Underground. That was where Nasir was now, in a room barricaded and reinforced to muffle all else. After he’d dragged his gaze from the double doors for the umpteenth time, shadows wreathing from his hands like an oil lamp just snuffed, Aya had suggested they train.
It would have been a suggestion, if she’d accepted Nasir’s refusal.
“We need to decide if we’re going to Alderamin,” Kifah groused.
Nasir didn’t understand why. “Detouring so far for something that may not exist is a risk when we could easily gather forces and prepare for the Lion’s arrival here.”
She cast him a look. “You never struck me as the type to wait around.”
He wasn’t. He preferred having a mission to complete, a task to keep him focused. But without the Lion wearing his father’s skin and threatening him with innocent lives, he had no reason to seek out magic. Particularly when it was a plan as volatile as the alternative.
“Regardless of our decision,” Aya said, gripping a staff, “we will not leave without Zafira, laa? Come.”
Nasir stood his ground at the entrance of the wide room, the crate gripped against his side, the array of weaponry along the walls glinting in the light of the sconces. He looked Seif in the eye, daring him to comment on the wisps of black curling from his hands. He almost laughed at the irony: Magic lived in his bones, the very thing that had ruined his life. His blood was too mortal to use for dum sihr, and yet his si’lah descent
denoted he would forever have magic, regardless of the minarets.
“If Zafira returns and none of us are there to receive her, she’ll think we’ve left,” he said.
“Breathe, Prince,” Kifah said. “If she could hunt in the Arz and return to her own bed every night, she can handle the sultan’s city.”
“She sometimes needs time to think alone,” Lana said calmly.
“She referred to herself as two people,” Nasir said flatly, pressing his lips closed when a tendril of black slipped free. “Did none of you hear?”
“It was not she who spoke,” Aya said, “but the Jawarat. It is a hilya, an artifact created of and imbued with immense power. Few hilya exist, as the Sisters forbade their creation after a tyrant beyond Arawiya’s shores harvested one for its magic and reduced an entire civilization to ashes.”
“That was back when safin thought it was smart to trade hilya out of Arawiya,” Kifah said with feigned sweetness. “Yet, knowing what hilya are capable of, the Sisters created one themselves.”
“They had no choice,” Seif said harshly.
Kifah sat back, pointedly looking down the length of his unbuttoned robes as she tossed a sugar-coated almond into her mouth and passed the pouch to Lana. “There’s always a choice.”
“Oh, there’s more than just Arawiya?” Lana asked, eyes bright.
“Always has been. Arawiya is a tiny piece of the world. Magic wasn’t the only thing that disappeared ninety years ago. Our world shrank when the Arz popped up, because it covered the outer regions of the kingdom, caging us in. There’s a khara-ton of land out there, and people. An isle where
greenery isn’t limited to oases, where leaves are bigger than grown men, and where beasts have tubes for noses. Another kingdom farther north where the people are paler than even the Demenhune and their snow, and just as relentless.”
Nasir was content with the size of his world, shukrun. “Is what Zafira said true?” he asked tersely, steering them back to the matter at hand.
“In a way,” Aya said, dipping her head. “The Jawarat is immortal. The Huntress is mortal. Hilya are made of power and memories, sentient beings in their own right. To willingly bind themselves to a mortal, or even an immortal for that matter, is rare. The darkest of them wish for bodily vessels; others merely seek companionship. It is odd that the Jawarat would choose her, but what she—they—said holds truth. Mortal bodies were not created to sustain souls for an eternity, however. Thus, the Jawarat’s immortality will grant her a life span longer than most mortals will ever see.”
“Khara,” Lana breathed. “Oi!” Kifah snapped.
“Language,” Nasir warned, and Lana looked at him like his hair had turned gray.
“It is twofold,” Aya said, studiously ignoring them. “Safin understand immortality. Our hearts slow at maturity, our bodies remain unaffected by mortal ailments, but immortality is not the immunity of death, and the risk of her mortality itself has increased. Living forever does not equate to having an indestructible life, and it is far easier to destroy a book than a human. Destroy the book, and she will die.”
“The Jawarat is an invaluable artifact. No one in their right mind would destroy it,” Seif said callously, and Nasir loosed a steadying breath to refrain from decapitating him. “Every heartbeat I spend here is an insult to my perpetuity. The Lion will not idle in the enactment of his wrath.”
“It’s not wrath,” Kifah said with a shake of her head. “Wrath and rage burn quick as fire. Vengeance is the only fuel you can keep going for more than a century. The longer it takes, the sweeter the revenge.”
“He had his chance,” Seif said. If either he or Aya noticed the zeal with which Kifah spoke the words, neither commented. “A thousand times over.”
Kifah shrugged. “Maybe he wanted to wait until he learned it all. Who knows? There’s a fine line between the thirst for revenge and the hunger for power, and men have a hard time understanding boundaries.”
“I don—” Nasir started to protest.
“You’re a friend. You don’t count,” she threw at him.
Seif launched into another tirade, but Nasir barely heard any of it as those three words—You’re a friend—looped drunkenly in his mind.
“Do you mean that?” he asked quietly, too tired to quell his curiosity.
