“The last time I used dum sihr,” Benyamin started softly, “I killed my son. No good can come from such an act.”
Nasir hadn’t known Benyamin once had a son. He knew little about the safi who knew everything. Who wasn’t even truly his cousin.
“I do not have the strength to do this again,” Benyamin murmured, staring at the inscription.
Altair gripped his shoulders. “Strength doesn’t come, brother.” He touched his forehead to Benyamin’s. Nasir watched their gazes crash, and he didn’t know how long they had known each other. Loved each other. “It must be seized.”
Benyamin’s sage eyes flickered closed as he took a steadying breath.
Kifah nudged him. “Just imagine the tales they’ll tell.”
He lifted a corner of his mouth in a smile and held out his hand for her lightning blade.
* * *
The doors yawned open with an echoing groan, welcoming them to a gaping pit of black.
“You don’t think you can do more of that dum sihr to shed some light on the place, can you?” Kifah asked, spinning her spear.
Benyamin shot her a glare as he wound a strip of cloth around his slit palm. Altair remained silent.
“The darkness speaks to those who listen,” Nasir murmured. “Those who listen are those who’ve accepted the darkness.”
Nasir had accepted the darkness. After the ill of his deeds that led to his mother’s supposed death, after the loss of Kulsum’s tongue, after the threats against the others in the zumra of whom he had grown unwittingly fond. Darkness was his destiny, his father had said, and now, with the black that crept up his arms, he believed it.
“Darkness is my destiny,” he whispered. The words cracked as they fell, winding around the marble walls, around his heart. He didn’t need a torch or a light of dum sihr to see.
He would not fear the darkness. He was the darkness. A razor-edged smile cut across his face. He stepped into the void, footsteps sounding in the silence.
He felt her presence, just as he felt her loss when she had disappeared to the Lion’s den. Perhaps it was the acceptance of the darkness that connected them. Perhaps he was imagining it.
But he saw her. She straightened like a gazelle at the sound of their approach, dark hair gleaming in the torchlight. Nasir had the absurd desire to reach out and run his fingers through the strands.
Then she bolted.
He flicked his gaze to the others and took off after her, Altair’s warning echoing in his ears.
You will need to end lives.
CHAPTER 82
Zafira knew the people who were following her, despite the shroud growing in her mind.
A part of her recalled their laughs and smiles. The camaraderie in conflict. One’s lingering looks that lit her aflame. The rest of her remembered what they were: the enemy. Her exploiters.
She darted between the wisps of shadow, feet silent, breathing hushed. A single pair of boots pounded behind her, not bothering with stealth.
Only one other could see and follow with such clarity through the darkness.
Only one other was arrogant enough to follow her.
Her ring struck against her chest, a silent reminder. Murderer. Murderer. Murderer.
Yet another voice whispered: savior.
* * *
Nasir followed without a word, making his presence known, but she would not slow.
Just as our eyes tailor to the darkness, so do our souls.
The ground gleamed of polished marble, a soft light rising to an arched ceiling. The place reeked of magic, old and weary. Columns rose up ahead, a wall of shadow growing beyond them.
“Qif!” he finally shouted. Nothing. Only the whisper of her movements and a wheeze as her breathing grew winded. He couldn’t bring himself to say her name.
He saw his moment.
He cursed beneath his breath. And leaped.
* * *
Someone collided with her, knocking her to the ground.
She jolted when the warmth of him entwined with the ice of her. It awakened something. Her senses. Her mind. It cleared the mugginess that had clawed her when she’d stepped upon this whisper-ravaged path.
“Sorry,” said a voice that had likely never said the word before. He carefully held himself above her.
His arms encircled her, the fringe of the keffiyah around his neck brushing her shoulders. His gray eyes shone in the dull light feathering above them, darkening as they roved her face, riffling something inside her.
She wanted to trace the length of his scar with her hand. She wanted to run a finger across his lips. She wanted—
Skies, he was beautiful.
