And yet she had kept their Umm alive. She had kept herself sane when Zafira disappeared into the Arz for hours on end. She might not have wielded a bow, but she had done just as much as Zafira. She had gone through as much as Zafira had.
“You didn’t have to do that, you know,” Zafira said, rolling off the bed. She tossed her one of the coins Kifah had given her.
Her sister gave her a half smile. “No one ever has to, and yet someone always must.”
“Lana, the philosopher,” Zafira teased, disappearing into the adjoining bath. She poked her head out in the silence. “Lana, the pensive?”
The beautiful. The burdened. The girl who had grown up without Zafira knowing it.
“I saw the sultan,” Lana said, turning the coin over in her hands. “When you think of him, Okhti, do you ever want to kill him?”
Zafira hid her surprise behind a blink.
“It wasn’t he who killed Ummi,” she said carefully. She had told Lana about the sultan being steered like a puppet by the Lion. “You know this.”
Lana’s eyes were ablaze. “If being controlled was his mistake, then it was his mistake all the same.”
Lana, the girl with murder in her lungs.
“Nasir said the sultan doesn’t want us using dum sihr,” Zafira found herself saying.
Lana’s brow furrowed. “Oh? Does this mean you’ve forgiven him?”
It took Zafira a moment to realize Lana was speaking of Nasir. Was she that obvious? Why did she have to be the one to forgive first? Skies, she felt like an old married woman. She shrugged. “He didn’t tell me that.”
“I see,” Lana said, a laugh in her voice. “But you will, won’t you? Use dum sihr?”
Zafira nodded as she changed out of her tunic.
Lana flopped on the bed. “You’re being rebellious. I like it.”
“I’ve always been rebellious. I hunted in the Arz—”
“For years, yes, I know. You’ve only repeated that a thousand and one times. But you were never rebellious. You were secretive. If the caliph had forbidden you from hunting, you wouldn’t have gone.”
Zafira considered her words as she threw open the window. A crop of orange trees ranged outside, tender white flowers in bloom reminding her of Yasmine every time she inhaled.
“See? You’re changing.”
But it wasn’t about rebelling against the man who had murdered their mother. It was the act of dum sihr itself, something strictly forbidden for good reason. Lana didn’t know about the Jawarat’s vision and the force of Zafira’s newfound rage. About how it seemed to be draining the good out of her, leaving only the vilest paths to follow.
She was changing, but it wasn’t for the better, and when Lana flashed her a grin, Zafira couldn’t smile back.
* * *
There were claims that the Lion had been seen in Sarasin, asserting he was climbing the Dancali Mountains, heading for Demenhur with a horde of ifrit at his back. A few had seen clusters of darkness racing for the ether, blanketing whole villages and creating havens for his ifrit kin. Others swore they saw a black lion bounding through crowds, leaving behind bloody entrails.
How the people knew the Lion of the Night was here at all, alive and well, Zafira couldn’t tell. She wouldn’t be surprised if the rumors could be traced back to the tiny Zaramese captain. Secrets were like mold, Zafira had learned. They found a way to spread no matter how diligently they were contained.
“I don’t trust any of it,” Zafira said airily as she and Aya waited for the others. Night had steeped across Arawiya long enough for the sky to brighten, and she had spent most of it in her room, hearing a soft knock every so often only for disappointment to flood afresh when she found the hall empty.
Aya’s sky-blue abaya was out of place in the war room’s dark dressings. Lana was dozing on the majlis with a papyrus in hand, the sheaf detailing some mixture or another that stanched the flow of blood. Apparently, the materials could no longer be found, but Lana swore she had seen them in Umm’s cabinet in Demenhur.
Aya studied Zafira. “You know the Lion well for such a young mortal.”
Something weighted her dreamy tone. Envy.
“I didn’t have much of a choice,” Zafira said dryly.
Aya stared at the vial. “The whispers escalate. They claim he is here to help us.”
They had more to worry about than crazed claims, but Zafira could see how they were made logical. With the freeing of the hearts came the Arz’s disappearance, and Arawiya was returning to what it once was: Sarasin’s darkness was receding, Demenhur’s snow melting. The Lion had only to seize opportunity.
She fastened the vial’s chain around her neck and opened her mouth, about to ask how dum sihr worked. Aside from knowing it was forbidden and required the slitting of one’s palm, she didn’t know much else.
“‘He will fix our broken world’ they say,” Aya murmured.
Zafira paused, brow furrowing. She remembered what Aya had said in that moment of hysteria, when she’d protested dum sihr. What he wants can never be as terrible.
“The Lion wants vengeance,” Zafira said, as if Aya didn’t know. “And the knowledge that brings power.”
He might still want a home for his ifrit. He might still be driven by the pain of his father’s loss, but neither were as prevalent among his desires as his thirst for knowledge and the throne. Laa, that was greed.
Aya hmmed and touched a hand to her tattoo, turmoil on her face, and Zafira realized the Lion she remembered was different from the one Zafira knew. He had to be, if Benyamin had welcomed him, befriended him when none of the other safin could look past their pride.
The door opened and Nasir strode inside, Kifah and Seif at his heels. Zafira struggled to meet his eyes, nodding at Kifah and tossing a fleeting glance at Seif instead.
“You’re not following me,” Zafira told Lana, who had bolted awake.
She started to protest, but slumped back when Zafira lifted a brow. “Fine.”
Zafira didn’t know if she’d be wholly conscious once she slit her palm and melded the bloods together. She didn’t feel particularly inclined to stoop low enough to ask Seif, or even Aya, who was still lost in her strange thoughts.
“I’ve received word from Demenhur. The heart has been restored to the minaret there. Nothing from the others as yet,” Seif said.
No one rejoiced. The marids’ hungry eyes flashed in her thoughts, but Zafira shoved them away. No word from the others only meant they were still on their way, she reassured herself. They were prideful creatures. They wouldn’t write letters detailing their whereabouts every half day.
Two hearts had been restored, two more were on their way. It was the fifth the zumra needed to focus on. When Zafira said as much, Kifah nodded sharply.
“We’re working on it,” she said, armed and ready.
“Will it work?” Aya asked.
“Did word of the Hunter not reach Alderamin?” Kifah asked with a raised brow. Zafira ducked under the sudden praise. “Not only will it work, but if all goes well, we’ll catch the Lion unaware. Now, shall we?”
Zafira tightened her hand around the vial of si’lah blood. Kifah was right, this would work. It was the act of dum sihr that scared her. The line down her palm from when she had fortuitously slit it on Sharr was still pink, the skin barely knotted together, reminding her of the Jawarat’s vision. How much more of herself would she lose before this was through?