“I was hoping to see you, azizi.”
She fought against him, shuddering when he wrenched her palm to his chest. The ice of his skin chilled her from beneath his embroidered thobe.
And something else. Horror and understanding locked her in place.
“It is something extraordinary, the pulse of life.”
The si’lah heart. Like a Sister of Old.
The heart that belonged to creatures beyond safin, ifrit, and men. Creatures of good. This was why he was pale—from the loss of blood when his chest had been cut open. This was the cause of his newfound power in a land still without magic, from the shadows barring the door to the ones that had cinched Ghameq’s heart. Why the Gilded Throne had accepted him, some twisted mutation cloaking it in black.
Aya had done this. Zafira knew it with the same striking certainty that she knew Aya was dead.
A deafening crash jolted them both, and she pried her wrist from his grip as one of the large windows ruptured with the sound of a thousand chimes. In that beat of distraction, she lunged, shoving her hands inside his robes and finding the Jawarat beneath the folds.
He lashed out. She fell back against the arm of the Gilded Throne with a cry, the Jawarat in her arms. Light flashed across the Lion of the Night’s tattoo before the shadows rose, and Zafira was back on Sharr again, chains shackling her wrists. Only this time, Nasir wasn’t here. Kifah, Benyamin. Lana.
Help—she needed help. She searched the floor for the jambiya, despite knowing Nasir’s gift to her was but a child’s thing in the face of the Lion’s power. Through the riot of fear in her heart, she heard a voice.
We ached for you, bint Iskandar.
The Lion gripped her arm, wrenching her forward and grabbing the Jawarat.
We are here for you.
And then the world came undone with a roar of anguish that brought them both gasping to their knees.
Always.
CHAPTER 54
The cruel sun scorches everything in blinding white light, but he does not blink. He does not look away. Every drop of blood is a knife to his chest. Each red splotch on the ground he feels keenly as if it were his own.
The stones strike again and again and again.
Pride lifts the chins of the safin. They wear white, but their hearts are made of black. Their ears are like his, pointed and sharp. A display of their immortality, heightened senses, and unnatural speed. They are special, their ears claim, and he is not.
He has no heart. He knows this, for there is no beat in his chest, but they see reason to remind him. Over and over and over. His body was shaped to hold a heart—like safin, like mortal men—but his ifrit blood birthed him without the pulsing mass of red.
As the blood quickens from erratic drops to a terrible trickle, he wonders: Does one need a heart to feel compassion? Is the rise of pride the downfall of mercy?
He is created of evil.
His darkness is a curse.
He deserves death.
Then why are they killing his father instead?
He is an anomaly. Too young to kill, too strange to be shown the light of day.
Ropes bind his father’s wrists, locking him between two erected beams. The stones make sounds as they strike the ground, clattering like child’s play.
“Stop,” he pleads through the sobs in his throat, and someone kicks him into silence. His bag slides down his arm, skinny and bruised like the rest of him. Hollow cheeks, ribs he can count. This is what happens when hate puts stones in the hands of men. His books tumble out. His reed pens, new and sharp, snap beneath angry calfskin sandals.
The school is ten paces from him. It was built for safin scholars, a place his father had dreamed of sending him to ever since he’d been a boy with a tutor. He was to be a scholar, a man of ‘ilm. It is the reason for this madness.
“Baba,” he cries until he thinks he knows how a heart must beat. Baba. Baba. Baba. It drowns out his sobs. It drowns out their hurtful words. It drowns out his father’s very, very last exhale.
Their cruelty turns his father’s ocean-blue eyes glassy, unseeing. It makes his organs sputter and stop. Stop.
Stop.
What is mercy, if there is no one to give it?
What does it mean to be lenient, if there is no one who deserves it?
They ask, What of the boy?
Others say, Leave him. Death takes what is owed.
There is blissful silence then, for corpses do not speak. They cannot cry or feel pain. He picks up his broken pens. He slowly stacks his books and lifts the flap of his bag. It is new, sewn for his first day at this school. It almost smells stronger than the blood, but not quite. He’s never smelled blood before, but he will always remember this moment. The first time he inhaled the sweetness of spilled death.
Your mother would be proud, my lion.
His mother, who died gifting him to the world. His father, who died because his lion was not a gift but a curse. Ifrit are monsters, they say, not meant for union with pure-blooded safin. His mother was ifrit.
What are ifrit, if not another race? If not beings with homes and families and wishes of their own? They are his kin. And they have nothing, for the Sisters deemed them monsters and banished them to Sharr.
You are made from night, my lion, and no matter what my people say, you are one of us. Mightier than us.
What is he now? An orphan. A half-breed left to die.
Inside, he is ifrit: black blood, heartless. Outside, he is safin: peaked ears, heightened abilities.
Outside: He is tears and boyish fear. Inside: He is fire and he makes an oath. It is brash and angry, but he will keep it. Shadows pool in his palms.
He is a lion and he will claim the night as his own.
They will fear him.
CHAPTER 55
Zafira lurched back into the present, gasping for air, teeth clattering from the force of her trembling. The turmoil continued around them, the same spear she had seen at mid-impact only now impaling an ifrit. An arrow in the air only now landed true. As if barely heartbeats had passed.
The Lion was on his knees before the throne, his cloak sliding back from his shoulders. The high collar of his thobe was drenched in sweat.
Discarded to his side, like an unwanted pamphlet, was the Jawarat.
She froze when he lifted his head, but his gaze was dull. She’d seen it in the mirror: the look of a person who had shattered so many times that the pieces no longer fit together. All bruised edges and angles.
No child should have to watch their father die. No child should have to stomach the smell of their own father’s blood.
What did it mean when a monster became human? Because it wasn’t the Lion with his palms on the cold, hard stone. It was Haider, a boy who had witnessed the world’s cruelty firsthand. A boy who had once been like her.
She carefully picked up the Jawarat.
We promised you protection, bint Iskandar. Look at him. Pathetic. Weak.
Rushing, roiling anger flooded her. Like when she realized Nasir still had his magic—anger that wasn’t her own but felt every bit as if it were.
He is not pure. His will is too heavy, too fixed. He tried to control us, and now we will end him.
She picked up Nasir’s jambiya—her jambiya—from beside Ghameq’s lifeless form. The blade sang to her, coaxed her even as some distant part of her fought against it.
No, you fool. Steel is powerless. Use us.
She loosened her hold, remembering her failed arrow at the Lion’s hideout. Remembering the Jawarat’s vision, slicing men in two.