Her brow creased. She’d never thought him beautiful before, not even when she had straddled his legs and seen his broken gaze. She had never allowed herself to think in such a way before. She had certainly never lay beneath him, his entire body pressed against hers.
Delicious heat spread through her limbs, up her neck, across her nose and cheeks. She was grateful for the dim light, for the shadows obscuring her skin’s betrayal. The whispers hummed, and she silenced them as a very different hum stirred from the depths of her stomach.
“I’ve heard Demenhune never blush.” His voice was rough; his words brushed her lips.
She had forgotten that he could see, that he was now as much of the darkness as the darkness was of him.
A sudden snap seized their breathing as one, and Nasir drew her to her feet, sheltering them between the columns. Her legs quivered, and she reached for the cool stone.
He scanned their surroundings, but his exhale told her they were alone.
She wasn’t sure if what she felt was relief or panic.
* * *
Nasir was abuzz.
Every fiber of his being was at war with itself. She was in his arms, pressed against the stone. She was supposed to be at arm’s length, leading him to the Jawarat.
She was supposed to be beneath his blade.
But before she had recognized him, the look on her face had scared him. It had instantly cleared the mugginess that fogged his mind when he stepped upon this path. It was a look he knew very well. A look he didn’t like.
Murder.
The darkness was taking hold of her, and worse, she was allowing it to sink its teeth into her heart. Why do you care, boy? You’re the same. He clenched his teeth at the echo of Ghameq’s voice in his head. The Lion’s voice.
The sultan. He was the sultan, regardless of whether his father or the Lion stared back.
Her eyes fell to his mouth and he knew what to do. He knew how to make her forget the darkness. To bring her back to herself.
* * *
The dangerous charge in the air lifted the hairs on Zafira’s neck. She was aware of every subtle thing. Like his shallow breathing and the distance between them. Like the shift that brought him closer.
“Zafira.”
His voice was a caress. It lilted across the length of her name, tasting it. Teasing it. She wanted him to say it again. And again and again. She wanted him to do to her what he had done to her name.
Everything inside her stumbled to a crash at that thought. But he was watching. Waiting. Those dark eyes intent, her insides aflame. She said something but didn’t know what. Her voice was a distant thing, intoxicated with whatever crackled between them.
“What are you doing to me,” he said more than asked. His voice was a rasp. The sharp sounds and throaty underscores of the language from his lips made her shiver. “Am I too close?”
“No.” He was too far.
He skimmed his knuckles up the length of her arms, fabric snagging between them. Her heart stopped. Her breath shook, and his echoed.
She felt his strangled emotions in his every exhale against her skin, in the heat of his gaze. The hum of their bodies. He stepped impossibly closer and dipped his head. “And now?”
She shook her head, barely. Yet he paused at every motion that brought him nearer and nearer, waiting f
or her to pull away and end this madness.
His lips touched her ear.
She lost all sensation when he grazed the sensitive skin, slowly sliding his lips up. Down. Up. Blinding her. Killing her. This was nothing like the moment when he had touched her collarbone. She swallowed audibly and he chuckled beneath his breath.
She swept her trembling fingers down the hard ridges of his stomach, the heat of his skin making her heart race. An almost imperceptible groan escaped his mouth and she bit back her triumph. But he saw it, and she felt the answering curve of his smile at the shell of her ear.
Zafira shivered at the scrape of his jaw. He slipped one hand behind her head and tangled it in her hair. Tilted her head just so. The other fell to her waist, and he searched her gaze, eyes black beneath his hooded lids, dark lashes brushing the tops of his amber cheeks.
Their lips touched.
Once, barely.
Twice, scarcely.
And
her world
disappeared.
She had never expected a hashashin’s lips to be so soft. So gentle. Like the first snow across the jumu’a, melting at mere embrace. But Zafira had befriended the darkness. She had slain safin and ifrit. She was the Huntress. She was magic.
