous. It filled the Jawarat with foreboding that once would have been glee. What had changed? She threw herself at him, uncaring that one of them might fall and break their neck.

  Nasir only gripped her, stronger than she had known him to be.

  And then he kissed her.

  Laa, it wasn’t a kiss, but a crash. She froze for a defining heartbeat as one vault of emotions careened to a halt and another erupted. She kissed him back. Their mouths fought for dominance. Twice they had kissed, but, skies, this was glorious. Thrilling in a way that electrified her entire body.

  She tasted anger on his tongue. Pain. Desire and her anguish and her fury lashed back. He broke down to panting, begging her to let him breathe.

  They wrestled, punishing each other for the words they had spoken and the things that they wanted and the Jawarat between them, confusing her. She sank her teeth on his lower lip. He tugged away, greedily taking her mouth again whole. His hands dug into her hair, gathering fistfuls as he pulled her closer, the space between them searing as his hands trailed down her neck, down to her back, pulling her flush against him with a rasp. She slipped her own fingers into his robes, beneath the fine linen of his qamis, and his head tilted back with a low, drawn-out sound.

  The cold Sarasin night was a caress as much as his touch. She felt powerful. She felt free—for the first time in an eternity, her thoughts were clear, so full of him that she thought nothing of the green book embossed with a lion’s mane.

  Afya snorted with as much indignation as the sound allowed, and Zafira pulled away, leaning her brow against his with a sigh.

  The starless night looked down upon them.

  She stared at the book, grasping at its contentment. As if it were pleased that she felt like herself, that she had returned to herself.

  You are surprised, bint Iskandar.

  She could barely hear the Jawarat over the buzzing of her skin. I thought you wanted someone to control. Someone to unleash your chaos.

  We thought it, too.

  The voice was distant, contemplative once more as Nasir gazed down at her with hooded eyes. “All right?” Are you through wanting to kill me? was what he asked in that question.

  Sweet snow, the rasp of his voice was a song she wanted to hear without end.

  She nodded.

  His mouth was a glorious bruise. His breathing the most beautiful, broken sound. He looked as if he’d already known exactly what would happen when his lips touched hers.

  He brushed a trembling thumb across her lower lip. “If anyone can change the fabric of the world, it is you, fair gazelle. I have seen it.”

  She had the feeling he spoke of more than just the Jawarat.

  He took her to another inn, this one lavish due to its presence in the capital of Sarasin. Zafira’s blood ran hot, her heart still a drum that wouldn’t cease.

  “Take me with you,” Zafira said as Nasir started for the courtyard.

  He helped her down and released her hand, and she wondered what it would be like to slip her fingers between his whenever she desired. To call him hers.

  Monsters didn’t become queen.

  Inside, they were greeted with warmth and the scent of fresh manakish. Curtains hung from horizontal beams, and an intricate chandelier fitted with a hundred oil wicks dusted the space in golden light. The crowd was subdued, patrons dressed crisply despite Sarasin’s state, their conversations amiable. Apart from their darker colorings, they were almost exactly like the Demenhune. Laa—they were hardier somehow, as if living in the volatile shadow of Sultan’s Keep had weathered them for this moment.

  Zafira started when a woman sidled up to Nasir’s side, her stomach bare, her skin like molten gold and leaving very little to the imagination in a red bedlah.

  “Sayyidi,” she said breathlessly, gripping his arm.

  Zafira frowned, ignoring a twinge of whatever it was. “You sound like you’re going to die.”

  Nasir only stiffened and the woman noted her with surprise. Zafira couldn’t see beneath his turban, but she knew the prince’s ears were burning a brilliant shade of crimson, and he looked grateful when the innkeeper emerged from the kitchens.

  Nasir cleared his throat. “Do you have any rooms?”

  The innkeeper nodded, and Zafira didn’t like the way his gaze priced Nasir’s clothes. “We run low, sayyidi, and—”

  A handful of coins clunked on the table between them, and the man’s hungry eyes swept downward. Zafira’s breath caught. It struck her oddly, how they could share so much yet live entirely different lives. The silver he exchanged in a single moment was more than she had seen in her entire life.

  “Very nice, sayyidi,” the innkeeper said, nodding so profusely that Zafira was afraid his head would unhinge. One by one, he pocketed the coins before gesturing down one of the halls. “This way, this way.”

  The room was as sumptuous as the ones in the palace. The platform bed was laden with silken sheets and jeweled cushions, wide enough for three of her and surrounded by a thin veil. It was a lavish display not meant for one, she realized with a stroke of heat.

  Nasir paused at the sight, and then quickly set her satchel on the low table and turned for the door. His eyes were dark. Fear clamped Zafira’s lips tight.

  And then the door closed with a soft thud.

  A recreant. That is what you are.

  “I don’t even know what that means,” she mumbled.

  A coward.

  Zafira gritted her teeth. She wrenched the book from her bag and threw it near the fire burning in the hearth, and felt the heat the instant the Jawarat did. With a snarl, she snatched it up
again and threw it on the bed.

  Anguish flooded her, an overwhelming sense of hurt—and it wasn’t hers. Skies, had the thing been … teasing her?

  Why do you not take what you wish?

  It was an earnest question, not one spurring her to action. Harmless curiosity was not something Zafira associated with the Jawarat.

  “Like when I killed the caliph? When I took justice into my own hands?”

  We speak of him. Your prince.

  She ignored it and unsheathed Nasir’s jambiya, the blade a gleam in the firelight reminding her of all she’d done. Then she pulled the black dagger out of her boot with another wince, thinking of how Altair must have reacted to finding it gone.

  She should give them both to Nasir to tuck away.

  You have killed. You have not been thieved of judgment.

  “Oh, so you’re suddenly intent on making me feel good,” she retorted, but couldn’t summon her anger. What had happened to its goading? To its gloating and vile provocations? She dropped down beside it. “Everything that’s happened is your fault.”

  She was a fool to assume she could go to Sultan’s Keep on her own. She pressed her eyes closed at the reminder of her brashness, how mindless she’d been to guilt Lana into stealing the dagger, how witless she’d been to sneak away.

  Killing the Lion and stealing back his heart wouldn’t rebuild the zumra’s trust. It wouldn’t recover the shard of her soul that was lost when she killed the caliph. Laa, the only way forward was through. To face them. To retain the person she once was.

  We know it is the fault of ours. And so we tried to atone.

  Atone. She almost laughed. “This is why you need a mother,” she said dryly.

  The Jawarat hummed at her joke, too chagrined to do more.

  The lantern threw a handful of shadowed stars and shapes across the ceiling as she snuggled into the pillows and cushions with a long sigh. She couldn’t fall asleep, despite the fatigue burning behind her eyelids. Could the Lion sense her, the way she sensed him in every shadow and slant of the night?

  Zafira stared at the Jawarat, knowing she relied on its company as a drunkard would rely on arak. She turned on to her side and stared at the stretch of space beside her. It wasn’t the Jawarat’s company she wanted, was it?