Coils of shadow split from his palms when they all focused on him. Nasir wasn’t in the mood for showing anyone what he could do.
“You have no trouble summoning your power, at least. You must refine it. Sharpen the black into a blade. Make it a sword to be wielded.”
Nasir closed his eyes, reaching for the source of that dark flame, trying to find the vein in his blood that ran black, but it felt like tugging on air. Kifah snorted, and Nasir’s eyes flew open. The shadows had disappeared.
“You remind me of this one invention my father had that started off all dark and showy and collapsed in a plume of smoke,” she remarked. He vaguely remembered that her father was a high inventor. He also remembered the little glass instrument she had stolen from him. It works best when I imagine I’m lighting him on fire.
“Did your father have you to cheer him on?” Nasir asked tiredly.
For the first time since he’d met the bold warrior, her fierce expression gave way to vulnerability. He’d spoken too quickly, without thought. She wasn’t a certain loud, golden-haired general used to carefree raillery. They’d been ready to rip each other to shreds, yet Altair had left a yawning emptiness behind, one Nasir was all too aware of.
He opened his mouth to apologize, but she beat him to it with a shrug.
“He should have. His loss.”
Aya tapped him with her staff, and it became the Lion’s stave. Benyamin leaping in front of him. Altair shackled to the Lion—his daama father.
It was only an instant. A mere moment in which his concentration broke, but it was enough. The shadows rippled free, billowing like smoke from a fire. The room darkened.
Breathe.
He thought of the fine dark lines running through ice-blue eyes. The weave of a braid crowned at her head. Aya voiced a warning. He felt her staff at his shoulder again, and he had to dig his heels against the sudden urge to lash out. To kill. The shadows sharpened.
No. No killing.
Breathe.
He was uncontrollable. A monster. What was the point of a life he couldn’t control? Seif was on his feet, drawing Aya away. A sight he had seen time and time again when the Prince of Death walked the streets.
Wrong are the ones who believe power is king. Control, and you will triumph.
Help me, mother.
Listen, was all she whispered.
He filled his lungs and forced his clenched fists open. The darkness hummed, a song just out of earshot. Listen. He closed his eyes and reached, tugging on the tangled whispers and deciphering the chaos.
“That’s it,” Kifah said carefully.
Darkness surged into every crevice of his being, stretching his lungs and organs too full, but he kept tugging at the frenzying skeins until light ebbed back into the room.
The last wisp curled into nothing, and Nasir loosed a breath. The shadows were gone. He turned his hands—the darkness had disappeared from his skin, too, returning his stained hands and wrists to their original color.
He looked up in the silence.
Aya’s smile wavered. “In time.”
Nasir couldn’t stop a small laugh at the emotion that clung to the room. Understanding. As if they finally understood Arawiya’s fear of him. Aya avoided his gaze. Seif’s stance was battle-ready. Kifah, at least, didn’t seem perturbed.
He’d lived without magic all his life. He’d suppressed magic all his life, which clearly hadn’t helped, for the more he used his shadows, the easier it was to breathe, and the easier it would be, he realized, to eventually control them. “There isn’t time for this.”
He might have been a quick study for anything else, but the wayward dark? It would take time. More time than they could afford.
“He trains for a tenth of the day and thinks he can conquer the world,” Seif said. “Have you forgotten your father—”
“Do not presume I forget anything, safi,” Nasir said coldly. They hated Ghameq, but none of them had lived with him. None of them had suffered the poker and years of abuse. None of them had stared at the medallion around his father’s neck and desired to rip it away.
“You cannot control yourself,” Seif said.
“I am afraid he is right,” Aya said softly.
Nasir didn’t care. He didn’t need his shadows to save Altair. He didn’t need the dark to ensure the hearts didn’t die. And when Nasir darted a glance at Kifah, who met his eyes unflinchingly, he knew: He didn’t need the High Circle when he had allies of his own.
CHAPTER 15
The sound wouldn’t stop. It rang and rang and rang despite all her swallowing to make it daama stop. Zafira had heard of detonations, bundles of fuses and sparks and fire trapped in a box, a Pelusian invention as fascinating as any. She did not appreciate innovation now. Screams echoed as if from leagues away, and the ground quivered from the hundreds of feet pelting across it. Drawing near.
Get up, the Jawarat commanded. GET UP.
Zafira swayed. She stood on shaky legs, hating the Jawarat and hating her stupidity, which had drawn her outdoors. Shadows draped across her, sand clouded her vision, but it was the ringing from that damned explosion that made her blind, for she had always seen with her ears as much as her eyes. Glass shattered. Somewhere else, a woman screamed. Men shouted. Through a bleary gaze, she saw flashes of silver cloaks and drawn scimitars. The Sultan’s Guard.
She could not afford to be seen, let alone caught. Hands gripped her shoulders and she fought against them as she was pulled back into the alcove near Aya’s house.
“Steady,” a small voice said. Zafira had heard that word in the same voice countless times as she hid away in her room while her sister cared for their mother.
She blinked her vision into focus as the ringing dulled. “What are you doing here?”
“I was waiting for you when I heard the explosion,” Lana said, frantic, her gaze slipping to the chaos behind Zafira. “I came as quickly as I could. Go back to the house.”
Lana didn’t move to follow. There was a stubborn set to her jaw that Zafira recognized from the hundreds of times she’d worn the expression herself. Only then did she see the kit in Lana’s hands, a wooden box barely closed around the tools and bandages and salves within.
“Go, Okhti,” Lana urged, gesturing toward a narrow sliver of space near the fountain. “It’s a shortcut. Aya’s house is on the other end.”
Zafira didn’t know why she hadn’t realized that before.
“They’re waiting for you.”
“Are you mad? I’m not leaving you here. It’s dangerous,” Zafira said, shaking her head. She shifted the Jawarat to her other hand and grabbed Lana’s arm.
Her sister wrenched away. Zafira went still.
Lana’s eyes were hard. “You have your duty as I have mine.”
You owe the world nothing, Zafira almost said, but that was not her line. It was Deen’s, when he had tried to stop her from venturing to Sharr. It was meant to stop, to hinder, to cage. Yet she wanted to say it—to say something, for Lana’s unspoken words were as loud and as clear as the screams and shouts just beyond this pocket of space.
Zafira had left her day after day after day, choosing a monstrous forest over the sister who needed her. She had left her again for a villainous island, knowing full well that she might never return to the sister who had no one else.