Zafira bint Iskandar did not want gentle from the Prince of Death. She wanted more.
He pulled back and read her face. She traced his scar with one trembling finger, and he murmured a curse as something wild gripped her.
She knotted her hands in his hair—pausing at the softness between her fingers, the feel of him against her—before she pulled him closer. Closer.
He shifted his hips against hers.
Zafira gasped. A low growl escaped his throat.
Her lips crashed on his. Kissing, nipping, teeth flashing as he drew her lower lip into his mouth, swallowing her soft exhale. He was everywhere and nowhere at once, both of them taking, giving, taking, giving. His tongue slid between her lips and her breath hitched, and she almost pulled back from the foreignness of it all, surrendering with a sigh. The taste of him—dates and spice—combined deliciously with the myrrh of his skin, dizzying her. He pulled her harder against him, and Zafira grabbed fistfuls of his hair.
If this was what it felt like to be lost to the darkness, she never wanted to be found again.
He pulled away and she froze at the emotion feathering his jaw.
As if he had just remembered something he shouldn’t have forgotten.
She swayed, bereft, and her hands fell to her sides when he averted his gaze. An emptiness yawned inside her. The shards of her heart that had been soaring settled back into her chest.
“The others await.”
She clutched the rarity of his voice, broken and hoarse. Her only proof that he had felt what she had.
At least a sliver of it.
CHAPTER 83
Nasir could not. He could not think or comprehend.
He was supposed to give her a distraction, a momentary lapse to jog her mind, to clear her intent of destruction. Not to be destroyed himself.
He hadn’t wanted to take it that far. He hadn’t expected something to stir within him. Filthy liar.
She stared with glassy eyes, her lips bruised a brilliant shade of red, her pale skin a glorious display of color. In that moment, he appreciated his affinity for allowing him to see with such startling clarity in the dark.
He wanted to brush the backs of his fingers across the smooth plane of her cheek, the sharp cut of her cheekbone. He wanted to touch his tongue to the splotch of black above her collarbone and relish her exhale. He wanted to savor this image for eternity.
He wanted. And wanting was a weakness.
“This means nothing,” he said abruptly, and immediately hated himself. Could he not loosen the sultan’s hold on him? His voice was a broken rasp. He still startled when her eyes met his.
It was her boldness that had set him on a path to destroy himself.
Her eyes dimmed. “Did you think I expected you to marry me after a kiss, Sultani?”
Her voice was torn, satisfying him before her words registered.
“The last man who proposed to me didn’t even get to kiss me.”
Deen. Sultani. Nasir felt the sting of her words in his rib cage. He stepped back, wanting to take the words back with him.
She was still close. Still a beautiful mess. But he turned away, because as soon as she said the word “kiss” with those lips, he ached to shove her back against the stone and dip his head to hers and—
The cool tip of a blade touched his neck.
Nasir laughed, low and humorless. He faced her slowly. Her jambiya was at his neck, arm steady. A marvel, considering how upended he was.
“Do you intend to kill me?” he asked. The sadness returned, pulling at his heart. Was there no one who truly loved him?
“Let me go,” she said.
“No,” he whispered.
“Look at you, coward,” she said.
He gritted his teeth.
“You came here for the Jawarat, intending to kill me as soon as I found it, and now you’re just an errand boy. Did Benyamin ask you to fetch me? Was kissing me his idea? How sickening it must have been to you.”
Nasir flinched, each word a physical blow. Pain struck his chest. Surely she had felt at least a sliver of what he had? Was this what the ifrit wearing Kulsum’s face had warned him of?
“We both know you won’t last a minute in a battle against me,” he said finally. The words were ones the Prince of Death would use—because as Nasir, all he wanted was to drop to his knees and weep.
She smiled, a cruel twist of those lips that had been between his teeth moments ago. “No, Prince. We don’t.”
