Aya paled, and the fight drained from Zafira as quickly as it had come. Nasir was not here. Which was for the best, as she would not have been able to look at him, not without seeing him in her room, his scar in the light, his hand at her thigh. The Lion’s hand.
“I didn’t know it was him,” she whispered.
“How—”
“Bleeding Guljul, for immortal safin, you’re all so dense,” Kifah snapped. “He’s half ifrit. Did you not think he could possibly shift like full-blooded ifrit can?”
“Whose countenance did he resemble?” Aya asked.
It was becoming increasingly harder to breathe. To think past the press of him, the amber in his false gray eyes.
Zafira’s exhale broke.
“Why does that matter?” Lana asked, coming to Zafira’s side and holding her hand. It was a blanket over her pulse, an instant quiet. “We can try to get it back without standing around talking. No. Okhti, what if he destroys it? You—”
Zafira shook her head. “He won’t. If there is anything sacred to him, it’s knowledge.” Of that, she was certain, and if she had learned anything about the elusive Jawarat, it was that its knowledge was endless. “But he’s going to take the throne.”
She didn’t speak of how he had vowed to make her his queen and how she had trembled from more than disgust and anger.
Shame held her tongue, stopped her from telling them he promised something far worse than anything any of them could imagine. Laa, it wasn’t shame but fear. How would they regard her if they knew she had not only given him the Jawarat but conversed with him? Kissed him?
It was the exact reason she couldn’t speak of the Jawarat’s malevolence. Of its vision and its whispers. To them, she was the girl who was pure of heart. Perfect in her desires.
Fear. Shame. They were needles stitching thread between her lips.
“As is expected.” Seif dismissed her words with irritation. “It was what he wanted a century ago. Did you assume he had changed? That his wants would end with the Jawarat and a single heart? Laa.”
“Then we should go to the palace. Where the throne is,” Lana said, and no one commented on her use of the word “we.” As if she were a part of this. As if she had found a limb on the tree of the zumra and perched upon it, joining them in her own way.
“But he can’t take the throne,” Kifah said, furrows lining her brow. “Every kid knows that. The Gilded Throne allows only the blood of the Sisters or the ones they’ve appointed.”
Seif and Aya exchanged a look.
“Perhaps,” said Seif. “Yet we’ve no knowledge of what the Jawarat will impart to him, what loophole the Sisters knew of that he will now know of. Regardless, he would be a fool to breach the palace before he understands the Jawarat. I’ve had safin scouring the city to no avail.” He worked his jaw. “I will send for more men.”
The wariness in his tone rang like a bell. The noose was tightening around them, and it was her fault.
“I’ll go.” The words spilled from her. She cleared her throat and lifted her chin, but found herself unable to meet anyone’s eyes. “I’ll go to Alderamin. To Bait ul-Ahlaam. I’ll find the vial of si’lah blood, and I’ll use it to find Altair, the heart, the Jawarat, and the Lion before he moves for the palace. Before he can do anything. I’ll fix this.”
Impossible. The echoes of the Jawarat’s voice clung to her, even now.
She shook its derision away. It might have been a lengthy list, but all four would be together. Of that, she was sure.
“Okhti, no,” Lana whispered.
But what did she understand? She could walk into a riot and heal a man, but she could not understand what the long burden of responsibility was truly like. Zafira had spent years caring for her people, doing right by them, always and always.
Until today. When the Jawarat had spoken using her voice. When she had, as Seif said, given the Lion the Jawarat with a silver bow. She stared at her hands, remembering what they had done in that ghastly nightmare. Suddenly the Jawarat’s vision was no longer so implausible.
She would leave at dawn. Laa, she would leave now.
“There’s more,” Kifah said, turning to Zafira. “I was about to come find you—look.”
She lifted the crate from the low table and opened it. The hearts gleamed darkly in the slanting light of the lanterns. No. It wasn’t the light that made them appear darker, they were darker.
“They’re dying.” Lana peered inside, voice small.
Zafira’s own heart stuttered, her breath almost painful. Magic was why she’d set off on this course, why she’d left her home, her life, her family.
It was dying before her eyes.
That was when they came in, nine in all, dressed in rich hues and styles straight from a tailor’s fantasy. Benyamin’s High Circle. Beautiful and merciless, armed and cruel. Tattoos curled around their left eyes, marking them with the values they upheld over all else. She thought she’d heard others roaming about the house when she’d first arrived, but assumed she was hearing things when no one joined their meals. Pride. Not even Seif ate with them. Zafira contained herself, masking the awe that threatened to take over her features.
Kifah’s voice was soft. “They’re going to take the hearts.”
Zafira blinked at her. The word “take” rattled in her skull.
Her first thought was of Deen and Yasmine’s parents, of how they had clutched their only son when the Demenhune army had come to take him away, months before they were drafted as apothecaries themselves.
Skies, calm down. The hearts were not her children. They were simply the insignificant pieces of cargo she had risked her daama life upon a nightmarish island to attain. Nothing more.
“Shouldn’t that be us?” she asked stupidly.
Kifah looked at her. “We can’t be everywhere at once. Besides, we’re giving them the easy task. Ride a horse, climb some steps, insert a heart into the empty rib cage of a minaret. Khalas.”
Her smirk widened when several of the safin shot her dirty glares.
Lana, who had forgotten to keep her mouth closed when the safin stepped in, finally unearthed her decency. “Will it stop the hearts from…” She trailed off, unable to finish her question.
Seif carefully wrapped three of the hearts in silk and passed them to the safin, who stood in ternary groups. “No one knows if restoring the four hearts will put a stop to their rapid deterioration, not without the fifth to set the Sisters’ magic in motion. What’s certain is that they are no longer safe here. The High Circle will restore each heart and remain on guard until we prevail.”
The Lion swept his gaze around Zafira’s room again, searching for them, molding into Nasir once more.
With a shiver, Zafira watched as the safin took the hearts and boxed them with delicate hands, held them with care. She bit her tongue against words of caution. How could she demand they be careful when she’d all but gifted the Jawarat to the Lion?
Seif kept the fourth heart for himself.
Have them, Zafira thought. She would let Seif and the High Circle have this small triumph. Laa, it didn’t belong to them; she would let them do this for her, and when she had the fifth heart and all the victory that came with stealing from the Lion of the Night, she would restore it herself.