Nasir tugged his already-lowered sleeve over the words inked on his arm. I once loved. Those years could be endless, or they could be nothing at all depending on how he lived them, and who he lived them with.
He skimmed the bookshelf, four planks of insanity. Each book brimmed with life—random markers, loose sheaves shoved every which way. Nothing was arranged by size or color or any semblance of order.
What can I say? I like my shelves messy and my lovers well fed.
It was what Altair had to say when Nasir had remarked upon them. Before Sharr, when the oaf had been half-dressed and decidedly not alone.
The reed pen rolled off Altair’s desk, and Nasir bent to fetch it, snaring on a bump in the wool rug. He crouched with a frown, tugging his glove free to run his fingers along a palmette the size of his hand in the corner. It was raised.
With care, he peeled off the motif sewn onto the rug.
Large enough to hide a stack of letters.
Nasir paused, glancing from the worn folds of papyrus, earthy and rough-edged, to the doorway.
“I’m becoming a nosy old crone,” he said to himself, and leaned against the bed beneath the night sky. Curiosity made him do this, for Altair was loud and shameless—and smart. He left no trail save for the one in his head. Why hadn’t these been burned? Perhaps there hadn’t been time during the rush of readying for Sharr.
Nasir parted the first fold of papyrus. Then he flicked to the next, and the one after, ears burning hotter and hotter.
They were love letters.
Ours is the most fervent of love …
I yearn for you endlessly …
My days pass in waiting for you, my nights in dreaming of you …
Not all were innocent. Some were scant—Does your body ache for my touch as mine for yours?—while others were longer and detailed, the words stirring his blood. He was a prince, an assassin, a monster, but in the end he was still a boy.
And that was when he saw it, tucked between the wanton words and indecent declarations.
The road will be secured two days hence.
Tariffs dropped between Pelusia and Demenhur. Validated by Nawal.
Distribution at Dar al-Fawda. Pelusian provisions.
Trade agreements. Treaties. Discussions. These weren’t love letters. These were fragments of Altair’s web, proof of his labors to unify the kingdom. Nasir could see him gathering ordinary people, arming them with bravery and courage, driving them with his wit and charm. Rousing hope in a way very few could, commanding men in an army and hearts of the common folk just the same.
While Nasir murdered them. While he, the prince born with the obligation to care for and ensure their safety, killed them.
The letters trembled in his hands. Wrinkled in his grip.
Remain in the shadows and serve the light.
He was no fool with romantic abandon. Death was irreversible, and he could never make amends for the wrongs he had done, but he was trying. He gave himself that much. He was trying to make things right, to be part of Arawiya’s change. To stop seeing people by the tendons he should slit and the number of beats it would take to kill.
He would wear the crown of the Prince of Death no longer.
He leaned back on his knees. What was he without the fear people looked to him with? Without the names in his pocket, and the missions that were his purpose? Monsters were created for a purpose, a destiny to be fulfilled. Who was he without the tally on his back and the weapons on his person?
Nasir gathered the letters and tucked them away, securing the palmette back in place. He had freed his father, ensuring the dignitaries’ safety, but there was more to be done. He set Altair’s reed pen back on the desk and stepped away with a whisper.
“Don’t die.”
CHAPTER 34
Alderamin had lost its appeal and allure. The sooq clamored from afar, the poets as dire as funeralgoers, the town of Zawia as dull as the wares of Bait ul-Ahlaam. When Zafira and Kifah finally arrived at the caravanserai, Seif was nowhere to be seen.
The stained-glass window was in fact an entrance, wide enough for caravans, though there were no camels idling about. Travel had not yet begun—the Arz’s disappearance was too recent, word still spreading. The archway led to a courtyard, from which one could see the entrances to every room in the two stories of stone, carved and white. Columns set in a honeycomb of tiles glistened in the night.
Though camels were scarce, people still traversed within cities, and Zafira and Kifah pushed past the crowded courtyard to the second flight of rooms. Kifah stopped her with a fleeting touch to her shoulder.
“At least,” she said, gently enough that Zafira clamped her eyes closed, “our memories are still our own. The moments that made your dagger special.”
Zafira’s exhale quivered dangerously.
“How do you do it? How did you know that telling him about the kaftar on Sharr would help?”
“I didn’t,” Zafira said truthfully.
“Only few can look at a monster and see its humanity,” Kifah claimed. But she did not know the half of it: that Zafira had befriended the Lion of the Night. That she had seen Nasir’s tallied scars, proof of his kills, and didn’t feel disgust. Kifah rapped her knuckles against the wall, restless as always. “And I’m sorry. For forcing your hand.”
Zafira looked at her, still numb, but also a little bit warmer. A little more ashamed. “I am, too.”
Kifah answered with a half smile and closed the door.
Zafira sank into the low bed, blind to the beauty of the room, to the moonlight probing through her window. The vial was theirs. All that was left was to slit her palm and find Altair. Find the Lion. Retrieve the last heart. Take back the Jawarat that was hers.
Footsteps paused just outside her door, and she stilled when she heard Kifah’s door open.
“Did you do it? Will it live?”
Even muffled and separated by a door, Zafira caught Seif’s inhale, his irritation at Kifah’s gall to question him.
“There is no way to know. Nothing happened when I inserted it,” he said. “I’ve secured a boat to cross the strait, so we’ll leave before sunrise. The blood?”
“Acquired.” Kifah’s voice was soft, and Zafira wished she had been stoic. It would have helped Zafira stay stoic. She said something more, followed by a word that sounded dangerously like “Huntress,” before Seif moved and her door closed.
Zafira slumped into bed, angry at the swell of loss inside her. She could barely care that one of the five hearts had been restored—they were still missing the fifth, and retrieving it would be no easy feat.
Her loneliness was complete now. Absolute. She removed her boots, then her bow, then her quiver, and then her empty, empty sheath. The Jawarat had kept her afloat, and it, too, was gone.
Skies. Her best friend had died in front of her eyes, her mentor had died without her forgiveness, her mother had died after years of suffering, and she hadn’t cried. She hadn’t shed a tear for a single one of them, and she was near tears now, because of a daama jambiya.
It’s more than that. More, even, than another piece of Baba. Every step away from home hadn’t been a footfall but a flaying. A careful removal of the Hunter she once was, the Huntress she had been. She would wear the cloak of the Demenhune Hunter no longer.
Her guise: gone.
The Arz: gone.
Her sense of direction: gone.