And in this place, surrounded by a darkness she had welcomed, he agreed.
He truly did not.
CHAPTER 84
Zafira would not give in to the whims of a man. She saw the war waging in him—the angle of his hand, trying to unsheathe his gauntlet blade. The pleading in his eyes.
She still felt the roughness of his jaw, the whisper of his lips at her ear. Somehow, she had gone from hating his existence to this inconceivable wanting. To thinking him beautiful.
This means nothing. The words stung more than they should have. It meant nothing to her, too. She had no expectations of men. Daama skies. She wanted to bash her head against the nearest slab of stone.
He watched her warily.
But he let her go.
She fled beyond the maze of stone columns. His absence was a cold emptiness that spiked her awareness: she was very much alone. The voices flooded her once more.
We are the past.
We are the future.
We are history.
We are destruction.
The farther Zafira trekked, the more insistent the voices became. Until they were a garble of words she couldn’t make sense of. She jerked her head, shook it, but they only increased. They clouded her thoughts until she could think of nothing else.
She stopped before a line of aged trees, odd within the structure of stone and marble. They were unyielding, like bars of a cage. Keeping out intruders. Or a coffer holding something in.
Zafira tried to think, but the moment she latched onto one thought, something else appeared in its place, images and ideas she had never conceived before. Slowly, she imagined the faces of her people, reunited with magic, and Zafira knew she was on the right path. She would loan the Jawarat to the Lion and then return to Demenhur, as victorious as her mother had asked her to be. No, that isn’t right.
“You let her go?” someone growled a distance away. Light flickered behind her. “The Lion will toy with her mind.”
The others were catching up.
“I’m here,” she told the trees, gritting her teeth as she tried to pry two trunks apart. “Let. Me. In.” She darted along the border of trunks, hands searching the gaps between them for an opening.
Sharp slivers of bark snared her palm, tearing
open a gash. She hissed and wiped the blood on her tunic, trembling against a wave of anguish. “Please open.”
“Where did she go, you fool?” someone snarled.
Altair. They were nearer now.
“Stay calm,” soothed Benyamin’s voice.
A sudden hiss silenced her emotions. Another hiss—her blood dripped to the cursed leaves. A tendril of white steam lifted, eerie in the darkness. It curled in the shape of a rose. White and wild.
Peace unto you, bint Iskandar. Pure of heart. Dark of intent.
Bint Iskandar. Daughter of Iskandar.
The guarding trees parted, unlocked by her blood. Dull light illuminated a circular jumu’a of black stone. The trees crackled and shifted, curving upward to form a dome of twisting branches, vines, and jewel-like foliage. It wasn’t a row of trees—there were five of them, their wide trunks lined with age, branches entwining to form an enclosure.
Protecting something.
Cradling her wounded hand against her chest, Zafira walked across a bed of leaves and stepped upon the stone. She felt a steady pulse beneath her boots. A breeze skittered across her skin, almost as if it were … sealing the jumu’a around her.
There it was. The lost Jawarat.
CHAPTER 85
Nasir sensed the ifrit too late.
Had he not been busy berating himself for the thousandth time, he would have sensed them long ago, but he hadn’t until one’s stave came swinging straight for his head. He ducked, scanning the stone pillars as he drew his scimitar.
Nasir should not have let her go. You only ever regret, mutt.
“We’re being attacked,” Benyamin announced.
“Barely a handful. We can take care of them,” Kifah said, spear twirling.
“Akhh, what else is new?” Altair asked flatly. The hiss of his twin scimitars punctuated his words.
“That, perhaps?” Benyamin asked, pointing in the distance.
“Bleeding Guljul,” said Kifah.
Not ten paces away, Zafira stood on a jumu’a of peculiar dark stone, a writhing black mass before her. Massive trees suddenly surrounded them, ancient limbs curling beyond a ceiling they could no longer see. It defied logic, existing within this endless hall of marble.
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