Altair. Unchained. Content. Barely concerned. Nasir should have known the moment he saw his brother lounging with a book. Still, he felt something crushing inside him.
To what end?
The clouds finally parted for the sun, steeping the street and buildings in gold. Perhaps they were destined to be opposites: Nasir the dark to Altair’s light. The night to his day. The monster to his greatness. And now, once more, they were on opposing ends. Nasir with the forces of good, and Altair with the growing forces of evil.
The Lion tsked. “Such violence, Nasir. What will the people think when they see how little their crown prince has changed?”
“Altair!” Nasir roared, but the general turned with the Lion, and Nasir cursed the pain flooding him.
“Aya? Aya, this isn’t right,” Kifah yelled, frantic. “Altair, stop her!”
But her voice cracked with the same truth the rest of them had already gleaned—they would receive no help from Altair. Nasir’s fingers shook as he felt along his belt, empty of knives. The blades at his gauntlets were of no use at this distance. There was only one way.
Nasir looked to the rooftop and shouted.
CHAPTER 42
Shoot.
Nasir’s command encased Zafira in a tomb of ice. As if the Lion pulling her arrow out of his chest with a frown hadn’t been unsettling enough.
This was Aya. Benyamin’s wife. Her ally and Arawiya’s greatest healer. It didn’t matter that she walked shoulder to shoulder with the Lion, her pale pink silk like petals of a flower withering in darkness.
I can’t.
She couldn’t shoot, despite knowing the Lion needed Aya for something important if he was stooping to the level of safin. Despite knowing she could bring ruin to them all.
“Zafira, shoot!” Nasir shouted again, a note of desperation in his voice.
Baba, help me. She stared down the shaft of the arrow, felt its pulse at her cheek, but she couldn’t. Fear crammed in her throat when someone else’s arrow struck bare paces from Aya’s dress. Zafira tried to find that dark voice in her blood. The newfound whisper that reveled in killing and destruction. But it lived within the Jawarat, far from her reach and easily overpowered by something else. The harsha in Aya’s hand. The word “roohi” from her lips. The pearls in her hair. The way she looked at Lana.
Zafira lowered her bow.
With a curse, Nasir ran. Gold flashed in the gloom as Kifah bounded after him. She pulled her arm back, hesitation freezing her form.
But she did it. She launched her spear, her aim true.
It landed on the stone with a whistle and a thump as the Lion disappeared, taking Aya and Altair with him.
CHAPTER 43
The Price of Dum Sihr is Always Great. Zafira had known this, and yet she’d done it anyway. If only Benyamin were here now, maybe he would help them make sense of what had happened. He would tell them why the Lion had barely flinched though her arrow’s aim had been true. Why his wife had chosen the Lion over them. Why Altair, the brother of his heart, had stonily turned away.
There was only so much betrayal a soul could handle.
They’d fled the people’s rising murmurs about the Lion and the crown prince who had tried to kill him, and finally made it back to the palace. Zafira looked among them, their ever-shrinking zumra—herself, Nasir, Seif, and Kifah. Numb, and broken.
“Why?” Kifah asked hoarsely, spear whipping her leg and adding to the echo of their footsteps down the palace halls.
Zafira returned again and again to the defining moment when she realized Aya would not use her staff against the Lion. The moment she knew Benyamin’s beloved was no longer one of them. She couldn’t decipher which hurt more: that, or when Kifah had begged for Altair’s help and he hadn’t batted an eye.
“Deception was always the Lion’s gift,” Seif said, pain softening his lofty tone. “Aya has been known throughout the years for two aspects: her unnatural beauty and her skills as a healer. It is obvious which of the two the Lion claimed her for, but I cannot perceive why.” He looked at Zafira’s bow, seeing that moment when Zafira could have—should have—fired it. “Aya was my companion and my charge, or I would never have come here. I would never have left my calipha’s side.”
“She’s still alive,” Zafira reminded him.
What did it mean to be evil? The Lion’s message could have resonated with anyone, especially someone as troubled as Aya.
Seif cut his gaze to her. “She is dead to me.”
“Until she’s truly dead, none of us can rest,” Kifah said. The words weren’t cruel, only fact.
Dum sihr. It was easy—slit her palm and meld it with the blood of the most powerful beings in Arawiya. Her compass would rise back to life, and she could find them again: the Lion, Aya, Altair. She bit back against the temptation. After what had happened, she knew that blood magic was not the answer.
“And here we thought we’d be smart stowing the hearts away. He clearly doesn’t need them. He didn’t even look for them,” Kifah said with a sad scoff. A group of white-thobed emirs stared as they passed. “But why Aya? Maybe he’s injured and needs her to heal him?”
Zafira shook her head. “I shot him. Every one of us saw the outcome of it.”
“It should not have been possible,” Seif agreed. “But it serves as further proof that with the Jawarat, anything is possible.”
Anything, indeed. Even splitting men in half. Zafira wondered if it was happy now. If she would ever be able to fill the gaping hole it had reopened by leaving her.
Seif continued. “Altair is no longer—”
“He left us.” Nasir, who hadn’t been fully present since the Lion disappeared, finally broke his silence.
She felt his pain as if it were her own.
Her limbs wanted to propel her toward him, to comfort him, but her heart held her in place.
“Maybe he had reason to,” Kifah offered helplessly. “I refuse—I refuse to believe he left without a reason.”
But her usual ferocity had been dimmed by what they’d seen. Nasir clenched his jaw and dropped his hood, running a hand through the wayward strands of his hair, tightening his fingers and tugging, inflicting pain upon himself. “He was lounging in that house.”
Kifah shook her head, adamant but quiet.
Zafira’s cup of sorrow had run empty, a strange numbness taking its place, denial lacing her edges. The haze of shadow had made it hard to see, but she could have sworn there were shackles around Altair’s wrists.
An angry shout drew their attention as one. A scribe narrowly avoided colliding with an emir and darted down the hall, stumbling to a halt before Nasir.
“Amiri,” she said breathlessly, brushing two fingers from her lowered brow. Her lashes fluttered. “The sultan requests your presence.”
* * *
The throne room glowed like something out of a story in which honor and justice and love prevailed. Zafira almost laughed at the irony.
People like her looked at a place and wondered how to furnish it with the least amount of coins. The rich did the opposite, and the Sultan’s Palace was no exception. Decadence spilled from everywhere. The cool tiles kept the bulk of the desert heat at bay, the dark rug leading to the throne’s dais cutting a stark contrast. On the Gilded Throne, a structure as magnificent as the stories described it to be, the sultan lounged, tall and proud.