“What rest?”
“The imbalance. Inside you.” Lana smirked. “Then you can revel freely.”
A bewildered laugh bubbled out of Zafira. “When did you become this wild creature?”
“I was always here,” she said with a nonchalant shrug, but she didn’t meet her eyes. “You just never noticed me.”
A spirited chuckle echoed from beyond the door—Altair. As if on cue, Kifah’s equally loud, dry response followed, along with several pairs of footsteps. They came close to her room.
And didn’t stop.
Zafira listened through the pounding in her ears, but no one turned back. No one knocked.
We’ll be leaving soon. Sweet snow, they had finalized a plan and she wasn’t even a part of it. These were her friends, her zumra. Her family bound by resilience and hope.
And they had left her.
Laa, she had broken their trust.
Zafira sank to the floor, wrapping her arms around herself as her wound screamed and her heart screamed louder. She was empty of feeling, a hole chipping wider and wider. A void of a disease by the name of loneliness.
Bint Iskandar.
She tightened her jaw. The Jawarat was the last voice she wanted in her head. She shot to her feet.
“Where are you going?” Lana asked. “Wait!”
Zafira marched back to the room and grabbed the Jawarat with an angry snarl. She dug her nails into the leather, and a dull pain like the blunt edges of ten knives cut across her back.
The book was silent. It was the rued kind of silence that came when someone felt they deserved to be chastised.
We only thought to please you.
Its despondence was as peculiar as when it had led her to the caliph and asked to be forgiven. As if it had ceased its desire to control her when the Lion had stolen it away.
“How?” she whispered. The caliph flashed in her thoughts, split in half like an apple in her palm. How could that please me?
“Okhti?” Lana crouched beside her, draping a blanket over her shivering shoulders. “Don’t do it. Don’t talk to it.”
Zafira shrugged away. “I need to fix this. I’ve—I’ve lost them, Lana.”
“Lost whom?”
“Them. My friends. Kifah, Altair. Nasir,” she finished in a whisper. You, for though Lana was here and concerned, she was concerned, and Zafira didn’t want her to be. “They don’t trust me anymore.”
“Then win them back. You can’t undo what’s done, but you can decide the future.”
The Jawarat stirred from its somber moping. The zumra has but only one wish.
The Lion’s annihilation.
We can end—
No. She knew what the Jawarat would suggest. If we’re doing this, we’re doing it my way.
Zafira straightened and looked at her sister, tiny and quick. “Can I trust you?”
Lana studied her, as if trying to decipher if it was Zafira or the Jawarat that spoke.
“Always,” she said, appeased by what she saw.
“Do you know where everyone’s been staying? Which rooms they’re in?” Zafira flexed her shoulder with a grimace. She needed to rest and heal, but she could do neither, not with the caliph’s death on her shoulders. Not while the Lion lounged on his ill-claimed throne.
Lana’s eyes brightened. “You mean the prince’s?”
“I mean Altair’s. I need you to steal something for me.”
CHAPTER 74
It didn’t take Altair long to find Nasir. He dropped the roof’s trapdoor shut with a thud, tugging the collar of his robes against the cold.
“You only drill when you think too much.”
Surprise flitted across the prince’s gray eyes. Did he really think Altair didn’t pay attention? Nasir gathered his belongings and leaped across the rooftop to join him, setting his neatly wrapped bundle beneath the shelter of a latticed archway. He stared into the distance, the perfect depiction of brooding. Altair couldn’t understand why women found that attractive.
“It’s Zafira,” Nasir started, slowly piecing his words together. “I don’t know if it’s right, allowing her to keep the Jawarat.”
Ah. It was natural, Altair knew, to second-guess actions when one had lived a life dictated by orders.
“Every deed has its outcome,” Altair said. “Doubt is inherent. The best of us merely manage to overcome the voice—”
“If I wanted philosophy, I would have sought out the library.”
Altair regarded him. “It’s time now for you to follow your heart. To listen to it.”
Nasir slowly spun the scimitar before sheathing it with a huff that painted the air white. The boy’s nose was an almost adorable hue of pink.
“Teach me,” Altair said suddenly.
Nasir’s eyebrows rose. “What?”
“Remind me what it’s like to use a single sword, because I will never use two again.”
Nasir frowned. “Why not?”
“Oh, because my father stabbed me in the eye.”
“I’m aware,” Nasir deadpanned. “But even a blind man can use a sword.”
“Perhaps a blind man who doesn’t have a dark army waiting for him. There isn’t time. I don’t have the balance for two.” He didn’t have his scimitars anymore, either, and if he was being honest, he didn’t feel particularly inclined to find a new pair.
Nasir nodded and stepped to the bundle he’d left beneath the archway. He carefully folded back the fabric and drew two scimitars. Altair’s heart stopped. The hilts were burnished gold, the perfect curve of the blades adorned with filigree and branded with names.
“Sultan’s teeth,” Altair murmured, taking Fath from him. “Where? How?”
“Seif, likely. I found it in the Pelusian carriage.”
“Akhh, I could kiss him,” Altair announced, turning the scimitar over in his hand. He kissed the blade instead, and sank into a stance. “Parry me.”
Nasir regarded him. “What makes you think I won’t kill you?”
“You love me too much.”
He caught the flash of Nasir’s laugh before he swung. Altair dodged it with shameful clumsiness. Both of his arms moved in tandem. They had mirrored each other for so long that it was habit.
“Change is coming, brother. Are you ready?” Altair was aware he spoke to distract others as much as himself sometimes.
“Death will come first,” Nasir said, lunging.
Altair heard the approach of the sword, for turning his head to see out of his right eye took far too long, and ducked. “And then—”
Nasir swung before he could finish, the hiss of his blade as cutting as the Demenhune air. This time, Altair parried it more swiftly. Nasir acknowledged him with a nod and swung the same way from his other side—Altair’s blind side. He parried a little too late.
Nasir lowered his sword. “And then I’ll be king. Or sultan. I know.”
“I always knew you were smart,” Altair teased, hefting the scimitar against his shoulder. In all twenty years of Nasir’s life, not once had they carried a conversation this long.
This was an improvement, and Altair was proud.
As with most of his rare displays of emotion, Nasir’s snort was a sound barely there.