Breakfast was tangy labneh with enough lemon to make Zafira’s mouth water, and crispy falafel. She watched Nasir break the chickpea patties in perfect halves as she obliterated her own share. They also shared sesame bread with slices of jibn, the cheese sweeter than she liked, and a dallah of mint tea.
After leaving the inn, Nasir fell silent. Zafira recollected their every conversation, assuming, in the end, that he was contemplating the question that wavered between them, an apparition neither acknowledged.
Ever since their angry lashing of teeth, tongue, and lips the day before, she had felt like herself. He had a knack for that, she realized, for grounding her. Her blood warmed at the memory. If he was the antidote to the Jawarat’s curse, it wasn’t so bad a problem to have.
The book hummed, and Zafira focused on the road. The sky was still dark as the night, the only indication of it being daytime the bright line far in the horizon that marked the edge of Sarasin.
“Do you think you can kill him?” Zafira asked after a time, aware Nasir’s mark might not be human. When he’d told her of the real Muzaffar, dead in the banquet hall of the Sultan’s Palace, a helpless cavern had opened beneath her. He hadn’t been any other merchant; he was one who had advocated for change, who had worked for the better of his people.
Now an ifrit had stolen his skin, his face, his seat.
Nasir looked delicately affronted. “Of course. After, it’s only a matter of confronting the Lion. Together.”
“Together,” she repeated with a dark laugh. “The others won’t be happy to see me, and you know it.”
“And now you’re here. The others won’t have a choice.” She realized then what he had done.
“If I did not know any better,” she said around the fist in her throat, “I’d say you came along solely to kiss me.”
And be with me. And keep me sane. And protect me.
He laughed. “You speak as if you didn’t enjoy it.” “Maybe I didn’t. Maybe I was only indulging you.”
“Those were not the sounds someone makes,” Nasir murmured against her ear, “when they’re merely indulging another.”
Her neck burned. The streets were empty.
“If we were in a story, what would happen?” Zafira asked before she could stop herself.
Nasir went rigid behind her. “What does that mean?”
“It’s a game Yasmine and I used to play,” she said, glancing back at him. “Every day she would learn a new fact about the man she was falling for, and every day she would lengthen the list of what her imaginary husband would have and be when he swept her away. And then she married him.”
“But?”
“Hmm?”
“But then what happened?” he asked, ever perceptive.
“She found he was not as perfect as she thought. He had lied to her. Or rather, he’d hidden the truth of who he was,” Zafira clarified.
“She discovered he had flaws,” Nasir suggested.
Zafira nodded, though it didn’t discount the secrets Misk had kept. “And I think she needs time to understand that flaws
make us whole. Real. He’s not terrible, or a monster.”
Nasir didn’t respond, and Zafira inwardly cringed at her use of the word “monster.” You absolute fool.
“I don’t—I don’t play games,” he said, eventually, as they turned down a street far too wide to be an alley.
“You do now,” she teased, only to find him serious. Disturbed, almost. At once, she realized it had nothing to do with games, but what this specific one entailed. “You’re allowed to dream, you know. To imagine.”
He said nothing.
She could sense something—someone, watching them from the shadows. Several domes glinted in the near distance. The palace.
“I would take you for iced cream,” Nasir said suddenly. Zafira held her breath.
“Isn’t that … what you wanted, once?”
She vaguely remembered making mention of it on Sharr, but it didn’t matter now. Bakdash was gone. If that lavender door was still intact, it would stand closed forever. No one was left to open it, to fill its walls with love.
Even if some of the people in her village remained, it wouldn’t be the same. The air would be spooled with ghosts, the streets thick with the dead.
“That iced cream shop—it’s gone now,” she said softly.
Renowned across the kingdom, gone just like that.
“You said this was a story,” Nasir protested, and she could hear the frown in his voice.
His utter confusion tore a laugh out of her, and she fell back against him, nestling into the nook of his outstretched arms. It was only a heartbeat, and then realization struck them both like a snake. Nasir went still. Zafira straightened. The Jawarat observed her without a word.
