The zumra stared at her. She was unable to remember a time when Demenhur had been so warm.
Altair smacked his lips. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t just say my father wants love.”
“She’s right,” Nasir said, and she held still against the weight of his scrutiny.
He knew the Lion had come to her room back at Aya’s house—she’d told him as much. He had witnessed her relationship with him before then, too. On Sharr.
“We can’t go around re-collecting the hearts,” he continued. “The minarets are safest, specifically with the High Circle protecting them.”
Speaking of the High Circle … “Where’s Seif?” Zafira asked.
“In Alderamin,” Altair replied. “We lost the Alder calipha, Benyamin’s mother, and without Aya as his charge, Seif’s place is there. He’ll protect the Alder heart and aid Benyamin’s sister, Leila, in claiming her throne.” He heaved a sigh at that. “What’s worse in all this is that no dignitary will divulge the massacre. For good reason, of course, but it means no one outside of the feast will question or fear the Lion.”
Zafira was only now beginning to understand the repercussions of the feast. The sultan was dead, a self-proclaimed king in his place, but the caliphates had always been, to an extent, independent. The bloodbath had toppled that system, bringing with it a swell of fear and uncertainty that no leader would rightly impart to their people.
“No point lamenting,” Kifah said with force, crossing her arms as Nasir tossed wood into the hearth, discreetly glancing at Zafira’s wound. “We need that heart. And if the Lion was in a big enough hurry to leave you unsecured”—she gave Altair a pointed glance, to which he feigned hurt—“there’s bound to be something else he’s missed.”
Altair’s mouth widened into a grin. “There is this.”
Bint Iskandar.
Not now, she snapped in her head. Altair closed his fingers around the black hilt of a dagger sheathed around his leg and pulled it free. It was black down to the tip of its blade.
Zafira had seen that wicked knife before. In the hands of the Lion. In midair. Striking the Silver Witch.
“The Lion’s black dagger,” she marveled.
“The one and only,” Altair said, flipping it over in his hands with a faraway look.
She studied him. “And the reason you went back.”
Altair smiled, and she didn’t miss the flicker of relief in his eye. “Ever perceptive, Huntress. It was indeed why I went back, when Nasir told me our mother was unable to heal herself. It just so happens that black ore strips one of magic. You saw how little your arrow affected him. There are spells that protect those who speak them, making the enchanted impossible to overpower. So long as the heart provides him with magic, wounding him will be impossible. Yet, until we wound him, we won’t be able to retrieve the heart. Akhh, I love conundrums.”
“And with the black dagger, we have a chance of stripping him of his power,” Kifah reasoned, foot tapping a beat. “Should have asked me.” She flourished a hand across the lightning blades sheathed along her arm. “I’ve got black ore to spare.”
Altair peered at them. “Pure black ore, One of Nine. See that silver sheen? They’ve been mixed with steel.”
Kifah didn’t look surprised. “I should have known anything of my father’s would be rubbish. Now, don’t lose that thing.”
“I don’t make a habit of handing important artifacts over to the Lion,” Altair said lightly. “I’ll keep it safe. In my own rooms.”
Zafira ducked her head.
“Using the dagger requires getting close,” said Nasir, ignoring the gibe.
“Oi, Zafira went and felt his pulse,” Kifah said, waving away his concern, and Zafira stared at her empty teacup.
“No one said it would be easy,” Altair said, sheathing the dagger. “But we have a chance now where we didn’t before, and it’s time we take back what’s ours. And yours, Nasir. Worry not—I’ll even polish your throne for you.”
Nasir gave him a look.
Heed us, bint Iskandar. The heart fights him, yet it will soon be tainted by him.
The Jawarat waited for its words to register. Zafira’s hands fell to the cover, confusion giving way to horrible understanding.
Once it is tainted, it cannot sit within a minaret.
The others stopped talking. Kifah and Nasir frowned at the book. Altair stared.
“What can’t sit within a minaret?” Nasir asked, jaw set.
“The heart,” Zafira whispered, too hollow, too anguished to care that the book had used her again. “We’re running out of time.”
“What does that mean, exactly?” Kifah asked with the same dread suddenly cloaking the room. She had gone still as a bird trapped beneath snow.
“It’s a si’lah heart. Meant to live within the si’lah themselves or the minarets of their making. It was never intended for the body of someone half ifrit, half safin.”
Her first thought was not to trust the Jawarat, not after she’d seen how capable it was of manipulating, stealing memories and exploiting others. But it made sense, didn’t it? It was the same as placing a fish in an empty bowl and expecting it to survive.
“That means—skies, we need to get it back now,” she said, “or all that we’ve done will have been for nothing. The Baransea, Sharr. Finding the Jawarat.”
Deen. Benyamin.
“And Aya would have done worse than give him magic,” Nasir said slowly.
Altair sat down. “She’ll have destroyed magic for good.”
CHAPTER 68
It was fitting, Zafira supposed. That one safi had dedicated his life to reversing the fall of Arawiya, only for his other half to do the opposite.
She should have unleashed her arrow when Aya had taken the Lion’s hand. She should have leaped to the ground and torn Aya apart with her bare hands. Blood filled her vision: Aya gasping, her throat ripped to shreds. Zafira’s fingers steeped in crimson.
Part of her was repulsed by her thoughts.
It is as you wanted.
The Jawarat lulled her with its truth. When it had shown her the terrible destruction of her village by her own hand, she had wanted it to heed her wishes. That was exactly what it had woven in her thoughts just now. The room spun, angry slashes of red making it hard to see. A soft purring came from the book in her lap and something—
Something fell to pieces.
Altair jerked from the little table with a yelp. “I’m all right! I’m all right!”
Zafira’s empty cup was now matching halves of ceramic. Rent in two the way the men in her vision had been.
“How did that happen?” Kifah asked with a frown.
“It must have already been broken,” Zafira said quickly. She struggled to quiet her racing pulse, as if the others could somehow hear it and know she had broken the cup.
“And just needed a bit of time to fall apart,” Nasir said, watching her, not at all referring to the cup. She carefully set the Jawarat down, out of reach, but the haze didn’t disappear. Laa, it was worsening, embers of anger merging into a flame, thieving her thoughts.
You did this, she hissed in her head.