Altair lifted a single brow and pondered this for a moment before he began to climb, more swiftly than Nasir would have expected given his hulking figure.
“Getting right to business, then, aren’t we, Sultani?” he called down. A vulture circled the cloudless sky, already awaiting death.
Nasir felt the grit of stone beneath his fingers.
Altair would get his turn soon enough.
CHAPTER 25
Zafira reached the wall’s top with a sense of satisfaction. One hurdle down, only a thousand more to go. Or considerably less, if the next hurdle killed her.
Deen made a sound behind her, and she whirled to him. To what he stared upon.
Sharr.
A desert spread before them, its horizon shrouded in a veil of dust. Uneven forms of stone rose in the distance, gnarled by the wind. Dunes the color of dark wheat rose and fell. It was a sea of umber, winking beneath a generous sun. It was sand, it was dead, yet Zafira’s heart soared at the sight.
Ruins unfolded directly below them. A menagerie of stone with carved arches, and columns with trellised windows. Minarets dotted the landscape. This wasn’t a prison—it was a metropolis. Living quarters, the tattered cloth roofing a sooq, wide steps leading to structures that may have once been beautiful.
People had done this. They had defied the sands and defied the suns. All to bring towering edifices of magnificence to life.
The warden hadn’t kept them locked in cells—she had given the banished creatures a place to live, to work, to be.
“I’ve never seen anything so illustriously tormented,” Deen murmured in awe. A breeze tousled the end of his turban and billowed her cloak. She still felt the echo of his lips against her neck every time she looked at him. “They lived here, Zafira.”
She felt the rushing need to quiet him, for she discerned the prickling sense of being watched. The desert was too still; the stone held its breath. Every shadowy slant twisted and beckoned. “I don’t think we should stay in one place for long.”
“There’s no one around for leagues.”
“Where do you think the monsters went?”
They may have roamed free on the island, but that didn’t mean they were any less evil. And if the whispered tales of her childhood were true, Sharr had been full of them. Ifrit, who could take the shape of anyone. Shadows that killed. Sirens known as naddaha. The bashmu, which put other snakes to shame. And other things she couldn’t remember the names of.
The very land was to be feared. It breathed dark magic, for when the Sisters of Old came to defeat the Lion of the Night, they brought magic with them, and Sharr had swallowed them all. Zafira unhooked her bow and nocked an arrow.
“Akhh, I don’t even know where to go,” Deen said.
She gave him a funny look. “The plan is to head to the center,” she said, and steered him toward a path that careened downward and veered in two different directions. That thrumming in her veins smiled at her choice. It was happy she listened to it.
“The center? I don’t even know where we came in from—the south? The north? And who says the Jawarat is in this center we’re supposedly heading toward?”
“It’s like the Arz; the more you think about it, the madder you’ll become. But I have a feeling it will be in the center.” She stepped into the shadows, sweat beading above her lip. The world became warmer. Hotter. The shadows warned of danger.
“Zafira,” Deen said.
She had to stop and turn because, male that he was, he wouldn’t continue until she did. She saw him slide a compass behind his back.
“This is Sharr. We don’t have a map. We don’t know of a way out. Are we really going to head deeper inside this place based on a notion of yours? A feeling?”
“Yes,” she said matter-of-factly. His features flattened and she hurried to add, “You can check your compass as we go. Unless you have a better idea.”
His face gave way to a rare expression of exasperation. It made her smile.
“No, no, I don’t,” he said.
* * *
They had awakened Sharr from its slumber. She knew this from the groan of the stone as they whispered past. From the debris skittering to the shadows and the wall’s inhale as they brushed against it, sand coating their parting fingers.
She could only hope it awoke on a more favorable side.
They emerged from the alcove to a barren wilderness. The ruins appeared even more haunted up close, and dust swirled, uncaring of the magnificence it defiled.
But the heat.
It besieged her, laved dryness against her skin in a way she never thought possible. How could someone feel such dryness? It was a weight. A sweltering thing, rippling in the distance.
