She had half a mind to slip back and climb into bed—her bed. She growled.
Engrossed.
With a steadying breath, she grabbed the jutting curves of stone and pulled herself up, relieved when her toes found purchase. Don’t look down. She grabbed the next stone and climbed up another notch, nearly losing her grip when Nasir poked his head over the side again.
“Dawn will get here before you do,” he mock-whispered.
She glared at him, finally reaching a ledge wide enough to allow her to rest her cramping toes. Him and his daama idea of fun. She slid her hands along the wall, and panic cut her breath when she found nothing.
Nasir reached down. “You’ll have to jump.”
He was insane. She wasn’t going to leap in the dark, this far off the ground, only to miss his—
“Trust me,” he said softly, a weight to the words. A question behind them.
She was insane. With another glare, she bent her knees, inhaled deep, and jumped. His hands wrapped around her arms almost immediately, warm and sure, and he pulled her up with a heavy huff of air.
His touch lingered an extra beat, and Zafira was so relieved to be on solid stone, she nearly leaned into him before catching herself. Feathery curtains hung from spaced-out posts along the open rooftop. Latticed arches with intricately cut-out shapes cast alluring shadows on the cushions and rugs arranged inside, the moon’s breeze winding through like a coy shawl, the entire layout doing nothing to stop her head from leaping to the conclusions that it did. Zafira might have been inexperienced, but she wasn’t daft.
“We’re almost there,” he said with a smirk, because, unlike her, he wasn’t daft or inexperienced.
“I’ve had enough of your fun, I think.”
He replied with a slow shrug, catching her lie. The stars crowned his hair. The heavy moon threw everything into a forgery of twilight.
“You know the way back, Huntress.”
She growled. “Lead the way, Sultani.”
He melted into the night, his feet barely touching the ground as he sprinted along the edge. Her heart crammed half a croak into her throat when he leaped at the end, arms spreading, a falcon in flight for the barest of moments before he tumbled onto the next rooftop, silhouetted against the night.
If a boy can do it, why can’t I? She was the girl who had conquered the Arz, who had tamed the darkness of Sharr. Leaping across rooftops was child’s play.
Zafira stepped back, the limestone rough beneath her slippers. With a quick inhale, she darted across the expanse, the sharp drop pounding closer with her every heartbeat. Don’t stop. Don’t stop. She pushed off at the very edge, and then she was airborne. Throat-wrenching fear shot through her veins, reminding her of the fragility of life. She savored that moment when fear teetered into adrenaline and hurtled into exhilaration.
His definition of fun.
And then her feet struck the ground, stone scraping her palms, the impact jarring her jaw.
Alive. Even if she’d left her heart back on the other rooftop.
She rose on shaky legs, blood pounding in her ears. They were on a circular rooftop now, with a slender minaret rising from its center. Moonlight bathed the stairs cut into its outer walls, reflecting off the glossy obsidian tiles.
“Fair gazelle,” Nasir said, and the teasing in his tone made her go very still. “We don’t want the people to think a rukh landed.”
She scowled. “One more insult and I will shove you off the edge of this roof.”
He smiled that half smile, and Zafira wondered if it would ever rise higher. If he would ever find joy enough to carry his smile to the gray of his eyes.
“I’ll take you with me.” That tone.
“Then we’ll both die.”
“You seem to have no trouble being the end of me.”
He was watching her in that odd way of his, as if she would be lost among the stars if he looked away. It was reverent, almost. Wishful. She loosed a tight breath and averted her gaze. In the end, when this journey and mission was done, none of it would matter, would it?
He was her future king, and she his subject.
CHAPTER 12
Nasir saw the shift in her. The sudden guard that dampened the brightness in her eyes. He didn’t know what he had done wrong this time.
“We’re almost there,” he said again, because he didn’t know what else to say, and started up the stairs spiraling around the abandoned minaret. He had forgotten about his leg until it throbbed painfully beneath him at the second rooftop, but he wasn’t going to cede like a frail old man because an ifrit had gotten the better of him on Sharr.
Unlike the five caliphates, Sultan’s Keep did not have a royal minaret that once housed magic, only an endless sea of spires grasping for the skies, reaching for something they could never find. The top of this minaret was the highest point overlooking the palace and the surrounding vicinity. A breathtaking sight when the moon was at her brightest, as she was now.
He used to come here, before. A fresh burn on his back and blood from his bitten tongue dripping down his mouth. When his mother would cry and his father would grip the poker, gray eyes far too ancient for a mortal man. He used to come here before that, too, with a man he called Baba who would hold his hand and look at him with pride.
Nasir had known love then. He could still remember the way it filled his chest to near bursting.
It was why, as soon as Nasir spotted the telltale form from his window, he had hurried to Zafira, for it was either that or relive his memories as shadows bled from his fingers. He was home, at last, the place he never wanted to be, but when she was near the darkness receded, curious wisps slipping from his hands like the final puffs of steam from a cooling dallah.
When she was near, he had more to focus on. The notch between her brows, the tilted tuck of her lower lip beneath her gnawing teeth. The brush of moonlight on the angles of her face.
“I can’t believe I have to make the trip back after this,” she muttered, and he added the lilt of her voice to his list.
We can stay here, he almost said like some sort of hapless fool ignoring reality.
Nasir used the scalloped edging to pull himself up, brittle limestone clinging to his palms. The minaret’s balcony was overshadowed by a jutting eave, so the best view was from above it, on the small, sloping roof. He helped her up.
And the breeze stole her gasp.
The clear sky unfolded in shades of purple peppered with silver stars. Sconces lit the overarching angles of the palace, setting the sprawling structure alight in gold-and-orange magnificence, shadows playing across the intricate carvings.
His home. His cage of gossamer and glory.
Curved around the palace, like the crook of a mother’s arm, was the Great Library, paned windows dark and glinting, protectors of the endless enlightenment within. Every ounce of Arawiya’s history, and every last scrap of papyrus worth anything at all, was stored inside. A sanctum for those like the Lion who hoarded knowledge as a miser with coin. Nasir was no hoarder of knowledge, but those shelves had been a haven once. Escapes wrought into the bound sheaves of papyrus. Minds were meant to be kept as sharp as swords, his mother had said, and so he would spend as much of his day reading as he would training, guilty that he enjoyed it.
The surrounding houses boasted domes of copper and obsidian, facets greedily gorging on the moon’s abundance. Arches were bathed in a battle of light and shadow, the rare lantern swaying sleepily. Sand dunes dotted the land, hollows lit blue, the occasional bedouin campsite ablaze like fallen stars.