Lana was watching her, and Zafira forced a smile. “Is Sultan’s Keep everything you imagined?”
For a moment, she was afraid Lana would push. Needle her about the Jawarat’s whispers, about Benyamin’s dreamwalk. About Baba’s cloak, which she would never see again.
“I was afraid I’d have nothing to do here,” Lana said instead. “It’s the sultan’s city! I’m a village girl with nothing to my name. But you know how weeds grow no matter where they’re planted? That’s me.”
Zafira didn’t point out that she was one of the most beautiful weeds in Arawiya.
“I’ve been keeping busy.”
“Oh?”
Lana nodded. “The sultan’s going mad, apparently. People are rioting, and more and more are turning up in infirmaries short of medics. Ammah Aya and I have been helping. She tutors me in the mornings, and we assist in different infirmaries from noon. They even pay a small sum. Can you believe I’ve earned enough dinars to buy something, Okhti? Money of my own.” Lana leaned forward, remembering something else. She lowered her voice. “Oh, and when I sewed a man’s arm as neatly as a seamstress, Ammah Aya called me a natural. She says that when magic returns, my affinity could be healing. Imagine that!”
Zafira felt both a flood of pride and a small sense of … loss. As if her sister no longer needed her. As if she had found purpose when Zafira had lost hers. What a selfish caravan of thought.
“What about Sukkar? Is he—” She couldn’t finish her question.
Lana smiled gently. “He’s safe. He was with us, remember?”
Another knock sounded at the door before she could press for her horse’s whereabouts, as soft and tentative as earlier.
Lana’s eyes brightened. “It’s him, isn’t it? The prince.” She nudged Zafira. “Aren’t you going to open it?”
“No.”
Lana hopped off the bed. “Then I wi—”
“No, you won’t. Sit down.” Zafira glared and Lana glared back. She gritted her teeth. “Fine.”
Zafira opened the door with her heart in her throat. Nasir’s eyes touched her damp hair, her wrinkled qamis, and settled on her face. He was still only half-dressed.
“Are you tired?” he asked.
She furrowed her brow. “No? I rested long enough on the ship, I suppose.”
“Come with me.”
He was already turning away, and she would have refused to be ordered if she hadn’t caught the light in his eyes. The hint of diffidence. The flare of shadow escaping his fingers before he stopped it.
“Where?” she asked, ignoring Lana’s whispered “Yalla!” from her perch on the bed. Zafira wasn’t supposed to indulge him. She wasn’t supposed to indulge herself.
“I want to show you something.”
It was rare for him to use the word “want.” Possibly rare for him to do anything he wanted, too.
“But my sister—”
Lana hissed. Skies, the girl didn’t even know him.
Zafira stepped back into the room with a scowl. “I thought you missed me.”
“Of course. And if you don’t get too engrossed,” Lana said with a grin, “you’ll be back in no time.”
“Engrossed?” Zafira asked with a lift of her brows. Either Yasmine had found someone new to share her favorite stories with, or someone’s reading material was no longer limited to adventure.
Lana only shrugged.
Zafira wrapped the Jawarat in a scarf and tucked it into a corner. Take us with you, bint Iskandar. She gritted her teeth against the voice and gave Lana’s curiosity a look. “Don’t touch it.”
“Of course, sayyida,” she replied solemnly.
* * *
Zafira followed Nasir to his room. Her eyes slipped from his robes hanging on the back of a chair to his towel stretched neatly with his drying turban on the rack and then to the bed, where the sheets were strewn from a restless attempt at sleep.
“Where are the hearts?” she asked. He’d last had them.
“With Kifah,” he answered, and closed the door behind her, closing away the entire world. Every last worry over Lana and the Lion and the Jawarat faded away, replaced by a burn low in her stomach.
He paused, realizing the same with a shallow breath, and stepped past her.
Before the window, he handed her two pieces of supple calfskin, a cross between socks and shoes. His sleeve shifted with the movement, and when he didn’t bother to conceal the teardrop tattoo as quickly as he once did, she felt … She didn’t know what she felt, but it was stirred with fear.
A kind of fear she craved.
“Can you climb?”
She looked out and the desert cold bit at her nose, the stars clear and bright and real enough to grasp. Silhouetted buildings rose into the night, as vigilant as the owls she sometimes saw in the Empty Forest. They were a good two or three stories off the ground, but she shrugged against the thrum in her blood. “Of course. The first rule is don’t look down, laa?”
“Looking down is half the fun,” Nasir scoffed, but there was a strain to his voice that heightened her awareness.
“Fun. You.” She almost laughed.
He turned to her abruptly, caging her between the wall and the heat of his body. Her limbs ceased to function. Myrrh and amber twined when he lowered his head the barest fraction, his mouth so close to hers that her lips buzzed and her head spun.
The right of his mouth lifted. “I can be lots of fun, Zafira.”
She swallowed at the lazy drawl of her name, and his eyes darkened as they traced the shift of her throat. She wanted to fight the wicked grin off his mouth with her own, aware of the sway in her body, threatening to pitch forward and close the distance between them.
“This is all I’ve been able to think about. You. Us. Those damning words,” he said softly, his voice liquid darkness.
“You said them,” Zafira breathed.
“I take them back.”
“Is that how you say you’re sorry?”
“I can get on my knees for you, fair gazelle,” he whispered against her cheek, “if that is what you wish.”
This was not Sharr. This was a room with a locked door and a half-dressed prince and a bed just a small shove away. The air simmered with his dangerous words, with her errant thoughts and the tension making it hard to breathe.
“I measure fun by the pound of my pulse.” His low voice dropped even lower. Rougher. “Do you feel it?”
He trailed the backs of his fingers up her wrist, skeins of shadow following like smoke after a flame, and dipped his head, touching his mouth to the inside of her elbow with a ragged breath.
Her throat was dry. “This isn’t fun. This is … this…”
Skies, what were words? He hummed softly, almost in answer.
What would it be like to let go? To ignore caution and live this moment without restraint?
“You learn to take what you can get,” he murmured, then hefted himself onto the sill and out of sight.
Zafira sagged against the wall.
Sweet snow below.
Her arm was ablaze. How was it that a handful of rough words and a trimming of distance could make her limbs buckle like a newborn fawn’s? She gulped fistfuls of air. What was the daama point of climbing up there anyway? It took her three tries to tug on the slightly-too-big slippers, and then she pulled herself onto the ledge just in time to catch him crawling spider-like to the top. He leaped, disappearing from view.