Zafira wanted to believe he had been waiting for her, but delusions were for dreamers. She’d gotten quite friendly with the wide mirror in their room in Alderamin, and equally annoyed with herself for even caring about how she looked, but being back in Sultan’s Keep meant she’d see Nasir, and seeing Nasir reminded her of the girl in the yellow shawl.
When he leaped his way down from the palace wall, dropping in a crouch and a stirring of sand, it was delusional to believe he made his way to them without once looking away from her, dressed in luxury only a prince could afford with an onyx-hilted dagger against his thigh and a scimitar sheathed at his hip. Armed, always armed. Inside and out. It was delusional to think he would let himself be seen without his mask, his gray eyes apologetic and rimmed in sleeplessness.
Because when he spoke, he didn’t look at her, he didn’t direct words at her, and it certainly felt like he spoke at her.
Still. Sweet snow below, the ache in her chest. The fervor in her blood.
She couldn’t care less that she was here, standing before the Sultan’s Palace, a place she had seen through Baba’s tales and never expected to witness herself.
The ornate gates swung inward, granting them entrance. Each of the guards swept a bow as Nasir passed. Zafira tried to ignore their scrutiny, at once insignificant and powerful. The path to the palace was set with interlacing stones that swelled and tapered like the scales on a marid’s tail, umber glittering gold. Under the watchful gaze of the stone lion fountain in the center, Nasir told them he had broken the sultan’s medallion.
“And you presumed it something to boast about?” Seif dismissed with no shortage of scorn. “Merely removing a chain while we were out there neck to neck with death?”
Zafira knew no one else understood Nasir’s pride. It wasn’t for what he’d done, but that he’d done it at all: Taken control. Acted of his own accord.
She opened her mouth, blood burning, but Kifah beat her to it, spear flashing in the early light.
“Enough,” Kifah snapped. “Did it work?” she asked Nasir, ever practical.
“I tho—I think—” Nasir stopped. Seif scoffed. “You think.”
Zafira knew no one saw his bare flinch either. The world could be remade, but abuse could never be undone.
“He suspects we’ll use dum sihr to find the Lion, and he was not pleased. He’s forbidden it. The man I killed—”
“You’ll have to be more specific.”
Nasir didn’t respond, and Zafira saw the exact moment when his mask fitted back into place. His back steeled, his jaw hardened. The Prince of Death.
“I’m hungry,” she said suddenly.
The tension snapped like a bowstring. Kifah snorted. The palace doors groaned open beyond the arched entrances.
“Mortals,” Seif muttered, crossing his arms as Aya joined them in a flutter of lilac.
“You need this mortal, safi,” Zafira bit out. She felt Nasir watching her, now that she wasn’t watching him. “And if I’m to slit my hand and find Altair and the heart, I need to eat.”
Oblivious, Aya ushered them inside the palace as confident as if she were its queen. She took one glance at the vial of blood hanging from Zafira’s neck and beamed, quickly hiding
a warble of her lips. “We must mark this occasion, my loves. Every victory must be celebrated, however small.”
Zafira couldn’t smile back, not when the sheath at her thigh hung achingly empty. Why was it that victories were forever riddled with loss?
That, and the palace made her feel out of place. The halls were bathed in golden light, heaving with shadows that danced, eager for the Lion. She saw extravagance at her every glance, dripping from the suspended lanterns, gilding the intricate, arching walls. Columns twisting with interlacing florals, pots overflowing with greenery too lush to be real, gossamer curtains fluttering shyly in the dry breeze of the wide windows, and beckoning balconies.
People filed in and out of the great double doors, dignitaries arriving for the ominous feast. Servants polished the ornate floors to a shine, and majlis after majlis was readied by nimble-fingered needlewomen. Chandeliers were brought down and lined with fresh oil wicks, and goats bleated from deeper inside where she presumed the kitchens would be, oblivious to their impending slaughter.
Servants led Zafira away from the others, and like a fool, she glanced at him, to see if he’d turn. Look at her. Acknowledge her.
He continued on, deep in conversation with Kifah. And it was as if, suddenly, they were strangers again. The cloaked Hunter, the aloof Prince of Death.
She didn’t think it was possible to stand footsteps away and miss him even more.
