There were moments before moments, in which the world was framed in startling clarity, a defined before hurtling toward a horrible after. Moments in which the powerful were powerless, in which promises became failings.
This was such a moment.
Nasir did not think Zafira saw Kifah running toward her after the briefest hesitation, or she would have waited before firing her last arrow. No—she had acted in defeat. She had opened her arms to the embrace of death, armed for one last fight.
He saw the arrow impale her chest. Heard the horrible rasp of her breath.
And his soul rent in half.
A shattering so great, he could not breathe for an eternal moment. It was then that he knew his soul had found its match. Bright, burning, gone.
Some word tore from him, foreign in its loudness, as if sound itself could stop and reverse time. He shoved people out of his path. The massive elder ifrit readied for another attack, and someone gripped Nasir by his middle and held him back. Forcing him to watch when he should have been there. To hold her. To stop them. To save her. He would give her his lungs if it meant she would breathe for him again.
What was the point of a throne and a crown and the power it wrought, if he was powerless?
“Let me go,” he shouted as the elder impaled the ground where Nasir almost stood. The force of it made something slip from his robes and fracture, pieces scattering across the stone. He snatched up as much of it as he could. The compass, silver and crimson. That small, insignificant trinket that had led him to her time and time again, gone. Like her.
“No,” Altair growled in his ear. Would that something as impossible as a mirage had become true, and still lay out of reach. “I’m not going to lose you both.”
Fair gazelle. Please don’t go.
“Please,” he whispered and begged. His compass. His queen. His life. “Don’t go.”
But death listened to no one, not even the Amir al-Maut. And Nasir watched as her butterfly wings fluttered once, and Zafira Iskandar fell to the ground, a silver star driving the light from his world.
His yesterdays and his tomorrows, gone just like that.
