We Free the Stars

by Hafsah Faizal

  She slid off the bed and helped herself to a single ma’moul cookie from the plate the maid had left on the table, glancing at the door and wrenching her gaze away.

  She shouldn’t. The Jawarat said nothing, only showing her a memory it hadn’t stolen, but cherished: her and him atop Afya, the freedom in her veins, the balance restored, the happiness, fleeting as it was.

  He is a chaos we savor.

  Her hand closed around the doorknob, and with a quick inhale, she stepped into the dim hall. She didn’t know where Nasir was. Perhaps he was downstairs, relaxing after a long day of being stuck with her. She took a step forward—

  And nearly tripped.

  “Khara,” she hissed.

  A figure rose from beside the door.

  “Nasir? Why are you—what are you doing out here?”

  The moonlight from the far window caught the bewildered look in his eyes. Fatigue slanted shadows on his face.

  “Did they not have any other rooms? Are we out of silver?”

  He merely blinked at her tiredly.

  Skies. She looked down either side of the empty hall and dragged him inside. “Why were you crouched out there?”

  He lifted a hand to the back of his neck and dropped it. “What happened at that inn in Demenhur was my fault. I should not have left you on Afya alone. And not”—his voice rose, stopping her protest—“not because you’re a girl, but because you’re hurt.”

  “So you were guarding my door,” she said, lifting her eyebrows. She set her boots together and moved them to the side, aware of her messiness in the face of his neatness. “Stay here. The room’s big enough. Akhh, the bed’s big enough for us both.”

  Liar, the Jawarat taunted, and she thought of his mouth. His hooded gaze. His nose nudging hers.

  When he took a measured step forward, igniting her blood, he acknowledged the lie. His chest rose and fell with careful reflection. “After what they said?”

  She caught the anguish hardening his jaw. The prince’s whore.

  “Do you think I’d let words from insignificant inebriates bother me? Is it true?”

  “Of course not,” he bit out.

  Skies, getting a reaction out of him was as impossible as the Arz. She hid a grin, trying but failing to act nonchalant. The bed might be large enough to fit three of her, but the room itself was too small for her to daama breathe in. She chewed the inside of her cheek and dared to meet his eyes.

  I always knew your innocence was a farce, Yasmine taunted in her head.

  The silence churned between them until he said raggedly, gaze darkening to black, “Well then. Time for bed, fair gazelle? You interrupted quite the dream I was having.”

  She sputtered, parting the curtains surrounding the bed so he wouldn’t see the way her limbs shook.

  “You can have that side,” she snapped.

  He removed his sword and aligned it with the bed. Him and his neatness. “Do you think the people are aware the Demenhune Hunter is so … domineering?”

  “Do you think the people know the Prince of Death dreams so indecently?”

  Nasir paused, and Zafira froze in the midst of knotting the curtain, an apology springing to her tongue when he—

  He laughed.

  Not the quick bark of surprise that he quickly quenched. Not the whisper of one, but a whole and true laugh. It glittered silver in his eyes and tugged back his head, rattling his chest and exposing his teeth and making it oh so hard to breathe. She wished she were an artist to capture this moment. She wished she were bold enough to cross the room and press her mouth to his exposed throat. To taste the sound of his laughter with her own tongue. It filled her with such untrammeled joy that the world darkened a hue when he stopped.

  Diffidence colored his cheeks as he unclasped his belt of throwing knives, long lashes sweeping downward with his gaze. He unwound his turban and shook his hair loose. Then he slid his robes free and hung them on the hook by the door.

  If it was possible for a girl to incinerate as her prince undressed, she had done just that. It was strange watching him go about such simple tasks. Intimate, in a way. He settled into the bed in that burgundy qamis, armed still with his gauntlet blades and gloves, and all she could think of was the smooth, solid plane of his skin, his pulse heaving beneath her touch.

  When she didn’t move to join him, he turned back and opened one eye, a laugh twinkling in its depths. “Should I leave? You’re not the only one to invite me to her bed tonight.”

