Laa, bint Iskandar. It was you. It is the violence you wished upon the safi.
“I—I need to go,” Zafira said quickly. She started to get up but swayed with light-headedness, and Kifah had to grab her arm.
“Maybe you should sit back down,” Altair suggested gently. “We need to put together our plan.”
Zafira shook her head. She needed space to think. To sort through the crowding in her skull. If she remained, her only input would be blood and murder and other atrocities she wanted no part of. What was happening to her? She was the girl who’d mourned the rabbits she snared, who sought forgiveness as she slit their throats.
“I’ll take you to your sister,” Kifah said, oblivious. Yes, Lana would help.
“Akhh, there’s two of you?” Altair remarked.
Zafira rolled her eyes as the door thudded closed. Kifah led her down one hall and then another, wide and serene, arches beckoning with parted curtains every so often.
“You met Yasmine,” Zafira started. Her friend was down one of these halls, hating Zafira for her treacherous heart, knowing Zafira was the reason the last of her family was gone.
Kifah nodded, a sly smile playing on the edge of her mouth.
Zafira ignored it. “So you know what she looks like. And … well, I need your help making sure she and Altair don’t meet.”
Kifah only nodded, her smile widening. At Zafira’s glare, she shrugged. “I might have overheard a word or two of your, er, reunion.”
Zafira’s brows flattened.
“Can you imagine it?” Kifah continued, wistful. “I didn’t spend long with her, but bleeding Guljul, the two of them would be perfect.”
Zafira’s slow blink turned to a scowl when she realized what Kifah was implying.
“She’s married,” she deadpanned. “And Altair killed her brother.”
Kifah only shrugged again as they turned down the hall. “Stranger things have happened.”
“Zafira?” Yasmine stepped from one of the rooms as if summoned by their conversation, a shawl clutched in her hand. Her hair fell in freshly washed curls, kissing her cheeks.
Kifah lifted her brows.
“You’re supposed to be resting,” Yasmine said. She looked between them, gaze narrowing to slits.
“I was,” Zafira replied, wanting to step close. Fear held her in place. “I’m going to see Lana.”
A door slammed down the adjacent hall, and a laugh echoed, boisterous and free. The dread coiling in Zafira’s stomach was instant and girdling.
“You should have seen your face, habibi.”
It’s fine, she told herself. Yasmine didn’t know Altair by the tone of his voice. Only by name.
“Always happy to be the source of your amusement, Altair,” came Nasir’s exasperated reply.
Zafira looked at Kifah, and Kifah looked at Yasmine.
Perhaps, if they hadn’t been here, Yasmine would have thought nothing of it. But their pause gave Yasmine pause. She stiffened, and Zafira saw the moment recognition dawned, her features morphing into anger and rage, eyes bright and livid.
Khara.
“You know,” Kifah said lightly, “maybe Yasmine can take you to Lana, eh? I—I have to go.”
“Go where?” Yasmine snapped, but Kifah was already jogging backward with a two-fingered salute. Yasmine hoisted her abaya and ran after her.
Now both of them were leaving her.
“Wait!” Zafira called. “What about me?”
Kifah turned down the hall, disappearing from view. Yasmine didn’t look back.
Do something, you fool. Zafira winced and shoved her fingers against her wound, crying out at the sudden pain. Yasmine slowed but didn’t stop.
“Akhh, One of Nine, why the rush?” Altair exclaimed, moving closer.
Zafira hissed again, just for good measure.
Yasmine looked back at her. “Now what is it?”
“Lana,” Zafira gasped, clutching her chest as blood blossomed across her wrappings. Perhaps this was a little too good an act. “I think my wound broke again.”
Yasmine wavered, torn between going after Altair or helping her bleeding friend. Zafira nearly scowled, doubling over and throwing a hand against the wall instead.
“Yasmine!”
“All right,” she snarled. “I’m coming.”
Zafira heaved a relieved sigh. Altair deserved the brunt of Yasmine’s anger, but not now. Later, when everything was through, she would make the introductions herself.
Yasmine grumbled all the way to Lana’s door and abandoned her immediately, but Zafira didn’t mind. She’d done her job. She stepped into a room with shelves upon shelves of little bottles—a regular arsenal of healing supplies—and Lana, almost invisible in the shapely rays of evening light.
It was much like the rest of the palace: carved white shadowed by gray, accented in silver that complemented the deep blue furnishings, but this space smelled of so many herbs that Zafira’s nose couldn’t decipher a single one aside from rosemary, which she had never liked but Lana had always loved.
It was like Lana to claim a room that wasn’t hers. Even at home, she could never sleep in their room, preferring to curl on the majlis in their foyer, and for a moment, Zafira could only stand in the doorway, taking in the gleam of her sister’s hair, the soft curve of her cheek, lit with a line of fire from the crackling hearth.
It reminded her of home, before she undertook the journey to Sharr, when Lana had begged her to stay, saying magic meant nothing without Zafira.
Now it could be gone. Never, ever to return.
“You’re here!” Lana said, leaping to her feet. Her hands were stained with ink. Only then did Zafira realize she had brought the Jawarat with her. Her fear was a viper, sinking fangs and numbing her. “I was just writing down notes. Since you survived.”
“I’m delighted your experiment was successful,” Zafira said dryly.
We like her, bint Iskandar.
Zafira ignored it, or tried to—there was a sense inside her, a foreboding similar to when a storm churned in the distance.
Lana grinned cheekily before concern marred her brow. “Are you all right?”
Zafira nodded quickly, angling her bandages from view.
“It’s the book, isn’t it?” Lana was staring at the Jawarat with fascination and fear. “You act strange when you have it.”
“I—”
She stopped when a knock sounded and the door opened before either of them could answer. Lana looked past her shoulder and quickly smoothed back her hair with an eager hand, leaving a streak of ink on her temple. Zafira’s eyebrows flicked upward. Sweet snow.
“Are we meeting someone special?” she whispered.
Lana glared at her. “It’s the boy Ammah Aya saved.”
Zafira turned to the door, wincing when her wound stretched. The newcomer was slight, with a cloak shielding hunched shoulders and a hesitant step. Zafira was suddenly back at home, staring in her speckled mirror before her hunts. She recognized it all, down to the bare tilt of the newcomer’s hooded head.
“That’s no boy,” Zafira murmured. This was the palace, where the caliph lived. Where Haytham lived. She pieced together the clues. “You’re her. You’re the caliph’s daughter.”