Death wasn’t supposed to fill her with such a blaze, and yet, Zafira was brimming with pride, her heart a touch lighter. The careening sun lit the ash of Nasir’s eyes aflame as the breeze toyed with the end of his turban. His hand was on the hilt of his sword, the point buried in the sand beside him. He was the Prince of Death, breathing life into his words.
Every bit the sultan he was born to be. It was a bittersweet thought.
“You did well, Sultani.”
He breathed a broken laugh. “Don’t call me that.”
“Why not? It was how you spoke,” she said. It hadn’t been the most moving of battle cries. It wasn’t full of bluster and swagger, which was more suited to Altair—she wouldn’t be surprised if Altair’s thoughts themselves strutted in such a way
—yet for someone like Nasir, who had been forced to trim his words and hold back, back, back, it was a leap.
The words he had strung together had taken far more courage than wielding a sword did, and it filled her to near bursting.
“The night may not be lenient,” Nasir said, and she paused, warming at the crimson painting the tops of his ears.
“It may not,” she said.
He stepped closer. “We may not see the next dawn.” “We may not.”
“The last time we stood in battle, I could only think of the things I didn’t say.”
Tell me, she wanted to whisper.
Altair called to them. “We need to disband. Kifah, with me. Nasir, you and Zafira head for the palace. At least one of us needs to be there when the Lion drops the barrier and leaves the grounds. We’ll join once we have the upper hand.”
Nasir scoured the dusty ground and picked up a scimitar. Zafira held herself still when his hands cupped hers and closed her fingers around its hilt.
“Later,” he said, answering her, but when he didn’t release her hand, she lifted her gaze to his, and saw that it was not a promise. The way he looked at her was the way the dying stared one last time at the sky, and so she knew.
He had conveyed hope into the hearts of men, but had left nothing for himself.
 |
When Zafira and Nasir finally stumbled from the narrow confines of the alleys leading to the palace, Misk’s archers covered them.
The sinewy draw of bowstring after bowstring was a torment, a reminder of her weakness. Huntress Zafira. Orphan Zafira. Soldier Zafira. A peg in a makeshift army grasping at hope as their end drew near. She was stranded without her bow. Abandoned without the compass in her heart leading her forward.
“Ifrit!” Nasir shouted.
Zafira ducked beneath the arc of a stave and countered, not expecting the force to wrench the scimitar from her grip. She dropped to her knees, sand in her fists, perspiration dripping between her brows.
The same stave came crashing down near her fingers, and she sprang away, her hand closing around a bow. Beside it, a Demenhune archer lay with his stomach ripped open, eyes wide and empty. Like Misk.
What had her people done to suffer this way? Shunned, starved, gassed, murdered. She stumbled back, bile rising to her throat.
Rise, bint Iskandar.
She gagged and yanked the fallen archer’s quiver free. If she was going to die, it would be with a bow in her hands and intent in her heart. For Deen and Baba. For Benyamin. For Umm and Misk and Yasmine.
The Jawarat hummed, urging her onward.
They sprinted into the chaos near the palace. The Great Library was barely visible in the billowing smoke. Angry surges of orange and vibrant red swelled in the darkness, flames crackling and roaring. The library was as much a part of Arawiya as magic was. It was the culmination of all that they were.
It’s not real, it’s not. But it smelled real, it looked real. The screams were real. It was all proof of the Silver Witch’s power, but with every single one of her senses goading her to drop to her knees and weep, Zafira couldn’t appreciate it.
Nasir dragged her into the cover of a date palm. “Look.
The gates.”
Through the smoke, Zafira saw it: the iron gates swinging outward with twin groans. Another sound, low and bestial, rolled from its confines like the unsheathing of a sword, and something hummed against her skin. Magic.
The Lion’s barriers were coming undone.