Zafira hurried after the servants to her quarters, as large as her and Yasmine’s houses combined, spacious enough to host an entire village for a feast. The ornaments alone could feed them for a year. There was a mirror wider than any she’d seen, an assortment of vials in front of it that Zafira deemed useless because she never understood what ointment was meant to
accentuate which part of her face and in which order. Another low table held lidded bowls, one with almonds, another with pistachio-studded nougat, and the third with dates.
She stepped farther into the room and knelt to touch the stupendously large platform bed, softer than the fur of the supplest of rabbits. Her mind flashed to the Lion wearing Nasir’s face and her head spun, weariness tugging at her eyelids. But she was too guilty to climb beneath the covers knowing he was out there and that she could find him, the Jawarat, the heart, Altair—daama everything by losing yet another part of herself.
Sweet snow, she was tired. She lowered her cheek to the sheets, and didn’t think she had ever felt something so glorious in her life.
“Huntress.”
Zafira turned. The room was dark, unfamiliar.
The Silver Witch greeted her with a twist of her lips. “The first time is always the hardest.”
Umm had once said that about something far more mundane than what she was going to do. Ah, right. To Yasmine, when she’d snuck away with a boy once. A pang ripped through her heart.
“We have no choice,” Zafira replied.
Anadil canted her head. “You are the girl who triumphed without the forbidden.”
Zafira smiled sadly. “Times are desperate.”
The Silver Witch studied her. “Very well,” she said. “Dum sihr in its base form will allow you to use your affinity. You will be a da’ira again. And while you may easily use your own affinity, you must locate a spellbook should you require another, as dum sihr requires an incantation in the old tongue. Established centers, such as the Great Library, may have some
in their collection, though I’m certain the Jawarat contains a few of its own.”
“I’ve lost it,” Zafira said softly. “So find it.”
The words were so simple, Zafira wanted to curl into a ball and laugh.
“Have a care,” the Silver Witch continued. “Too much magic outside one’s affinity, and some part of you will pay the price.”
She touched a lock of her unnaturally bone-white hair, and before Zafira could say once was enough and that she would never practice any magic other than her own, Anadil shook her head. As if echoing what the Lion had said about brash promises.
“Okhti?”
Zafira bolted upright. Faint sunlight slanted over her, a breeze stirring the gauzy curtains. Noon. A dream. The Silver Witch wasn’t here; Zafira had daama slept. A dreamwalk?
Lana peered down at her.
“These are my rooms, but now we can share! Can you believe I slept in the prince’s chambers last night?” She lowered her voice, brown eyes glittering. “In a little room dedicated for his lady friends.”
There were a thousand words she could have said then:
Hello, or
Bait ul-Ahlaam does have everything, or
I found the vial at the cost of everything, or
How are the repercussions of the riots?
But she said none of them.
“Lady friends,” she echoed. Like the girl in the yellow shawl. Like the women whose gazes followed him shamelessly through the palace.
“You know, when they want to—”
“I know what it’s for,” Zafira snapped. Her neck burned. Other parts of her burned, too. In ways they’d never done before.
Lana grinned. “I missed your grumpiness.”
Zafira folded her legs beneath her and reached for the vial shimmering in the light, the geometric patterns reminding her of the Silver Witch’s letter from forever ago. That’s it. Focus on what needs to be done.
“Sweet snow, it’s beautiful,” Lana exclaimed. “Did it cost a lot?”
“Yes.”
Not of coin, she didn’t say, but something else. Something no amount of dinars could ever buy. But Aya was right: This was a victory. For Lana, too. They had traveled to Alderamin and Bait ul-Ahlaam because of her suggestion. Because of Lana, Zafira might have lost the last she had of Baba, but they could find Altair and the Lion. Track down the heart and the Jawarat. That was what mattered.
Lana moved to a corner of the room where she had been poring over a sheaf of papyrus on a low table with a tray of tools and an array of ointments along the edge.
“There’s an entire section of the palace dedicated to medicine,” she explained. “I’ve been transcribing remedies for Ammah Aya.” She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t think she needs them any more than she hopes I’ll commit them to memory.”
Only then did Zafira realize what Aya had taught Lana that their mother never had: confidence. A surety that Demenhune women lacked, even those who had fathers or brothers like the Iskandars once had Baba.
“Oh, and Kifah came. She wasn’t happy to know you were asleep, but I took care of it. None of us are any use half-dead.”
Zafira pursed her lips at the word “us” and the reminder that her sister was no longer a little girl. She hadn’t been a little girl in a long time, but that was all Zafira saw: Her small figure tucked against Baba’s side. Her eyes wide in wonder, her nose in a book.
