Zafira opened one wary eye and then the other, blinking back against the onslaught of light. Only in Demenhur was light so white, so blinding. Everywhere else it streamed gold, glittering with enchantment.
“I—I’m not dead?” Her voice was hoarse.
A face framed by hair like burnished bronze pressed close, half hooded by a blue shawl. Warm eyes lit with emotion and rimmed in kohl, rounded features cast in worry, beauty etched into every facet of her creamy skin. Zafira ducked her head, suddenly shy. Laa, fear prickled through her chest.
Because being daama dead was easier than facing Yasmine.
A sound between a sob and a laugh broke out of her friend. “You’ve always been a corpse walking. No one else could be so boring.”
Zafira looked down at herself, stretched on a mat, and remembered the shaft of the arrow protruding from her chest. The surprise she felt, even as her body succumbed to pain. How was she alive? How was she in Demenhur? Every thought tangled with the last.
“What am I wearing?” she asked.
Strips of gauze had been wrapped from the right of her chest to the opposite crook of her neck. The muscles in her back were strangely knotted, making it hard to ease herself up, but her dress was a bright hue of yellow, taut across her shoulders and a good length too short. It was no wonder she felt cold.
“You were ready to die, so I thought you might as well go looking nice. It’s mine. Khara, you’re as ungrateful as ever. I cleaned you up and washed your stinking hair. Cleaned your filthy nails. I should have left you out to freeze. That would have served you right.”
Zafira stared at her for a few breathless moments until she couldn’t hold back her grin any longer, yearning and jubilation and happiness because her friend was right there.
And then Yasmine began to cry.
Zafira choked on her pain when Yasmine wrapped her into her arms. Orange blossom and spice flooded her numb senses.
Yasmine’s sky-blue gown hugged her generous curves, accentuated her ample bosom. She looked regal. She had always been regal in a way that everyone in their village understood. She was the sun in the gloomiest of days. The joy in the despondence of death. Life as a royal suited her, even if she was only a guest in the palace and leagues away from the suffering of the western villages.
“Lana sent me a letter,” Yasmine whispered, “and I came as fast as I could. You were—you were bloody and still, Zafira. So still. My heart stopped.” Her voice was small and shaky. “I stayed with you. Even when they said it was hopeless, I stayed with you.”
What was it Lana had learned from Aya? Only half of a sick man’s life was owed to a healer, the other to hope.
Zafira didn’t know when Aya had lost the ability to hope.
“If the archer had been even half as skilled as you are, you wouldn’t have stood a chance. You’re lucky you had Lana on the journey with you to stanch the bleeding and keep you alive until they got you here to the supplies she needed. She knitted you back together, commanding everyone like a little general. Poor thing collapsed from fatigue a little while ago.”
Of course it was Lana. Zafira felt a swell of pride, until Yasmine pulled away and she caught sight of the familiar walls. The basin in the corner with its chipped edge. The mirror with its fissure that always stretched her eyes too far apart.
This wasn’t the palace in Thalj. It was no palace at all—laa, it was a poor man’s house.
It was her room. She was home.
“Why are we here?” she breathed.
“Apparently there was only one way to save you, and it was in your umm’s cabinet.”
Or in Alderamin, Zafira didn’t say. Aya was bound to have tenfold of their mother’s collection. Ya, Ummi. Before, Zafira had lived with the guilt of not seeing her. Now every glimpse filled her with an aching, numbing emptiness.
The reminder that she was an orphan was a wound opened afresh.
“It’s strange being back, isn’t it?” Yasmine asked, misinterpreting her silence. “Like wearing an old dress washed one too many times.”
It was true. Now that Zafira had seen the palace’s smooth walls and the sheen on its floors, she was painfully aware of her home’s every blemish. The dark veins of rot creeping from the broken windowpane she never had enough coins to repair. The armoire with its doors that didn’t sit right, cutting a shadowy gap that Lana refused to look at for fear of nightmares. The doorway that Baba would lean against as he wished his daughters good night.
Zafira cleared her closed throat. “Was it Kifah who brought me in?”
“If she’s one of the Nine Elite, then yes. They brought you here in one of those fancy Pelusian carriages that travel unnaturally fast. She’s the only one who stuck around, though.”
“And the others,” Zafira ventured. “Are they … are they here?”
“Others? It’s just us. I left Thalj to come here as soon as Lana’s missive arrived, and that was before Caliph Ayman returned from Sultan’s Keep. So I don’t know if he’s alive.”
No, not the old fool.
Altair, who had materialized in a halo of light to help them at the doomed feast after turning his back on them.
Seif, who wielded scythes like the silks of a dancer.
Nasir.
Nasir. Nasir.
Yasmine canted her head, her shawl sliding from her shoulder. “And here I thought I’d never see color on your cheeks. Are you all right?”
Zafira nodded meekly, unable to meet her eyes for more reasons than one.
“The snow’s still here, if you’re wondering.” Yasmine looked at her hands.
No, Zafira hadn’t been wondering. She was thinking of Deen now, which meant Yasmine was, too.
“It’s falling less. The elders hope the change will be gradual, or the caliphate could flood.”
Deen’s name rolled to the edge of Zafira’s tongue.
She lifted her eyes and met Yasmine’s gaze that was every bit Deen’s. Sorrow stirred her stomach.
“I know.” Yasmine’s voice was flat, the stiff line of her shoulders cutting. “I’ve known.”
Zafira held still, trapped in a case made of glass. How dare you feel sorry, guilt demanded. How dare she, when it was her fault?
“I came back here,” Yasmine began haltingly, “after you left. And I was … I was lost. I don’t know what got into me, but I went to the Arz, because I missed you so daama much, and I saw it. It—flashed behind my eyes. As if I were suddenly elsewhere. I saw Deen jumping in front of an arrow, and the golden-haired demon who fired it.”
Zafira’s brows knitted. The Arz didn’t present its visitors with visions—it fueled their affinities, which meant Yasmine was a seer. If magic was restored, Yasmine would be able to see snippets of the future.
The revelation made Zafira inhale deep, and she flinched at the sharp sting in her breast. At the change in the room. The charge that hadn’t been there before. She had expected it, but she had not anticipated the amount of pain that would thrive upon it.
“I’m sorry,” Zafira whispered, and the chain around her neck heavied into a noose. “I’m sorry I didn’t love him enough. I’m sorry he died so I could live.”
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Sorry. Who could have created a word so callous, so insignificant?