Qadir turned away. “We ran from them. We disobeyed our king and buried our country deep beneath the sand so that no human could ever reach us.”
The weight of those words settled slowly. To sink a landscape of ruins was one thing. To make an entire country disappear was another. Loulie crossed her arms and swallowed. She imagined falling forever, imagined her home and her loved ones suffocating beneath the sand.
“They made us suffer for our betrayal,” Qadir murmured.
Loulie glanced at the faded scars running up his arms. My shame was carved into me with a knife so that I would not forget it. I deserved it.
“Those of us who didn’t want to suffer fled to the human world,” Aisha said. She held up the hairless rabbit and, after a significant pause, threw it into the fire. The prince made a sound of protest that quickly collapsed into a gasp, for the fire did not burn the hare; it cooked it. “Of course, all of us suffered in the end.”
A sullen but short-lived quiet permeated the cave before the prince cleared his throat and said, “In our legends, they call you the Queen of Dunes. They say—”
“Enough.” Aisha’s voice was sharp, cold. “I tire of these jinn stories.”
The prince blinked, looking thoroughly perplexed. He turned that look on Qadir, who shook his head. “My past is my past. I buried it long ago, and I intend to keep it that way.” He glanced up and caught Loulie’s eyes. Forgive me.
There was nothing to forgive him for. This was not Qadir’s fault. And yet—she could not stop reliving the moment Imad had apprehended them in the ruins. You. It was you we were looking for, he’d said. Not the compass, not a relic. The thieves had unknowingly been searching for an ifrit—a creature that had stumbled into her tribe’s burning campsite that night, looking for his compass, and who had found it in the hands of a tortured girl. It had been the thieves who killed her family. Qadir had saved her from them. And yet if Qadir had not been wandering by their campsite in the first place, if the thieves had not tracked him to that area…
They would still be alive.
The realization opened a gaping hole in her heart. It didn’t matter that it was irrational. Her memories were a stronger force, pushing away everything until there was nothing but a deep anguish, one that ought to have been extinguished with Imad. But the flame had not gone out; it smoldered somewhere inside her, screaming, What if, what if?
“Loulie,” Qadir said softly.
“I’ve heard enough for the night.” She felt hollow. Drained. “We’ll speak more tomorrow.” Her words had the finality of an executioner’s ax. The quiet persisted into their halfhearted meal. Later, the prince and Aisha took their conversation outside, leaving her alone with Qadir.
Neither of them spoke. Not until Loulie was ready to sleep and Qadir reached out and touched her shoulder as she was limping away. “I apologize,” he said. “It was selfish of me to only ever want to be Qadir in your eyes.” Gently, he squeezed her shoulder. “Thank you for fighting so hard to reclaim my dagger in the ruins.”
He exhaled softly, then slid his hand off her shoulder. “I managed to save this as well.” He tapped something at his hip: a familiar scuffed-up scabbard. Loulie’s heart jumped into her throat at the sight of it. Imad had not mentioned the blade when his ghouls investigated the hole.
As he always did, Qadir read the question in her expression. “I hid the blade in the desert before I infiltrated the ruins.” He shook his head. “You have taken care of my dagger all these years; it is only natural I would protect a gift from you in the same way.”
Loulie had no words. Even if she had, she would not have been able to speak, tight as her throat was. So she said nothing when Qadir offered her a feeble smile and said, “Tomorrow, when I have regained more of my power, let me heal your injuries?”
All she managed was a nod before she turned away, eyes burning with unshed tears.
When she did finally sleep, her rest was plagued by nightmares.
50
MAZEN
Mazen rose with the sun. After hours of trying and failing to fall asleep in the freezing cave without any blankets, he moved to the mouth of the cave to watch the sunrise. The sky was beautiful, clear of clouds and painted in hues of blue and gold. He imagined those colors stretched across the desert sky like a tapestry, pictured his father, hands clasped behind his back, a soft smile on his face, watching this same sunrise from his palace balcony.
The sultan had always been most amiable before sunrise; Mazen liked to think it was because he had yet to don the mask he presented in court. Sometimes, when his father had been in a particularly good mood, he’d told Mazen stories. Stories about Amir, the first sultan, and his brother, Ghazi, the first qaid.