  Zafira’s eyebrows flicked up, and he shamelessly made himself more comfortable.

  “The girl in the red bedlah?” she asked.

  He regarded her. “Jealous?”

  The word conjured the girl in the yellow shawl, Kulsum, and indeed, her spite was immediate. She tried to hide it away, to clear her open book of a face. Too late.

  His eyes were intent, reminding her that he could read her as easily as a map.

  She hurriedly tugged on a frown. “Concerned, mostly. The poor thing could hardly breathe.”

  “I tend to have that effect on women.”

  “Which women?” She tilted her head.

  He smirked.

  Skies, what a fool he’d think she was. Of course there were other women. He was the daama prince.

  “Not this one,” she said, hoping the fluster on her face would come across as exasperation.

  “Oh?” He turned and watched her, the teasing in his tone heating the room in a way the hearth never could. “Our little moment on Afya’s back said otherwise, but I do love a challenge.”

  She glared, and the curve of his shoulders trembled with a laugh.

  “Sleep well, Huntress. May your dreams be as delectable as mine.”

  “No one says that.”

  “No? I didn’t know you made a habit of sharing your bed with other men.”

  She growled and climbed back beneath the covers, facing the opposite side. His voice was like warm honey down her tongue. His presence was a weight, making her mind meander through every story Yasmine had shared, her neck burning. The Jawarat was content and quiet. Dastard.

  She wrenched her gaze to the window, to the heavy throb of the Lion’s darkness, and knew sleep would be hard to find this night.

  CHAPTER 82

  Nasir was heavy with exhaustion, yet he could think of nothing but the brush of color on her face, her presence beside him. The heat pooling lower and lower.

  And the hesitation in her gaze, clouded by uncertainty.

  He was a killer with a crown, a poison alluring enough to taste. To Kulsum, to the women whose gazes followed the Prince of Death down the corridors. Not to her.

  I would rather know one intimately than a thousand ostensibly, he had wanted to say, but the words were too bold, more of an invitation than a proclamation.

  He didn’t want to be another moment stolen from a thousand. He wanted every sunrise and every crescent moon. He wanted to be the reason for every rare blush, the cause of every breathless sigh.

  He thought of that moment atop Afya’s back, its match on Sharr between the columns just before all broke loose. Was he only so bold when she was in need of a distraction? If he had not kissed her then, so full of anger and pain and sorrow, would she have shoved him off the horse?

  “Take me with you tomorrow,” she said. “I’m not going to stay here while you’re killing the caliph.”

  “Your wound—” Your mind.

  “Is fine. Take me.”

  Who was he to deny her anything? “Aren’t you afraid?”

  “The one thing certain in life is death, isn’t it?” she asked, echoing his cruelty on Sharr. “I was stupid for thinking I could confront the Lion alone, but … if I’m going to die, I might as well die fighting for what I believe in. Our cause is just. We’re not fighting for land or governance. We’re ensuring a future for the people. Magic and a world worth living in.”

  He marveled at her strength, at how she could open her mouth and give him direction, a compass lea
ding his path.

  “It’s … what I’ve been doing since the day I first held a bow in my hands.”

  “You won’t die,” he said after a silence.

  “Why not?” She didn’t know that he wasn’t teasing, not then.

  Because he was aware of every rise and fall of her chest, of her even exhales feathering the air, and the vast distance between them. She was a beacon in the darkness. A wild rose that bloomed over death.

  Laa, she was the reason death had become significant to him.

  And he would not let it take her.

  “All those women,” she said, abruptly changing the subject. “You had to have some semblance of confidence.”

  Her tone was inquisitive, curious, daama clueless. Fair gazelle, the things I could teach you. The sheets rustled as she turned to look at his back, and he screwed his jaw tight. Despite his shirt, he felt the presence of each scar as if it were being carved afresh.

  She continued, oblivious. “Where did it all go?”

