Kifah had studied her with an ease that prickled her skin, and decided silence was the best answer.
A bird screamed in the distance now, breaking her out of her thoughts. She stared at it angrily as it swooped into the distance. Her horse whinnied, and she was angry at it, too. It was a shade darker than Sukkar but reminded her of him anyway. How attuned they had been to each other, how smooth his movements were. She bit her tongue. Better physical pain than the incurable one of the heart.
She missed the weight of the Jawarat by her side. Its cynicism and commentary. Its constant search for chaos and control—even if she did not approve, it would have been a welcome distraction.
“It’s going to take some getting used to, standing around without four extra heartbeats,” Kifah mused.
“One less task for when we retrieve the final heart,” Seif reminded them curtly.
If, Zafira nearly corrected. She’d been astounded by the Lion’s audacity as much as by his presence in her room, and that didn’t bode well for her own confidence. At least she had the peace of mind knowing the girl in the yellow shawl had left the house shortly before she and Kifah did. Otherwise, her presence would have plagued every footfall of the journey.
But why? she asked herself. Why were her emotions, thoughts, and actions so visceral when it came to Nasir?
“Oi. Don’t look so glum,” Kifah said, bringing her horse near Zafira’s as they passed rows and rows of swaying barley, the crops contained by short fences on either side of the road. “If the Lion had walked through my door looking like my brother Tamim, I would have handed him the Jawarat without a second thought. And my brother’s dead.”
But the person in Zafira’s room hadn’t been her sister or dead mother or father, had it? It had been a boy she’d known for mere weeks, and yet felt a lifetime’s connection to.
“Do you still think of Tamim?” she asked. There were days when she forgot to think of Baba, when she barely thought of Deen, whose breath had clouded the cold Demenhune air less than a month past.
“Always,” Kifah said. Her chestnut mare snorted as they trotted along the cobbled road. “Though there are times when Altair takes precedence. More and more, as of late.”
“You like him,” Zafira said.
Kifah snorted. “Don’t tell me you don’t. You’re going to Alderamin for him.”
She was going for more than Altair; for her own guilt, for the Jawarat, for the heart the Lion had stolen. Still, Zafira couldn’t argue with that. “But do you … love him?”
“Trying to pair us up, eh? I’m afraid my affections don’t run that way. I love him, yes. Fiercely.” She canted her head. “I’m beginning to love our zumra—even Nasir—as much as I loved Tamim, but I’d never be with Altair in the way you think. Affection isn’t measured and defined by tangible contact for me.”
Zafira considered that.
“I see those gears turning, Huntress. I wasn’t always so certain. I used to think I hadn’t found the right person yet. To be with another is supposedly an inherent desire of us all, is it not? Something we’re meant to do. I … I have never felt that pull. That need. Laa, I thought I was daama broken. Heartless.”
Zafira studied her. “But not anymore.”
Kifah squared her shoulders and spurred her horse onward with a smile. “No, not anymore.”
Zafira squeezed her thighs and her lazy horse whinnied again before following Kifah’s lead. It was a special kind of strength, knowing one’s heart as well as Kifah knew hers.
What do you want? She had demanded an answer from Nasir, and yet she could barely piece together one of her own.
Seif was waiting for them up ahead where the sand rose and fell in neat dunes. Pockets of shadow clutched the last of the night, sinking lower and lower as Zafira and Kifah neared, until the golden expanse deepened to azure, brightening and reflecting the sky, whispering a song quite different from that of the shifting sands.
The Strait of Hakim.
Yet another place Zafira had never thought she would see in person. Another place Deen, whose dream was to explore, would never see.
She pressed her knuckles against the ache in her chest, fingers brushing his ring. There it is. The loss she thought she’d forgotten. The pain she thought she’d overcome. Yasmine’s face flashed in her mind, honey eyes dripping in sorrow.
Kifah whistled. “If that doesn’t beg for a swim, I don’t know what does.”
Zafira didn’t know how to swim. She didn’t know much of life’s delicacies or its simplicities. The waters were clear as glass, dragging the light of the waking sun to its depths and churning it into an alluring shade of blue-green.
Seif surveyed the shores, the barrenness. “Trade flourished here, at a time. Rarities from the Hessa Isles. Goods moved from Sultan’s Keep to Alderamin and back. Marketplaces sprawled along both coasts.”
Resentment seared his words, and Zafira wondered whom he blamed for Arawiya’s fall. If he blamed himself in any way, for it was, as every Arawiyan knew, the safin’s cruelty that created the Lion.
“We’ll cross there.” He pointed farther up the coast, where a bridge stretched like a too-thin smile across the horizon. It was white wood, the kind they could harvest in Demenhur, or maybe even Alderamin, a terrain she did not know. Iron rivets sparkled intermittently along its length, vying with the water for attention. They were a tiny comfort, she supposed, for the bridge had to be at least a century old.
“I’d much rather swim,” Kifah said slowly, running a hand along her bare scalp.
Zafira would much rather take a boat. Seif didn’t care.
“You might not care for your well-being,” Zafira began, realizing what a lie the words were when Kifah burst out laughing. It was a marvel how she could be both deeply concerned and full of delight in a single moment. “But we’re not crossing that bridge with the heart.”
Seif didn’t even glance back. “Aya and I crossed it when we returned home to retrieve the remainder of the High Circle after the Arz’s fall, and she is worth more to me than all the magic Arawiya can possess.”
The two of them exchanged a look at his solemn tone, and Kifah’s laughter disappeared as quickly as it had come. He must have sensed their silent contemplation, their piqued curiosity, for he turned back with his signature irritation in his pale eyes, tattoo shimmering against his dark skin.
“Yalla, mortals.”
The bridge looked even worse up close, but neither Zafira nor Kifah commented as they dismounted and led their horses across the damp sand. The white wood was speckled with rot, a neat rectangular view of the strait cutting through every so often where slats were missing.
Well then.
Seif prepared to go first, the silk-wrapped heart clutched to his side, and Zafira wondered if he’d ever held a child. It was less likely than if he’d been mortal, she realized. Safin paid for their immortality with lower chances of procreation. Very few safin ever gave birth—a blessing, they learned in school, for Arawiya would be overrun with the vain creatures otherwise. Having never met a safi, she’d had no reason not to agree with the biased texts she’d read.
Now, having realized just how precious Aya and Benyamin’s child had been, the knowledge made her chest ache. It conjured a feline smile and umber eyes. Angry words from a mortal girl before his death. Did the dead know sorrow?