After a moment, Nasir audibly swallowed. “We’re nearly there,” he said quietly.
Zafira nodded, shifting the book in her hands.
She’d been at ease. Not intoxicated by lust or desire or need, just comfortable. With that one revelation came a flood of more: How she had come to expect his heated gaze and pensive smiles, and how well she fit in his arms. How he cared for her, in a way she thought an assassin could not. How she cared for him, as she once vowed she never would for anyone, least of all the Prince of Death.
Nasir slowed Afya to a walk as they neared the Sarasin palace in the center of Leil. The streets were fuller, likely because of the lighter-than-black skies, less marred by darkness. In it, she could see the grandness that once prevailed. The details carved into every edifice, proof that here they once valued life.
It was bittersweet, in a way. Hopeful, too. For if the Sarasins valued life once, it meant they could do so again. It made her think of her village, and how, despite how hopeless so much seemed, she had still found it in herself to feed her people, to care for them.
What Sarasin needed, first, was someone to stand for them.
To unite them, make them worthy of their place in Arawiya.
They stepped through a glade of date palms to a sight that crowded Zafira’s throat. She had basked in the ethereal lure of the Demenhune palace and the majestic beast of the Sultan’s, but there was something about the Sarasin palace that stole her breath away.
It emanated a dark beauty she had come to associate with all things Sarasin. Where the other two palaces sprawled, this one towered. Minarets rose to the cloudless skies, and the enormous obsidian dome in the center was cut with countless arched windows. Scrolling florals were carved into the gray stone, the slant of the sun deepening the rises and dips.
Zafira had spent all her life thinking Sarasins to be monsters, and yet here was beauty she had never expected. They tethered Afya to a post to the side of the palace and sprinted to a smaller set of gates. Black-and-silver liveried guards were making the rounds, narrow swords set against their shoulders.
She slid a glance at Nasir. What was it like to return to the place of one’s blood and know one was not welcome? There was a price on his head. Even if there weren’t, he’d killed the previous caliph in cold blood.
Nasir dragged her to the shadows, surveying the surroundings as he spoke. “Raw materials come in twice a day. The carts should arrive soon.”
“How do you know we have the right timing?”
He straightened the knives along his belt. “That’s why I said ‘should.’”
Zafira cast him a look as a rumbling filled the air. With a wink, Nasir pulled her deeper into the shadows.
Three carts clattered down the stone road and halted before the black gates. The guards lazily sheathed their swords and strolled to them. Those locks could undo themselves quicker than the dastards were working them. The cart drivers echoed Zafira’s impatience, noisily rifling through sheaves of papyrus, ready for their coin.
Nasir nudged her down the thin line of cover to the last cart, and Zafira didn’t breathe as they darted across the road in broad daylight—Sarasin’s definition of it, gray and murky. All the driver needed to do was glance behind him. All the guards needed to do was look a little farther down the road.
She sent Nasir a look of alarm that he studiously ignored as he loosened the rope holding down the cart’s covering. While Zafira stared at the back of the driver’s head, Nasir peeled up the burlap and gestured for her to climb inside. She kept her footing light and winced as she slid between the sacks of flour
and nestled into the far corner. The head of a nail dug into her shoulder, just above her wound. The horse shuffled, and the cart rocked with it. Skies, this was nowhere near a foolproof plan. She’d be safer if she tore open a bag of flour and doused herself in it.
Nasir pursed his lips, clearly thinking the same, but there wasn’t time. The guards would turn toward the second cart soon enough. They’d be seen in a heartbeat. He gripped the edge of the cart to heft himself up and follow her inside—and froze.
The guards were drifting their way.
Khara. Voices rose. Someone shouted—one of the cart drivers, arguing over his payment. Zafira heard next to nothing over her pounding pulse.
I like the sound of your heart.
She did not like this newfound fear, the way it paralyzed her senses and slowed her blood. The Jawarat, which thrived on chaos, had no tumultuous words of advice. Nasir met her eyes, panic flitting across the gray.
And then everything went dark as he dropped the burlap over her and the cart began to move.
