Something caught in Nasir’s left eye, making it hard to see for the briefest of moments before he blinked it away. Zafira might as well have told him to leap into a chasm. That was how it felt to speak to his father.

A bride. The mere thought weighed heavier than the Lion having the Jawarat, a heart, and Altair. Nothing in Nasir’s life ever went right, but everything seemed to be going more wrong than usual.

“I will,” he promised softly. For you. There was something in his chest. A wild beast, perhaps, desperately trying to claw its way free. To leap into her hands and let her do with it what she willed.

He had rehearsed an apology and an explanation when he had lifted his old dagger from the crate in his wardrobe. Words upon words that he had painstakingly strung together, things he needed to say before tonight. Before the feast, when he would have to choose a bride.

Every last syllable vanished when he saw her.

I want to, she had said, and he wanted to know the limits of those words. He wanted to speak every word he had jumbled inside him, but he needed—he didn’t know what he needed. Time, perhaps.

“You look nice, Zafira,” she drawled playfully when he didn’t say anything more. She flourished two fingers from her brow with a confidence that stole his breath. “Shukrun, my prince.”

She wasn’t nice, she was a vision.

The girls had brushed moonlight onto her skin, leaving that splotch of darkness to taunt him. Her hair was a mane of gleaming tresses framing her face, blue eyes dazzling in a fringe of kohl.

“Do you wish for me to scribe poetry in your name, fair gazelle?” His voice was rough.

“Pretty words are nice sometimes.”

He brushed a hand down the shimmer of her sleeve, touched the inside of her wrist. “Did the stars fall from the sky to adorn you in their luster? No—liquid silver. You are the well that forged every blade in the world.”

She laughed, and his heart leaped at the sound.

“On second thought,” she breathed, closing the distance between them, making him all too aware of her bed stretching out behind her, a tease and a wish, before she brought her mouth to his. “You should do more and talk less.”

A sound escaped him. His ears burned at her intrepid advance, so unlike the blushing girl from Sharr. It was one thing to want to kiss her, and quite another for her to grip the collar of his thobe and pull him to her, the softness of her mouth capturing his. His hands fitted to her waist, the warmth of her skin pulsing through the thin cloth.

“Nasir.”

The pleading in her whisper drove him mad. He wrenched her closer, barely stopping a groan at the feel of her against him. Her lips parted with his, and he smiled at the tentative press of her tongue. He tasted citrus, and the roaring in his blood rushed lower, lower.

Perhaps more than her mouth and her soft sighs, he craved the touch of her palm on his chest, the splay of her fingers on his heart. Claiming him. He pulled away to study her. Her eyes were glassy, her lips bruised and far too lovely for a killer like him. Yet he allowed himself the credit—he had done this. He

was the reason the cloistered Huntress was falling apart. He was the reason her lungs worked for breath.

He wanted to lose his fingers in the obsidian of her hair again. To knot his hands into the fabric of her dress to stop the tremble in them, to lead her back, back, back, but it would be cruel to ruin her perfection. He lightened his touch.

“I missed you,” she whispered against his mouth. “I’m sorry,” he whispered at the same time.

She drew back the barest bit, and that half-lidded gaze nearly undid him. “What for now?”

He swayed forward. “For ruining your dress.”

“What’s the use of a pretty dress if I can’t do what I want in it?”

What was the use of a crown if he could not do as he wished?

Her hands slid up his thobe and threaded in his hair, igniting him anew before she pulled away with a smothered sob.

“How long can a stolen moment last?” The words were half to herself. That was the reason for her boldness. For her abandon.

It hurt him.

A single chord of perception stood in her blue gaze before she spoke in a breathless rush. “Will you speak these words to your bride? Kiss her so?”

“My bride. My queen. My fair gazelle,” he said in the barest shred of a whisper. “Cannot all three be one and the same?”

Color brushed her cheeks, and he knew it then. The world could bring a thousand women to him and not one could stand as equal to her. He followed the bob in her throat, noted the sadness in her eyes. He had finally found it in himself to voice

what he wanted, but what did it matter if she didn’t want the same?

“And the girl in your room?” she asked, thinking he had spoken lightly. “Am I to share you with her when I am your queen?”

“Kulsum. I truly do not know why she had come to my room the night you saw her. She was my mother’s servant, and she lost her tongue because of me. I—I loved her,” he said, because it was true, because he would never lie to Zafira, “until I learned she was a spy who had been using me and that I’d killed her lover years ago.”

His father had tortured him.

His mother had lied about her very existence.

And his lover’s every kiss had been a double-edged sword.

Now isn’t the time for your pathetic realizations. It was too late—he was already spiraling down the abyss. She saw it. She saw the chaos on his face, heard it in the thrum of his heart because she was still so close. It was only when she pressed her brow to his that he remembered to breathe.

“You are right not to accept me. Not to want this,” he said. She shook her head against his. “It isn’t your fault that—” He cut her off with a broken laugh. “What are the odds,

Zafira? Every bit of affection in my life has been fabricated. When does it stop being the fault of others and start being the fault of mine?”

She didn’t speak. Only gripped his shoulder with a sure hand, listening as no one ever had before.

“I only look human,” he said quietly. A curl of shadow escaped his mouth. It happened when his emotions ran rampant, when he struggled to rein in his thoughts. “I’m a monster. A beast. And the ones who run are the ones who’ve

gotten close enough to see that there’s no room inside for anything else.”

“Even a beast is capable of love. Of being loved,” she countered. “The Lion made your father cruel. Necessity made your mother lie. Pain fueled Kulsum’s manipulation. No matter what Altair has become now, he loved you before. Kifah loves you. I—”

He stilled. He didn’t dare draw breath. A knock sounded at the door, insistent.

“I should—” She stopped, breathless, and pulled away.

“Yes,” he said dumbly, and then she was gone, leaving the scent of oud and roses on his clothes, silver starlight everywhere he looked, and the ghost of words that never were.