And yet she had kept their Umm alive. She had kept herself sane when Zafira disappeared into the Arz for hours on end. She might not have wielded a bow, but she had done just as much as Zafira. She had gone through as much as Zafira had.
“You didn’t have to do that, you know,” Zafira said, rolling off the bed. She tossed her one of the coins Kifah had given her.
Her sister gave her a half smile. “No one ever has to, and yet someone always must.”
“Lana, the philosopher,” Zafira teased, disappearing into the adjoining bath. She poked her head out in the silence. “Lana, the pensive?”
The beautiful. The burdened. The girl who had grown up without Zafira knowing it.
“I saw the sultan,” Lana said, turning the coin over in her hands. “When you think of him, Okhti, do you ever want to kill him?”
Zafira hid her surprise behind a blink.
“It wasn’t he who killed Ummi,” she said carefully. She had told Lana about the sultan being steered like a puppet by the Lion. “You know this.”
Lana’s eyes were ablaze. “If being controlled was his mistake, then it was his mistake all the same.”
Lana, the girl with murder in her lungs.
“Nasir said the sultan doesn’t want us using dum sihr,” Zafira found herself saying.
Lana’s brow furrowed. “Oh? Does this mean you’ve forgiven him?”
It took Zafira a moment to realize Lana was speaking of Nasir. Was she that obvious? Why did she have to be the one to forgive first? Skies, she felt like an old married woman. She shrugged. “He didn’t tell me that.”
“I see,” Lana said, a laugh in her voice. “But you will, won’t you? Use dum sihr?”
Zafira nodded as she changed out of her tunic.
Lana flopped on the bed. “You’re being rebellious. I like
it.”
“I’ve always been rebellious. I hunted in the Arz—”
“For years, yes, I know. You’ve only repeated that a
thousand and one times. But you were never rebellious. You were secretive. If the caliph had forbidden you from hunting, you wouldn’t have gone.”
Zafira considered her words as she threw open the window. A crop of orange trees ranged outside, tender white flowers in bloom reminding her of Yasmine every time she inhaled.
“See? You’re changing.”
But it wasn’t about rebelling against the man who had murdered their mother. It was the act of dum sihr itself, something strictly forbidden for good reason. Lana didn’t know about the Jawarat’s vision and the force of Zafira’s newfound rage. About how it seemed to be draining the good out of her, leaving only the vilest paths to follow.
She was changing, but it wasn’t for the better, and when Lana flashed her a grin, Zafira couldn’t smile back.
 |
There were claims that the Lion had been seen in Sarasin, asserting he was climbing the Dancali Mountains, heading for Demenhur with a horde of ifrit at his back. A few had seen clusters of darkness racing for the ether, blanketing whole villages and creating havens for his ifrit kin. Others swore they saw a black lion bounding through crowds, leaving behind bloody entrails.
How the people knew the Lion of the Night was here at all, alive and well, Zafira couldn’t tell. She wouldn’t be surprised if the rumors could be traced back to the tiny Zaramese captain. Secrets were like mold, Zafira had learned. They found a way to spread no matter how diligently they were contained.
“I don’t trust any of it,” Zafira said airily as she and Aya waited for the others. Night had steeped across Arawiya long enough for the sky to brighten, and she had spent most of it in her room, hearing a soft knock every so often only for disappointment to flood afresh when she found the hall empty.
Aya’s sky-blue abaya was out of place in the war room’s dark dressings. Lana was dozing on the majlis with a papyrus in hand, the sheaf detailing some mixture or another that stanched the flow of blood. Apparently, the materials could no longer be found, but Lana swore she had seen them in Umm’s cabinet in Demenhur.
Aya studied Zafira. “You know the Lion well for such a young mortal.”
Something weighted her dreamy tone. Envy.
“I didn’t have much of a choice,” Zafira said dryly.
Aya stared at the vial. “The whispers escalate. They claim he is here to help us.”
They had more to worry about than crazed claims, but Zafira could see how they were made logical. With the freeing of the hearts came the Arz’s disappearance, and Arawiya was returning to what it once was: Sarasin’s darkness was
receding, Demenhur’s snow melting. The Lion had only to seize opportunity.
She fastened the vial’s chain around her neck and opened her mouth, about to ask how dum sihr worked. Aside from knowing it was forbidden and required the slitting of one’s palm, she didn’t know much else.
