“Then we take it away from her. I’ll keep it,” Altair said.
Lana held it close. “The only way to rid someone of a poison is with the poison itself. We can’t rip it away from her,” she stressed. “She’ll go mad.”
“And until she learns to control it, she will be capricious.”
“Until she learns to control it, she’s dangerous,” Kifah growled.
Lana shook her head, staring unflinchingly at what remained of the caliph. “She was always angry. If you lived beneath his rule and lived the way my sister did, you would know that the caliph had invited this upon himself a long time ago.”
There came a pounding on the doors. More guards, no doubt.
“I will never forget the day I first saw her, when I learned the selfless huntress was no ruse but who she truly is,” Kifah said with a shake of her head. “If that book is going to make her as unsalvageable as the heart the Lion stole might soon be, then I suggest we destroy it.”
“At the cost of her life,” Nasir growled.
Kifah paused as if she had forgotten that one, terrible fact, then said in a measured tone, “I would rather die at a merciful hand than live a monstrous life.”
Nasir glanced at Altair, mortified when something akin to agreement shone in his eyes. She had done something wrong, horribly wrong, but if there was anyone who understood the desire for a second chance, it was Nasir. If anyone understood what it was like to wish they could begin afresh, unjudged and untainted, it was him.
She had given that to him. She saw him as a boy when everyone else deemed him a monster. Even if the world and all it contained gave up on her, he would not.
“No one’s taking it away from her,” Nasir ruled.
Lana was watching him, relief bright. “Nothing is without salvation, right?”
CHAPTER 72
Nasir nudged open the door with his foot and carefully set her down on the bed, uncaring that Lana was witness to him tucking a pillow beneath her arm and straightening her clothes. Lana clutched the Jawarat to her chest, and as much as he loathed entrusting it to her, she was right. She set the book out of reach and curled against her sister’s side without a word.
It was only now that he noticed how distraught Zafira had been. As she slept, the groove between her brows was smooth, the harsh cut of her lips supple.
His life was full of loss and pain, and he would not lose her again.
In the hall, he came face to face with a girl—the one he’d seen at Zafira’s side before. She was as slight as Kulsum, her curves more ample, her eyes doe-like and heavy-lidded, the color of honey.
She was not pleased to see him closing the door to Zafira’s room.
“She’s asleep,” he said.
Her eyes narrowed in mistrust, for she didn’t yet know of the attack. Laa, she thought Nasir had been in Zafira’s bedroom for a reason other than laying her motionless body across her bed. If only.
Her voice might have been melodic, if it was not full of the hate he was used to. “If you hurt her—”
He didn’t wait for her to finish. “If I hurt her, I will bring every weapon at my disposal and lay them at your feet for you to do to me what you will. If I hurt her, I will no sooner carve out my own heart than dare draw breath again.”
She was silent. Her eyes were no longer narrowed.
“Do you understand?” he prompted.
“You love her.”
She spoke the words like a subtle knife: rife with disbelief. As if it was impossible to comprehend that the Prince of Death would care for anyone.
No, he did not love her. The word for what he felt for Zafira bint Iskandar did not yet exist.
* * *
When at last he stepped into the room where the others had gathered, conversation ceased for a beat. He paused with a raise of his eyebrows, but when he dropped the curtain behind him and joined them, they continued again as if nothing had happened.
It took him a moment to note the tension. The stiffness of Kifah’s movements, the stillness in her restless limbs. Wariness tugged at Altair, haunting his one-eyed gaze.
They were trying to continue as if nothing had happened.
“I don’t think we can wait for her,” Altair said.
Nasir leaned against the wall, knowing full well whom he spoke of. He agreed. “No, we can’t.”
Haytham slid a look across them in the silence, and Nasir wondered how easily he’d believed the lie.
Kifah unfurled a map across the table. “Haytham has received another report. Seems the Lion still hasn’t left the palace grounds, not even to visit the Great Library.”
“Imagine the temptation,” Altair murmured.
“But why not give in to it? Is he afraid?” Kifah mused.
“Or preoccupied,” Haytham offered.
Nasir remembered the haunted look in the Lion’s eyes, the pain. He wondered if that played more of a part than fear did. He was powerful and protected, and the Great Library was hardly a journey from the palace. His father had made the trip often enough. Nasir knew, because he would note Ghameq’s comings and goings to time his own excursions to the mollifying edifice. Each time, his father would return with a stack of—
Only, that hadn’t been his father.
“He’s gathered enough reading material for the time being,” Nasir said.
“Perhaps,” Altair ceded with a tilt of his head. “But we can agree that standing within the walls is an entirely different experience.”
True enough.
“Let’s hear your plan, then,” said Nasir, catching the hope in Altair’s tone and clinging to it for dear life.
His brother looked pleased. “We will, woefully, need to part ways, habibi.” He tapped the map with a finger, trailing two upward paths from their present position in Thalj. One path stopped in Sarasin’s capital of Leil, the other in the vicinity of Sultan’s Keep. There was a third path, too, crossing the sea. “Three parties. Kifah and I. A falcon in the skies. You.”
And no mention of Zafira.
“Your job involves doing what you do best,” Altair said.
“Killing,” Nasir said, stepping closer to look at the plans spread across the table. It was what he did best. Still, it stung.
Altair noticed, but his next words didn’t help ease daama anything. “You do have experience sneaking into the Sarasin palace and killing a caliph, so—”
Nasir released a breath.
“Oi, don’t be upset!”
“And why are we killing him?” Nasir asked, apathetic.
“As you said, the ifrit looks like the man the Sarasins admire. Therefore effortlessly controlling both ifrit and human armies. It’s simple. We get rid of him, we command in his stead. Short term, of course. Until we get rid of the Lion and appoint someone better suited for the task.”
Perhaps it was because of Zafira and her honor, her rectitude a drop of white in the fabric of his dark world, but Nasir’s first thought did not involve killing the caliph, ifrit or not. It was odd how that change had come about within him.
Kifah took his silence as acceptance. “Controlling a horde of ifrit will prove tedious, but this way, we will at least be able to restrain the mortal Sarasin army and use them to hold the ifrit in check.”
Nasir looked at her sketch. “A blockade.”