“Only in the desert can you see the heat,” Deen said, following her gaze.
“If these weren’t ruins, I don’t think I would mind,” Zafira said, running a hand along the dusty stone. She pulled at her collar. Desolation roamed everywhere.
“No one will judge you.” He gestured to her cloak.
She looked away. “Give me time.”
He nodded and they pressed onward, climbing over run-down steps and wood that had long since petrified. Zafira stared at the columns they passed. Had magic created this? Or labor? The stories never spoke of Sharr being lived upon, just used as a prison.
She heard movement and saw the curl of a scorpion’s tail as it scuttled beneath a slab of stone. Zafira’s eyes widened as she hurried forward, barely suppressing a shiver.
When she could no longer summon saliva for her parched throat, she spotted a shimmer of blue a stretch from their course and stumbled forward, ignoring the goatskin at her side.
Deen grabbed her arm. “A mirage, Zafira.” He nodded to their right. “There’s an oasis this way.”
“How would you know?” Zafira had only heard of mirages in stories. They were always magical, miraculous. Now it seemed like a taunt. A way to draw the thirsty forward so the sands could devour them.
He pointed to the sky, where a trio of birds circled. Then below, where a date palm curved. “Life.”
Zafira was surprised by the greenery when they reached the small pool. Wild ferns and bright shrubs. The water was so clear, it reflected the clouds as pristinely as a mirror. But when Deen cupped his palms and bent down for a drink, Zafira glimpsed black stones glittering beneath the glowing waters, reminding her of the Silver Witch.
“Well, Huntress? What say you?” he teased, letting the water trickle through his fingers.
“I wouldn’t drink it,” she said, lips twisting back. She handed him the goatskin hanging by her side.
“You know this won’t last forever, yes?” he said, limiting himself to a sip.
“Until I’m dying of thirst and hunger, I’ll pretend it will,” she said, capping the skin.
He twirled his jambiya and looked ahead. “Let’s hope it never comes to that.”
If there was one thing Zafira didn’t do, it was hope. Hope was as much a disease as love was.
They trekked onward in silence, jointly attuned to the desert around them and the eyes that tracked them soundlessly. An ifrit? Worse?
“How does your compass rate our progress?” Zafira teased after a moment.
Deen slipped the disc back into his pocket, looking up at her with a rapid blink of his eyes. “My what? I’ve no idea what you’re blabbering about.”
She thwacked him on the side of the head, and he laughed, the sound filling her with remnants of home. She was glad he was here. Glad she wasn’t alone in this uncharted place.
Zafira kept her arrow nocked, tensed and ready, but after at least a league of walking in silence, with no way to tell where the sun now hovered, she let her shoulders relax. Perhaps she imagined the eyes following them, because one moment they bored into her from behind and the next they pierced her from the front.
Maybe the tales of Sharr were mere exaggeration. Maybe the extent of the danger was falling prey to a mirage or getting caught in a
sandstorm.
Or so she made herself believe, until she heard the sound she had been waiting for. Far off, but near enough to make the hairs on the backs of her arms stand on end.
The sound of someone trying to stay silent.
CHAPTER 26
The two Demenhune drifted together like ghosts, with ethereal skin and aristocratic features, though much of the Hunter, Nasir noticed, was obscured beneath a heavy cloak and hood. No doubt the fool was suffocating in this heat.
If what Nasir had heard was true, however, the Hunter would sooner become a pool of perspiration than reveal his identity. He just hadn’t expected the Hunter to come accompanied—a slip easily remediable.
The Hunter drifted through the ruins soundlessly, and his companion prowled after him. Nasir unhooked his bow.
Altair followed his gaze. “Eyes on the prize?”
Rimaal, this man.
Altair nocked one of Nasir’s arrows. “You never know,” he explained with a forced grin. “I’ve heard the Hunter never misses, and I’d hate for my dearest prince to be impaled by one of his fine twigs.”