“‘He will fix our broken world’ they say,” Aya murmured.
Zafira paused, brow furrowing. She remembered what Aya had said in that moment of hysteria, when she’d protested dum sihr. What he wants can never be as terrible.
“The Lion wants vengeance,” Zafira said, as if Aya didn’t know. “And the knowledge that brings power.”
He might still want a home for his ifrit. He might still be driven by the pain of his father’s loss, but neither were as prevalent among his desires as his thirst for knowledge and the throne. Laa, that was greed.
Aya hmmed and touched a hand to her tattoo, turmoil on her face, and Zafira realized the Lion she remembered was different from the one Zafira knew. He had to be, if Benyamin had welcomed him, befriended him when none of the other safin could look past their pride.
The door opened and Nasir strode inside, Kifah and Seif at his heels. Zafira struggled to meet his eyes, nodding at Kifah and tossing a fleeting glance at Seif instead.
“You’re not following me,” Zafira told Lana, who had bolted awake.
She started to protest, but slumped back when Zafira lifted a brow. “Fine.”
Zafira didn’t know if she’d be wholly conscious once she slit her palm and melded the bloods together. She didn’t feel particularly inclined to stoop low enough to ask Seif, or even Aya, who was still lost in her strange thoughts.
“I’ve received word from Demenhur. The heart has been restored to the minaret there. Nothing from the others as yet,” Seif said.
No one rejoiced. The marids’ hungry eyes flashed in her thoughts, but Zafira shoved them away. No word from the others only meant they were still on their way, she reassured herself. They were prideful creatures. They wouldn’t write letters detailing their whereabouts every half day.
Two hearts had been restored, two more were on their way. It was the fifth the zumra needed to focus on. When Zafira said as much, Kifah nodded sharply.
“We’re working on it,” she said, armed and ready. “Will it work?” Aya asked.
“Did word of the Hunter not reach Alderamin?” Kifah asked with a raised brow. Zafira ducked under the sudden praise. “Not only will it work, but if all goes well, we’ll catch the Lion unaware. Now, shall we?”
Zafira tightened her hand around the vial of si’lah blood. Kifah was right, this would work. It was the act of dum sihr that scared her. The line down her palm from when she had fortuitously slit it on Sharr was still pink, the skin barely knotted together, reminding her of the Jawarat’s vision. How much more of herself would she lose before this was through?
A chorus rose in her veins when she gripped the knife Aya handed her, a barely contained excitement born from her bond with the Jawarat. But her hand shook with the weight of ten eyes boring into her, judging her. The tip of the knife meandered across her palm. Skies, couldn’t they leave? She opened her mouth, heat tight across her skin.
Then her insides screeched to a halt when a hand closed around the knife.
Nasir’s shadow draped over her, reassuring. He slid his palm beneath hers and brought the blade to her skin. Zafira
forgot to breathe. Her heart forgot to beat.
She relaxed her hand, as every part of her longed to lift her gaze up to the gray abyss of his. To remember what it felt like to be assessed by him. Watched. Revered. Understood.
“Forgive me,” he said softly, and drew the knife across her palm with a flex of his wrist. She hissed at the sudden pain. Red swelled along the blade’s path.
She heard voices in the hall, but they were distant and muffled, dreamlike. Perhaps she was dreaming and not tearing at the seams. Seif came forward and carefully measured out three drops of si’lah blood into her palm, murmuring something she couldn’t catch, before he closed the vial and dropped it back against her chest.
The effect was instant.
Zafira swayed. A strange and sweeping cold rushed through her, a hundred things hurtling too fast and heavy to comprehend. Everything suddenly burned shinier, bolder, brighter. As if she had drunk something that had fermented too long. She was aware of every little piece of herself—the blood racing beneath her skin, pulsing at her fingers, throbbing at her neck, at her temple.
Power.
From somewhere far, far away, the Jawarat hummed in approval. She felt the cool press of it deep inside her. She felt full and free. She felt like herself. The wind from the open window tousled her hair, hurtling freely as a bird. If she closed her eyes, the looming trees of the Arz crowded around her, whispering limbs greeting her. She missed the whiz of her heart, pulling her in a direction she couldn’t see. She missed magic.
“Huntress?”
Zafira opened her eyes to startling clarity. Kifah and the others watched her warily. In her mind’s eye, she saw Altair’s
grin. She saw the bloody mass of the final si’lah heart, beating faintly.
She smiled. “Follow me.”
