In the hall, Nasir clenched his fist against the wall and dropped his head to the crook of his arm.
The rise and fall of her chest made him want to weep. The sight of that smile he’d thought he’d never see again—rimaal. Crazed joy echoed in his limbs, crowded in his throat, worked his lungs for breath. Like a drunkard finally sobering, Nasir knew what had happened to him, and what her near death made him realize.
He didn’t dare think the words.
“Shukrun for letting me know before you shoved me down that hall,” Nasir said, trying to keep his voice steady.
“I thought you’d enjoy the surprise,” Altair said, his face finally free of those terrible streaks of blood. “That was a short visit, by the way. Don’t you know what you’re supposed to do with the door closed?”
Nasir pretended he didn’t understand. “She wasn’t alone.” “Ah, so you do know—”
“Not. Another. Word,” Nasir bit out. Haytham’s son clung even closer to Altair’s leg. Nasir sequestered his wayward thoughts and burned them.
The general shrugged, patting the boy with inattentive reassurance. “You know as crown prince, you can ask anyone to vacate the room, yes?”
“As well as you know I’m not one for ordering people around.”
“Could’ve fooled me—”
“And here I thought we’d finally gotten rid of you.” Kifah stepped past the navy curtain, dark eyes bright.
Altair made a sound between a chuckle and a strangled sob, and wrapped her in a hug, lifting her off the ground.
She froze at the embrace.
“I missed you, too, One of Nine,” he said.
She pulled back and pointed at her eye, raising her brows without comment.
“What can I say?” Altair asked in a nonchalant manner that suggested the opposite. “My father was jealous.”
“Or exasperated,” Nasir said.
Kifah snorted. “That is far more believable. Though that act of yours, when you’d turned your back on us? I was ready to fling my spear through your skull.”
“I know,” Altair said, earnest. “I thought I’d convinced him that if no one else was on his side, his son was. Do you still think I look dashing?”
Nasir tamped down a smile when Kifah gave Altair a look. “I never thought you looked dashing.”
“Idris?” a new voice asked.
The four of them turned to the doorway, which framed a man Nasir had witnessed through a fire sparked by dum sihr one too many times: Haytham. Ragged and weary, but alive.
“Baba!”
The boy stumbled and ran, and the wazir dropped to his knees, weeping as he drew the boy into his arms. The old Nasir would have scorned him for how easily his loyalties had turned. All it had taken was the trapping of his son, and the Lion had full sway over the second-most-powerful man in Demenhur. This new Nasir felt remorse for them both. Altair had the decency to allow them privacy, pulling Kifah aside with him.
Nasir had no such qualm. Haytham looked up.
“Sultani,” he said, rising hesitantly. He gripped his son’s arm.
“We meet at last,” Nasir said. Haytham’s mouth twitched with a failed smile. “The Huntress looked at you with respect when you saved her in the palace. Why?”
Had it been anyone else, Nasir wouldn’t have cared, he wouldn’t have given it a second thought. Haytham’s gaze flickered in surprise, but he should have known Nasir would notice. If an assassin was not attentive, he was dead.
“Our interactions were scarce, but I’ve known for years that the Hunter is no man,” Haytham said, choosing his words.
Nasir’s eyes narrowed to slits. “How?”
“Ayman’s daughter. He cast her away, but I ensured her education and upbringing regardless, by dressing her as a boy. I recognized the signs.”
Nasir hadn’t known the Demenhune caliph had a daughter, let alone a child. Was the caliphate’s bias so twisted that children were all but disappearing? But the regard in Zafira’s gaze made sense now. Haytham was a man of prominence, a path to ensuring that the women of the caliphate did not fear for themselves.
“And yet you’re a traitor,” Nasir said. “The reason her village is gone. Her mother is dead.”
Haytham was as much to blame as Nasir was. For it was he who had guaranteed the caliph’s whereabouts. He who had fled when the people suffered. The wazir pulled Idris tight against him—the reason a man as loyal as Haytham had loosed his tongue and betrayed the people he was sworn to protect.
“If the people know, you will be stoned,” Nasir continued. If Zafira knew, she would break. Nasir knew well enough how painful it was for a gaze once wrought with esteem to lose it. He couldn’t allow that to happen.
Haytham did not dare breathe.
“Then we’ll speak nothing of it,” Altair broke in.
The two of them glanced at the general in surprise. Kifah was nowhere to be seen as Altair’s blue gaze flicked between them.
“It won’t discount what you’ve done, but we can all agree your death will do more harm than good, laa?”
Nasir nodded. It wouldn’t be a difficult secret to keep. Only the three of them, the Lion, and Ghameq knew. And one of them was already dead. Forever. The word was a pebble smooth and laden.
Outside, the sun was dipping behind the spindly trees, the cold deepening. Haytham used the end of his keffiyah to regain some composure and dropped to his knees. His son understood enough and did the same.
Altair lifted an eyebrow. “You’re welcome.”
Nasir said nothing, but when the boy snuck a glance up at him, he couldn’t help it: He smiled.