Altair seemed to have heard a lot of things, and since that night at the tavern, Nasir had begun to wonder about the general he had thought oblivious to everything but women and drink. Whom did Altair share his knowledge with—Ghameq? Unlikely.
Altair ducked beneath a weathered archway. Nasir moved aside a clutter of debris, readying an arrow of his own. He exhaled and aligned his aim to the second Demenhune, who stared after the Hunter with a look of … yearning in his eyes.
The intensity of it gave Nasir pause. This was his chance to stop. To shatter the hold of his father and retain the fragments of humanity he still clutched in some corner of his black heart.
But Nasir had one shot, one arrow before they lost the element of surprise. He breathed. Cleared his mind.
The hashashin bowstring, engineered by the Pelusians of Sultan’s Keep, stretched without a sound. He sighted his aim and was about to release the string when he heard it: the sound of another, less silent bowstring being pulled tight. The Hunter and his companion were in front of him, and Altair was to his left, which meant—
Someone else, shrouded from view. His pulse quickened. One of the others Ghameq had warned him of. Or, worse, an ifrit. The dark tip of an arrow peeked between the columns of limestone.
Leveled at Altair.
Nasir set his jaw but did not shift his aim.
If the unknown archer killed Altair, Nasir wouldn’t have to see the light fade from the general’s twinkling eyes. Twinkling? Nasir was no coward. The only reason Altair wasn’t yet dead was because Nasir needed him. Altair was Nasir’s to kill. He didn’t want someone else to do his work for him, as tempting as it was.
He heard the archer’s bowstring tighten, the aim shaky but true.
He saw Altair, oblivious to the arrow pointed at his heart.
Nasir exhaled.
Three arrows flew at once.
CHAPTER 27
Zafira heard the snap of a bowstring: thrice. Everything happened quickly after that. She saw the arrow, spiraling toward her.
Then Deen, yelling. Hands on her shoulders, pushing her away. Her own bow was nocked with an arrow that she let fly, letting her heart lead it because she couldn’t see, couldn’t think. A rustle of something else behind her. The ground, rushing to her face. Sand, gritting against her cheek. Stone, hard against her bones. Sound, sound, sound, beating against her eardrums.
And then,
silence.
Before everything rushed back with a noise: a choked gasp for air. No.
Zafira scrambled to her feet. The greedy desert was already swallowing up the blood, sand reddening to black. Her vision wavered.
No. No. No.
“You fool. I told you, I told you.” She dropped beside him and searched for the arrow. She dared to hope, to wish, only for a moment.
Only to suffer. For the arrow had struck directly beneath his heart. Deen. Deen. Deen.
He tried to smile, but it looked like a grimace. His face had paled, hazel eyes dim, skin coated in sweat and a smear of blood. She shook her head. It was too late. Like when Baba had stumbled out of the Arz and she couldn’t save him. Like when Umm had pierced his heart and Zafira couldn’t save her.
She remembered those nights after Baba had died, those nights after Deen’s parents had died, when they had held each other, chasing away fears with simply the other’s presence. The years and years of him being everywhere, no matter where she looked.
He struggled, hacking a cough as he dragged something out of his pocket. It blinded in the sun. A gold chain and, at its end, a ring. He held it out in a loose and trembling fist.
“You would never wear one”—he gasped—“on your finger.”
The chain trickled like molten gold from his palm, and she picked it up, sand sticking to her damp fingers. The gold band swayed, perfect and unblemished. Nothing like Zafira.
“One moment, you wanted to explore past Arawiya, you wanted marriage, you wanted me. Then you turned around and joined this journey. You threw everything aside for—for this.”
Deen’s eyes slowly swept across her face. Zafira thought she would explode. If only you knew.
“Why, Deen?” she begged. “Why did you come to this island?”
“For you, a thousand times,” he choked, but she knew the rest of those words. Words he had said countless times before. His eyes flickered. A thousand leagues and a thousand sands. For you, a thousand times I would defy the sun.