  Please. Go. To. Sleep.

  “I don’t know,” he lied, because she wasn’t another woman. She was Zafira, legendary and ethereal, pure-hearted and guileless. Lost and tethered to a book. “Where did you find the sudden confidence?”

  Like a fool, Nasir wished this night could go on forever. The Lion, the darkness, Altair’s plans—he wished all of it could disappear, only for a moment.

  “I stole yours.”

  He heard the smirk in her voice, and it took every last drop of his resolve not to turn around and pull her into his arms.

  CHAPTER 83

  Zafira’s dreams were usually as straightforward as an arrow, but not this night. One moment, she saw the Jawarat’s vision, only instead of crimson flooding the streets of her village, the blood ran black while the book crowed of redemption, and as she tried to grasp its meaning, to continue onward and see what happened next, the white village darkened and narrowed to a room.

  A veiled bed, silks sliding along her bare skin, lips feathering the slopes of her breasts. Her name a whispered prayer in her ear.

  She woke with a start. An odd, aching need tightened her skin. The Jawarat purred.

  The hour wanes.

  But night still clung to the sky. Khara—of course it was still dark out; they were in Sarasin. She made to move from her warm cocoon of blankets and froze.

  Her cocoon was not a blanket, but a body, solid and lithe. Nasir. She was nestled against him, wrapped in his arms as if she would disappear if he let go. At some point in the night, he had discarded his gloves. Her dream rose vividly, heat breaking out across her body.

  His exhales were steady and measured on her shoulder, and she carefully twisted her neck to face him. He was even more beautiful asleep. The harsh lines of his brow were smooth, long lashes fanning like scimitars against his copper skin. Her fingers itched to brush away the wayward locks that had fallen across his brow.

  One of his hands was splayed across her stomach. The other, the one connected to the arm beneath her, rested palm up beside her face. Ever so slowly, she lifted her hand, marveling at the quake in her fingers. As if she had never once achieved perfect stillness when drawing back an arrow. As if she had never stood unmoving before a deer in the darkness of the Arz.

  When she was near him, the very rhythm of the world became something else. A wild, terrifying, incomprehensible thing.

  She held her hand over his, two contrasts of color, two differences of size, two palms made for each other.

  His hand tightened on her stomach, and his breath hitched. Slowed. Zafira bit back a gasp as something roused low in her belly, embers stirring to a flame.

  Turn to him, they seemed to say. Act, they goaded. Or perhaps it was the Jawarat and the mayhem it desired. It was one of the rare moments when she didn’t care if it was, because skies, she wanted it, too.

  She closed her eyes and didn’t dare move.

  He was adept as she was, the assassin to her hunter. He only needed a heartbeat to read the shift of her breathing. Yet Zafira had noted the way his senses were hindered when it came to her. As if he were suddenly so tangled in his own emotions that he was blinded to all else.

  She cracked her eyes open a sliver and relaxed her breathing—as much as she could, considering the pounding beneath her skin. The pillow shifted, and he muttered a curse. One by one, the pads of his fingers lifted.

  Silence.

  And then, a tumultuous sigh.

  “Zafira.” He cleared the roughness from his throat and tried again. “Zafira. We have to go.”

  She made what she hoped was a believable act of waking slowly and turning even slower. His eyes were flint, unreadable.

  At last, as if he knew, as if he needed to explain why he’d held her, he said, “You were shaking last night.”

  “And then I stopped,” she said, holding his gaze to say that she knew why she had stopped and that she liked it and wished the night had never ended. What were words if not feelings?

  “And then you stopped,” he replied, honing the weary cadence of his voice as if to say Me too, fair gazelle, me too.

  But the night had to end. Everything had to. Cannot all three be one and the same? She’d been so deep within the turmoil of the Jawarat that she’d forgotten the weight of that question. The sweet torment it gave her.

  Nasir was watching her, reading her, and his smile moments later was a spoonful of sorrow.

