“I would never have let him marry you. You know that, right? If your hearts don’t beat the same, what does it matter?” Yasmine’s mouth was askance and razor-sharp, her tone dripping poison.
Zafira held her breath, waiting for the lash.
“That didn’t mean you had to kill him.”
Zafira stared at her. Her friend, the sister of her heart. It took every last drop of her will to hold her features still and stoic, to keep from falling to pieces. Wars could wage and swords could cut and arrows could pierce. None of them compared to the pain of a well-poised word.
“A murderer,” Zafira said, void of emotion, surprised to learn her heart could indeed suffer more. “You’re calling me a murderer. This is a new low, Yasmine, even for you.”
Yasmine crumpled in pain, and that was somehow worse. Because it meant she knew it wasn’t true, but she was hurting and wanted Zafira to feel the same.
Couldn’t she see that Zafira did? She relived his death when the light bled gold across the desert, when a stranger on the street smiled without malice, when she passed stalls of colorful fruit.
“I didn’t take him,” Zafira said, her voice careful and slow and—sweet snow, she sounded like Nasir. It was easier than screaming, pretending she felt nothing. It was easier to ignore the burn of tears, the guilt she felt guilty to feel. “I didn’t even ask him. He stood on his own two legs and decided according to his own daama conscience, and if you expected me to be his caretaker, you should have given me a wage.”
Yasmine was aghast. “And now you have the gall to mock him. To mock me and my pain.”
“Your pain,” Zafira repeated. “Your pain. He was your brother by blood, but he was mine by choice. Did you think I was happy when he died? Do you think I’m happy now? My best friend is dead. My parents are dead. My life as I knew it is gone.”
“Are you listening to yourself?” Yasmine asked, voice rising. She threw the pillow aside and stood. “All I hear is me, me, me.”
“As if you didn’t marry and leave us both,” Zafira scoffed, heat rising to her face. Anger clouded her head and made her speak so uselessly.
“He didn’t die for me,” Yasmine enunciated. “He died for you.”
“And I wish he hadn’t, Yasmine! I lived five years of my life with the guilt of Baba’s death. Don’t think I’m a stranger to any of this. Altair—”
“Don’t,” Yasmine bit out. “Do not speak that name in my presence. I know it’s his. Misk told me enough to let me connect the daama dots.”
Zafira had hated him, once, because of the notion that he had killed Deen. But when she learned that it was true, she’d felt sad instead. When he’d turned away from them at the Lion’s hideout, she’d believed it with a sinking, drowning certainty, but when he’d come to their aid later, his face streaked red, wrists raw and chafed, she’d felt remorse and contrition.
She loved him in the way she loved Kifah, and she could not fault herself for it.
“He is my friend,” Zafira whispered. Not the way Yasmine was, not the way Deen had been, but enough that her heart could not summon hate, not anymore. “And I will say Altair’s name as I see fit.”
Yasmine whirled, but Zafira beat her to it, clenching her jaw against the sting of her wound as she rose to her feet and threw open the door, slamming it in Yasmine’s face.
Kifah lifted her brows from the hall, where she would have heard every last word. “Already bustling about, I see. It’s good to have you back.”
She tipped her head toward the other room, Umm’s room, and Zafira found Lana asleep inside, beneath a mound of blankets, the soft pink one Yasmine had gifted Umm tucked beneath her chin.
“Zafira?”
She paused. Kifah never called her by her name.
“I am bound by duty to the Nine Elite, but I am bound to you by honor. Did you think I’d forget you saved my life?”
The events of Sharr seemed far and foreign, a story rooted in the past, an adventure that seemed less wrought in danger than the reality they faced now. Zafira had forgotten it. Or she would have thought twice before firing her last arrow.
“My blade is yours. Until every last star is freed, we are bound.”
Zafira warmed at the ferocity in Kifah’s dark eyes, her promise a harsh line across her brow. “Does that make us friends?”
Kifah laughed. “A thousand times over.”
And though Zafira would never forsake her friendship with Yasmine for anything in the world, even now, when she had flung as much pain as Yasmine had flung back, it was a relief to befriend someone as carefree as Kifah, as if her vengeance had encompassed her so deeply that nothing else was ever allowed to fester.
“What about the others?”
“You mean your prince,” Kifah said smugly.
“I meant your general.”
“Oi, I told you,” Kifah protested, and Lana stirred at the bark of her laugh.
“That doesn’t mean you don’t love him.”
“Laa, and that doesn’t mean you don’t love his grumpy brother.”
It felt dangerous to let the words simmer without denying them. A refutation clambered up her throat, but she swallowed it back down. She hadn’t almost died to live a life bereft of danger.
Kifah sombered quickly. “I see those bloody streaks on his face every time I blink. You know what’s worse? My first thought at the sight of them was What if it’s a lie?” She looked down. “I’ve never felt such shame.”
Zafira pursed her lips. The two halves of herself were at war with each other. Half of her knew that Altair had dedicated decades to this cause. To Arawiya’s restoration. He couldn’t have climbed up the ranks to the sultan’s right hand without an atrocity or ten. His every act was deliberate, done for the good of the kingdom. She knew this, and yet the other half of her was trapped trying to decipher why he had turned away when he’d had every opportunity to aid them.
“No word from anyone,” Kifah continued. “Nor did I see either of them when we were escaping, only Seif, who told us to head for the palace in Thalj to recoup, though he didn’t know you were alive. We had to detour here, and we’re lucky we had Ghada’s carriage to quicken our pace, but we’ll circle back when you’ve recovered, and hope they’re waiting for us.”
The moments leading to Zafira’s near death still echoed like a terrible dream, but standing in her old home with the ghosts of her life was somehow worse. The emptiness yawned, hungry and cold.
Kifah followed her to the foyer. “The Lion hasn’t wasted any time. He dropped the taxes, and so the riots have stopped. There’s even talk of a new caliph being appointed in Sarasin soon. It’s only been four daama days.”
Her words made it harder for Zafira to breathe, but they made sense, didn’t they? The Lion had created those riots. He had raised taxes. He’d refused Sarasin a new caliph. All so he could take on the guise of being lenient when he became king.
She loosed a breath. Lana’s stack of books sat on the majlis, the latest pamphlet of al-Habib at the very top. Baba’s coat hung near the door, the hook beside it empty, and she felt her cloak’s absence acutely. Four days. Zafira snatched a shawl and her boots.