He was always asking for the impossible. Always asking for what she wouldn’t give. She brushed her lips against his cheek, and he exhaled. This time, she wasn’t hungry for more. She longed for what she had already lost.
And hadn’t he told her that, when they embarked on this journey?
“Find the Jawarat, Zafira. Trust…”
He reached for her, and she let his fingers trail the side of her face. He dropped his hand and curled his pinkie around hers, his grip already faltering.
“Today was that day,” he whispered. He breathed one last time before that small finger fell away from hers. Before that beautiful heart that harmed none and loved too much—stopped.
“Farewell,” she whispered, waiting, waiting, waiting for the tears to spill. But they stayed where they were, suffocating her heart.
She thought of Yasmine’s tin of cocoa, sitting in her cupboard, the empty vial of honey. Had she known in the vague way the bond of blood worked?
It was Zafira’s fault for boarding the ship yesterday, knowing he would do anything, anything, for her.
Anger, raw and foolish, quaked through her fingers.
They’ll tell stories about us, he had said.
There once was a boy with a future.
Until all he had left was his past.
* * *
He looked calm, as if in sleep. But the longer Zafira stared, the more she felt it: loneliness.
It encompassed every limb of her body, weighing her down to the sand beneath her legs. She was far from home, in a place no one could find her. The one man who loved her was dead.
Yaa, Deen. If Yasmine was the sister of her heart, more than a best friend, then Deen was her best friend. Deen was her everything, second to Yasmine.
How was such unfairness to the best of souls possible?
He was a body now. Flesh molded into beautiful features that would no longer alight at her voice and smile at her words. Zafira sobbed at last.
Something cracked.
She lifted her head. She didn’t care who was out there now. Whoever it was must have wanted her dead, not Deen. Surely the archer had another arrow to spare? She croaked a laugh: The witch had lied. Someone else had been sent.
There was also that second presence—the rustle she had heard behind her as Deen had jumped in front of the arrow.
The cracking grew more incessant now, a howl accompanying it. She shivered and rose to her knees.
Shadows twisted out of the ground, winding around Deen’s limbs and torso. His indigo turban melded with the pooling black, bronze curls darkening. The sands stirred like water beneath a breeze. Black wisps unfurled and draped over him.
Sharr was taking his body.
Zafira leaped to her feet but hesitated. He would have some semblance of a burial this way, or so her addled brain told her. The arrow glinted in the shifting light as the shadows dragged him deeper still, farther into the sand.
The arrow. Zafira crept closer and tried to pull the arrow free from the confines of Deen’s chest. It snapped hollowly, and her heart cried out, but the upper half of the ebony shaft with the dark silver fletching tapered to points was what she needed.
She took his jambiya and satchel but couldn’t bring herself to take away his beloved tabar.
Zafira stood back as Sharr swallowed the man who had loved her, until not a trace of him was left. Hollowness tugged at her again, weighted her arms and burned in her eyes. She felt nothing and everything at once.
She slipped the chain around her neck, the ring falling at her chest. There were words inside it: “for you, a thousand times.” She bit her cheek. She would find the lost Jawarat. But first, she would avenge Deen’s death. She held the broken arrow up to the kiss of the sun, and stilled as the world dimmed.
Shadows began to rise, adrift in the wind, at one with the sands. A low groan carried through the thickening air, and panic crept into her bloodstream when she realized what was happening.
Sharr had been fed.
CHAPTER 28
Nasir’s arrow had gone straight through the skull of the ifrit. He knew it was an ifrit only because its human form had shifted into something dark before Altair fell with a sickening rasp.
A sound that made something in Nasir rear its head.
Altair was dying.
An arrow had reciprocated from the Hunter, too. It had zoomed into a dark window, but it would have struck Nasir’s heart had he not turned at the last moment. The fact was not lost on him that the Hunter had aimed true in the midst of the fray.
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