That was what Baba and Umm had, once. What a young Zafira had wanted, until the love her parents shared shattered them both, scattering shards of their souls into the desolation of the earth.
She had thought of them last night beneath the stars, beside a boy with unkempt hair and a question in his gray, gray eyes. She had finally seen the sprawling palace that belonged to the sultan, the lights suspended by intellect, something far more magical than magic could ever be, and yet—
It paled beside him, her prince.
“Are you all right?”
Skies. Did he have to sit so close? The harsha in his hand was perfectly halved. She had noticed that about him. The way he hung his clothes behind a chair when she was content with piling them in a heap. The way he broke his bread into neat pieces before lifting it to his mouth, whether it was manakish or flatbread or harsha.
“Never better,” Zafira said, and Lana made a sound that was dangerously close to a snort.
“He looks like he’d rather eat you instead,” Kifah whispered in her ear and rolled her eyes when Zafira shrank away. “It was a joke, Huntress.”
The front doors flew open, and Zafira clutched her satchel as Seif marched inside. Aya dropped Lana’s hand and quickly moved the dish of pickled lamb from view. Apparently, the cold-blooded safi didn’t approve of eating lamb, or even hunting animals for that matter.
He slammed something down on the side table, and Aya paled at the sight of it. Zafira squinted—it was a tiny bottle, empty, but for a smear of crimson. Blood?
“We’ve found nothing. No ships in the harbor, no sign of the Lion whatsoever. We’ve been at work all night.” Seif paced and shot a glare at Nasir. “While you were off—”
“Careful, safi,” Nasir said, voice low. “Running your mouth can be dangerous, and immortals are dying like flies.”
Aya’s wide eyes were curious. “Where were you? You were not to leave the house.”
“Surveying the vicinity from the city’s highest point.”
If only I could lie so easily, Zafira thought. Then again, it wasn’t entirely a lie.
Seif scoffed. “With her?”
“Are you implying that women cannot climb?” Nasir leveled him with a look before Zafira could lash out.
Seif’s frustration manifested in a growl, and from the ghost of a grin on Nasir’s face, Zafira could tell he finally understood why Altair treated the art of infuriation like it was his sole purpose in life. Lana struggled to hide a laugh.
“He may not be here yet,” Kifah said, “but that doesn’t negate the inevitable.”
He comes for us. The safin are unaware.
“The Lion of the Night,” Lana whispered, and Seif shot Aya a look that said We should have left her in the snow. Zafira decided then and there that Seif would be the last person she would ever protect and the first she would feed to a dandan.
Kifah studied Lana. “And it’ll be chaos on the streets as the news spreads across Arawiya.”
Chaos already clung to the air, in the dust that stirred as the people rioted, in the taxes that suffocated.
“Yet Sarasin will be fine,” Seif muttered.
“How?” Zafira asked, annoyed. “Who will protect its people?” The Sarasins had suffered ever since their caliph had been assassinated. The caliphate had always been a dark place—literally, too, with its dark sands and sooty skies—but once the throne had been emptied in cold blood by order of the sultan and the armies taken under his control, the uncertainty had strung tension tight and fearsome.
Seif ignored her. Typical.
Aya rose. “An established mortal by the name of Muzaffar. He was well-known in merchant circles, but while you were on Sharr, he began making a name for himself among the common folk, too. Placating them, providing for them. His men keep the peace, and that is more than many can ask for.”
“A fragile peace,” Nasir said quietly. “Barely enough to withstand the Lion.”
“Not all will fear the Lion. Even in the past, during his reign of darkness, some believed he signaled the beginning of a new age,” Aya said, pearls gleaming, and had she been anyone less pensive, Zafira would have mistaken her fervor as support for the cause. “They claimed he was the bearer of a golden era of greatness, and had the Sisters not clung to the old ways, we would never have been led to this dark point.”
“Right.” Kifah dusted her hands and rose. “We need blood.”
“There’s an infirmary nearby,” Lana said without thinking twice.
“Si’lah blood,” Kifah clarified with a note of impatience. “Blood with magical properties. You can’t find that in an infirmary.”
“What for?” Zafira asked, though the dread in her veins was answer enough.
Kifah met her eyes. “For you. For our compass to begin working again. You can easily track down Altair, the Lion, and the heart in one go.”
Easily. As if they were in a basket waiting prettily for her to snatch away.
“That requires dum sihr,” Zafira said. She pursed her lips, feeling guilt for her irritation over Kifah presuming she had no qualms about using forbidden blood magic.
“No.”
The command was sharp, the edges strung with loss. Everyone looked to Aya, who shook her head, something like madness in her gaze.
“No. No dum sihr.”
Lana stepped forward. “Ammah—”
“What he wants can never be as terrible.” Aya’s voice cut like a lash. It took Zafira a moment to understand who he was: the Lion.
The price of dum sihr is always great. Benyamin’s words on Sharr. She remembered then that he had used blood magic in an attempt to save his and Aya’s son. That he had failed. That pain made reckless fools of them all.
“What he wants,” Kifah spat through gritted teeth, “is vengeance on your kind and an Arawiya fettered by darkness.”
A home for his people, the Jawarat said.
Violence was not how one established a home.
Aya continued to shake her head, hysteria wavering in her eyes. Lana reached again for her hand, and Zafira saw Umm then, folded in her sister’s arms, fragile and lost. She murmured something too soft to hear, and Aya shuttered her gaze, collecting herself enough to press her lips to Lana’s brow.
Zafira’s limbs were suddenly restless, her eyes prickling.
Nasir sat in silence, gray eyes unreadable. He lifted his arm and dropped it. Turned away with a sigh.
“My mother feigned her own death. My father pressed a poker into the fire and branded me. Forty-eight times. Belittled me. Likened me to a dog.”
He spoke in the voice that looped with the darkness, the one that was at once quiet and imperious.
“It was magic that did it. Magic that gave the Lion a conduit to my father. Magic that made my mother forsake the Gilded Throne.” He looked to his hands, breathing tendrils of shadow. When he exhaled a broken laugh, darkness curled from his mouth. “Yet here I am, contributing to its restoration.”
Zafira knew he had suffered, she’d seen it firsthand in the Lion’s palace on Sharr. Yet she had never linked his suffering to magic.
How was it that the thing she loved so deeply, craved so fiercely, had caused him such undeniable pain?