“We both agreed we need some time apart. I don’t want to say goodbye. Does that make me a bad person? For not leaving him?”
Zafira hid her relief with a shake of her head. “It means you love him enough that you’re willing to make it work.”
Yasmine held still, her gaze off to the side. What do you know of love? Zafira imagined her asking in the silence. You couldn’t even love the man who loved you. Zafira wavered. And then Yasmine crumpled, shoving a hand to her mouth.
“I miss him,” she breathed. “I’m so angry, Zafira, but I miss him. I miss you. I miss what we had, and what we could have.”
Outside, Arawiya was falling to a ruin even darker than the Arz. Zafira did not know if Nasir and Altair lived. She did not know if magic would ever return.
Still, she found the words slipping out of her mouth, chasing what they once had, trying to remind Yasmine that though she had lost her brother and maybe even her husband, she still had Zafira. She would always have her. “If we were in a story, what would happen?”
A tiny smile broke Yasmine’s resolve, breaking a wider one out of Zafira. Yasmine, who was never sad, who was always full of emotion and bursting with passion.
They had played this game time and time again. She could almost mouth the words as Yasmine spoke of the half Sarasin, half Demenhune man she had desired for months in a way Zafira had never understood.
“A bookkeeper would sweep me away with his good hair and good taste. He’d be tall, of course,” she recited, and Zafira, as always, refrained from commenting on Yasmine’s height, or the lack of it. “Skilled in matters of importance that you pretend to know nothing about.”
Zafira couldn’t tell whom the game was meant to benefit. “And? Is he?”
“In every way but the truth. I hate lies.” Yasmine picked up her cup and swished the qahwa rinds. She didn’t look up. “Your turn.”
“Mine?” Zafira asked, shrinking back. “I don’t have anyone.”
She cringed when the words left her, half expecting Yasmine to say Oh, but you could have.
“It’s theoretical. A game,” Yasmine said instead, gaze rising to the bandages wrapped around Zafira’s chest, flicking to her face, and she dared to hope: They could get through this, the two of them. They were making progress, if Yasmine could look at her now. “An escape from all this.”
Zafira was quiet for a while. Her neck burned even as her thoughts raced. “He’d know his way around a bow and a blade.”
Yasmine’s brows lifted.
“He’d be my opposite, in every way. So contrasting that if you’d look at us a certain way, you’d notice that we’re exactly alike.”
She didn’t dream. She didn’t believe in wishes. She was no romantic like Yasmine, but somewhere along the way, she’d grown partial to another soul.
They were twin flames, twined by fate.
“Heavy words,” Yasmine said softly, “from a girl with no interest in love.”
The door swung open without a knock, and a liveried guard stepped back, formal and stiff as he announced, “Crown Prince Nasir bin Ghameq.”
Her heart stopped.
Yasmine dropped to her knees with a surprised yelp, lowering her gaze as a figure haltingly entered the room.
Zafira heard the weight of his surprised inhale. The breathless murmur of her name that sent shivers down her spine.
She saw the struggle in his limbs, the way half of him pitched forward, the other half holding him back. He still wore the fitted thobe from the feast, matted with dark blood and dusted in sand.
“Shall I get down on my knees before you, my prince?”
Her beautiful, bloody prince.
His answer was a whispered invocation. “Never.”
Yasmine made a sound, but he barely registered her presence until she rose to her full height. He blinked down at her, and it was impossible to believe he was unaffected by her beauty.
“Forgive me,” he said hoarsely, and stiffly flourished two fingers from his brow. “I will, uh”—he cleared his throat—“I will return at another time.”
He closed the door. Yasmine whirled to her, gaping.
“That was … that was the crown prince. He looked at you—khara.” Yasmine stopped, and the room was suddenly very warm. “A moment longer and he would have torn every last bit of that yellow—khara. Theoretical, I said. Sweet skies, Zafira. Deen for the Prince of Death—”
“Don’t.”
The word cut harsh, and the room echoed with her command.
“Don’t?” Yasmine repeated. “He’s—a monster, Zafira. My brother for a monster.”
Zafira would have flinched or fought. She would have been offended on his behalf. But Zafira had lived with Yasmine, and she herself had shared in that thinking, that the Crown Prince of Arawiya was not a boy, but a beast.
Until he wasn’t.
Yasmine left, and the door stayed closed. Zafira leaned back. What a fool she’d been to think a friendship such as theirs could be mended in an afternoon.
CHAPTER 66
In the hall, Nasir clenched his fist against the wall and dropped his head to the crook of his arm.
The rise and fall of her chest made him want to weep. The sight of that smile he’d thought he’d never see again—rimaal. Crazed joy echoed in his limbs, crowded in his throat, worked his lungs for breath. Like a drunkard finally sobering, Nasir knew what had happened to him, and what her near death made him realize.
He didn’t dare think the words.
“Shukrun for letting me know before you shoved me down that hall,” Nasir said, trying to keep his voice steady.
“I thought you’d enjoy the surprise,” Altair said, his face finally free of those terrible streaks of blood. “That was a short visit, by the way. Don’t you know what you’re supposed to do with the door closed?”
Nasir pretended he didn’t understand. “She wasn’t alone.”
“Ah, so you do know—”
“Not. Another. Word,” Nasir bit out. Haytham’s son clung even closer to Altair’s leg. Nasir sequestered his wayward thoughts and burned them.
The general shrugged, patting the boy with inattentive reassurance. “You know as crown prince, you can ask anyone to vacate the room, yes?”
“As well as you know I’m not one for ordering people around.”
“Could’ve fooled me—”
“And here I thought we’d finally gotten rid of you.” Kifah stepped past the navy curtain, dark eyes bright.
Altair made a sound between a chuckle and a strangled sob, and wrapped her in a hug, lifting her off the ground.
She froze at the embrace.
“I missed you, too, One of Nine,” he said.
She pulled back and pointed at her eye, raising her brows without comment.
“What can I say?” Altair asked in a nonchalant manner that suggested the opposite. “My father was jealous.”
“Or exasperated,” Nasir said.
Kifah snorted. “That is far more believable. Though that act of yours, when you’d turned your back on us? I was ready to fling my spear through your skull.”
“I know,” Altair said, earnest. “I thought I’d convinced him that if no one else was on his side, his son was. Do you still think I look dashing?”