  “Come,” he said, fitting his gauntlets and the mask of the Prince of Death back in place.

  CHAPTER 84

  Breakfast was tangy labneh with enough lemon to make Zafira’s mouth water, and crispy falafel. She watched Nasir break the chickpea patties in perfect halves as she obliterated her own share. They also shared sesame bread with slices of jibn, the cheese sweeter than she liked, and a dallah of mint tea.

  After leaving the inn, Nasir fell silent. Zafira recollected their every conversation, assuming, in the end, that he was contemplating the question that wavered between them, an apparition neither acknowledged.

  Ever since their angry lashing of teeth, tongue, and lips the day before, she had felt like herself. He had a knack for that, she realized, for grounding her. Her blood warmed at the memory. If he was the antidote to the Jawarat’s curse, it wasn’t so bad a problem to have.

  The book hummed, and Zafira focused on the road. The sky was still dark as the night, the only indication of it being daytime the bright line far in the horizon that marked the edge of Sarasin.

  “Do you think you can kill him?” Zafira asked after a time, aware Nasir’s mark might not be human. When he’d told her of the real Muzaffar, dead in the banquet hall of the Sultan’s Palace, a helpless cavern had opened beneath her. He hadn’t been any other merchant; he was one who had advocated for change, who had worked for the better of his people.

  Now an ifrit had stolen his skin, his face, his seat.

  Nasir looked delicately affronted. “Of course. After, it’s only a matter of confronting the Lion. Together.”

  “Together,” she repeated with a dark laugh. “The others won’t be happy to see me, and you know it.”

  “And now you’re here. The others won’t have a choice.”

  She realized then what he had done.

  “If I did not know any better,” she said around the fist in her throat, “I’d say you came along solely to kiss me.”

  And be with me. And keep me sane. And protect me.

  He laughed. “You speak as if you didn’t enjoy it.”

  “Maybe I didn’t. Maybe I was only indulging you.”

  “Those were not the sounds someone makes,” Nasir murmured against her ear, “when they’re merely indulging another.”

  Her neck burned. The streets were empty.

  “If we were in a story, what would happen?” Zafira asked before she could stop herself.

  Nasir went rigid behind her. “What does that mean?”

  “It’s a game Yasmine and I used to play,” she said, glanc
ing back at him. “Every day she would learn a new fact about the man she was falling for, and every day she would lengthen the list of what her imaginary husband would have and be when he swept her away. And then she married him.”

  “But?”

  “Hmm?”

  “But then what happened?” he asked, ever perceptive.

  “She found he was not as perfect as she thought. He had lied to her. Or rather, he’d hidden the truth of who he was,” Zafira clarified.

  “She discovered he had flaws,” Nasir suggested.

  Zafira nodded, though it didn’t discount the secrets Misk had kept. “And I think she needs time to understand that flaws make us whole. Real. He’s not terrible, or a monster.”

  Nasir didn’t respond, and Zafira inwardly cringed at her use of the word “monster.” You absolute fool.

  “I don’t—I don’t play games,” he said, eventually, as they turned down a street far too wide to be an alley.

  “You do now,” she teased, only to find him serious. Disturbed, almost. At once, she realized it had nothing to do with games, but what this specific one entailed. “You’re allowed to dream, you know. To imagine.”

  He said nothing.

  She could sense something—someone, watching them from the shadows. Several domes glinted in the near distance. The palace.

  “I would take you for iced cream,” Nasir said suddenly.

  Zafira held her breath.

  “Isn’t that … what you wanted, once?”

  She vaguely remembered making mention of it on Sharr, but it didn’t matter now. Bakdash was gone. If that lavender door was still intact, it would stand closed forever. No one was left to open it, to fill its walls with love.

  Even if some of the people in her village remained, it wouldn’t be the same. The air would be spooled with ghosts, the streets thick with the dead.

  “That iced cream shop—it’s gone now,” she said softly. Renowned across the kingdom, gone just like that.