“Why wouldn’t I?” Kifah tilted her bald head at him. “Oi, relax. I wasn’t going to braid you a bracelet. There’s no binding contract. We don’t have to—”
“No, no. I—Never mind,” Nasir said quickly, and she lifted an eyebrow as he tried to make sense of the thrumming in his chest. Rimaal. First a brother, then a mother, now a friend.
What was next?
Aya swung her staff in a swift arc.
“I’ll drill if he goes above and waits for her,” Nasir said, jerking his chin at Seif. Zafira could handle herself, he knew. She wasn’t a child or a frail old man. She was the girl who stood unafraid on Sharr before the Lion of the Night himself. That didn’t mean they should abandon her. Fool. Next you’ll be singing songs in her name.
Seif made no move to leave, but Lana, who had been toying with a slender mace on the wall, turned to them. “I’ll go. Can I keep this?”
“No,” everyone but Seif said at once.
She pouted and dropped it back against the wall. When the door closed behind her, Seif made himself comfortable on a trio of cushions with a bundle of missives, and Nasir felt the desire to decapitate him return at full force.
“It is good to see you in your natural habitat, Aya,” the safi said.
Aya laughed at Nasir’s fleeting surprise. With her lilac abaya and gentle grip, she didn’t particularly look at home here. “I have honed thousands of affinities over the years across the kingdom, young prince. I am a healer first, and a teacher of magic second. No match for Anadil, but I like to think myself commendable.” She took a stance. “Now, let us see what you can do.”
Coils of shadow split from his palms when they all focused on him. Nasir wasn’t in the mood for showing anyone what he could do.
“You have no trouble summoning your power, at least. You must refine it. Sharpen the black into a blade. Make it a sword to be wielded.”
Nasir closed his eyes, reaching for the source of that dark flame, trying to find the vein in his blood that ran black, but it felt like tugging on air. Kifah snorted, and Nasir’s eyes flew open. The shadows had disappeared.
“You remind me of this one invention my father had that started off all dark and showy and collapsed in a plume of smoke,” she remarked. He vaguely remembered that her father was a high inventor. He also remembered the little glass instrument she had stolen from him. It works best when I imagine I’m lighting him on fire.
“Did your father have you to cheer him on?” Nasir asked tiredly.
For the first time since he’d met the bold warrior, her fierce expression gave way to vulnerability. He’d spoken too quickly, without thought. She wasn’t a certain loud, golden-haired general used to carefree raillery. They’d been ready to rip each other to shreds, yet Altair had left a yawning emptiness behind, one Nasir was all too aware of.
He opened his mouth to apologize, but she beat him to it with a shrug.
“He should have. His loss.”
Aya tapped him with her staff, and it became the Lion’s stave. Benyamin leaping in front of him. Altair shackled to the Lion—his daama father.
It was only an instant. A mere moment in which his concentration broke, but it was enough. The shadows rippled free, billowing like smoke from a fire. The room darkened.
Breathe.
He thought of the fine dark lines running through ice-blue eyes. The weave of a braid crowned at her head. Aya voiced a warning. He felt her staff at his shoulder again, and he had to dig his heels against the sudden urge to lash out. To kill. The shadows sharpened.
No. No killing.
Breathe.
He was uncontrollable. A monster. What was the point of a life he couldn’t control? Seif was on his feet, drawing Aya away. A sight he had seen time and time again when the Prince of Death walked the streets.
Wrong are the ones who believe power is king. Control, and you will triumph.
Help me, mother.
Listen, was all she whispered.
He filled his lungs and forced his clenched fists open. The darkness hummed, a song just out of earshot. Listen. He closed his eyes and reached, tugging on the tangled whispers and deciphering the chaos.
“That’s it,” Kifah said carefully.
Darkness surged into every crevice of his being, stretching his lungs and organs too full, but he kept tugging at the frenzying skeins until light ebbed back into the room.
The last wisp curled into nothing, and Nasir loosed a breath. The shadows were gone. He turned his hands—the darkness had disappeared from his skin, too, returning his stained hands and wrists to their original color.
He looked up in the silence. Aya’s smile wavered. “In time.”
Nasir couldn’t stop a small laugh at the emotion that clung to the room. Understanding. As if they finally understood Arawiya’s fear of him. Aya avoided his gaze. Seif’s stance was battle-ready. Kifah, at least, didn’t seem perturbed.
He’d lived without magic all his life. He’d suppressed magic all his life, which clearly hadn’t helped, for the more he used his shadows, the easier it was to breathe, and the easier it would be, he realized, to eventually control them. “There isn’t time for this.”
He might have been a quick study for anything else, but the wayward dark? It would take time. More time than they could afford.
“He trains for a tenth of the day and thinks he can conquer the world,” Seif said. “Have you forgotten your father—”
“Do not presume I forget anything, safi,” Nasir said coldly. They hated Ghameq, but none of them had lived with him. None of them had suffered the poker and years of abuse. None
of them had stared at the medallion around his father’s neck and desired to rip it away.
“You cannot control yourself,” Seif said. “I am afraid he is right,” Aya said softly.
Nasir didn’t care. He didn’t need his shadows to save Altair. He didn’t need the dark to ensure the hearts didn’t die. And when Nasir darted a glance at Kifah, who met his eyes unflinchingly, he knew: He didn’t need the High Circle when he had allies of his own.
