She needed to retrieve the hearts, untether them from Sharr, and, in so doing, lift Sharr’s curse. The Silver Witch’s strength would return. With the guidance of the Jawarat, they would return the hearts to the royal minarets.
Restore magic to the caliphates.
But freeing the hearts meant freeing the Lion, too.
“The hearts,” she whispered, unable to hold the words inside anymore. They rose in her chest, clawed at her mouth, made her speak. “The hearts are in the trees. Magic is in the trees.”
The zumra heard her.
There was a sudden burst of movement as they struggled to fend off the ifrit while moving toward the trees. But the Lion had heard, too. He swept toward her. He didn’t need the hearts just yet—the Jawarat was more important to him. To him, knowledge trumped all.
Destroy him. He has served his purpose. The Jawarat’s words echoed in her heart. They were not the words of the Sisters. They were a result of the years the book spent festering in darkness.
Zafira backed away, ducking from an ifrit’s stave. Another swooshed behind her, but Kifah hurled one of her lightning blades, felling the ifrit in its tracks. Altair appeared with raised scimitars, but the Lion deflected with ease, hurling him into the path of the rushing ifrit.
“Huntress!” Kifah yelled.
Zafira saw Kifah running to where Benyamin’s body lay, saw her bending over the fallen safi, their friend, but she couldn’t react. Her vision dipped darker and the book trembled in her hands. She was not atop the stone, her only protection. Distantly, she heard Kifah shout and Altair answer with orders, the general in the battlefield.
The Lion snarled, skeins of darkness trailing him. Zafira ducked away, trying to see in the chaos that pelted from all sides. Trying to listen over the demands of the Jawarat. She heard Benyamin’s voice, telling her to remain calm. To think. To trust. We are stronger as one. But he was dead now.
Screams pierced her eardrums, followed by the howl of wind before a body crashed into hers and the Jawarat was ripped from her grasp.
This time, she felt its loss like a seam tearing in her heart. She felt its call, its panic as it called for the one it was bound to.
The whisper of the Lion’s lips caressed her ear, and she knew she had failed.
CHAPTER 88
Nasir wrenched his gaze from tree to tree. They were massive, their boughs old and weary, veined in white like the Silver Witch’s hair. He counted five.
This was what had become of the Sisters.
He hurled knives at oncoming ifrit, their shrieks numbing his eardrums as he slowly fought his way toward the first tree. The Silver Witch was nowhere to be seen. Nor was Zafira, but he trusted her to stay safe and protect the Jawarat.
They all did.
Without it, they would have nothing more than five bloody hearts locked with power beyond imagination.
He reached the tree, even more enormous up close. The heart could be anywhere, hanging from some limb, tucked within the trunk—no. He paused.
A steady beat pulsed at his feet.
The roots. He cut his scimitar across a line of ifrit, giving him a moment to hack at the twisting roots. Another ifrit howled, the heat of a stave licking Nasir’s neck. He turned and put down another horde, hurling knives to hinder the next wave. Come on, he gritted, digging beneath the dirt, nails turning black, fingers going cold. The beat grew louder the farther he dug.
There.
He nearly recoiled as he drew the organ from the ground, insides lurching at its pulse, at the rubbery softness. Strains of blood mixed with the dirt on his hands.
Kifah appeared at his side and barely flinched at the sight before she barked, “Four more to go. Yalla, yalla.”
More ifrit hounded forward in black waves, fiery staves flashing, and Nasir quickly wound the inner cloth of his robes around the pulsing heart, leaving it hanging at his hip.
He locked blades with an ifrit, shoving with all his strength before hurling the last of his knives at the surrounding creatures. He made way for the next tree, but Altair met him halfway with a panicked look, another pulsing heart held gingerly in his palms. Nasir took it and tucked it into the folds of his garb.
Kifah felled ifrit upon ifrit as she headed to the next tree, her spear a moving shield and weapon at once. Nasir fought off another horde and looked up in time to see the pump of her fist as she retrieved another heart.
Two more to go.
He retrieved another, suffering a gash across his leg before he shoved his sword through the ifrit’s throat. He stumbled to the next tree, stopping when Altair rose from its roots, the final heart in hand.
The ground rumbled.
A stillness fell over them. The land sighed and groaned in relief. An exhale of contentment, finally liberated from what it was not. Sharr was free.
Which meant that across Arawiya, the Arz had begun unfolding into the ground.
Rimaal. Nine decades of encroaching darkness. Of a forest that stripped them of their sea. Of caliphates cursed to suffer endless snow, darkening skies, and dying lands. Of hostility gnashing razor-edged teeth.
It had ended.
It was over, and Nasir had been a part of it. He nearly swayed with the realization. He had been a part of something good.
The elation in his chest fell when an ifrit nearly decapitated him. He saw a flash of silver as the Silver Witch slowly rose to her feet, her power no longer receding.
But there were two sides to this coin: The Lion was no longer tethered to Sharr. They had to move quickly.
“Gloomy weather you’ve gifted us,” Altair called as he stumbled toward Nasir, blood across his brow. He seemed to be bracing himself before he turned back to the surrounding din, where ifrit swarmed, trapping them. The dark creatures were thriving, drunk on the shadows Nasir had unleashed. Retrieving the hearts meant nothing if he and the others died in these endless hordes.
“Eh, old tomato!” Altair yelled.
The Lion paused mid-stride, robes billowing in the wind.
“The retribution promised begins now.”
“What are you trying to do?” Nasir snapped. “If you die, I will kill you myself.”
“Akhh, I love conundrums. Careful, little brother, I’m beginning to think you’re worried for me.” Altair patted Nasir’s cheek with a bloody hand before Nasir could wrench away and then strode toward the Lion of the Night.
Altair heaved a dramatic sigh. “I’d been saving for a special occasion, something with more flair. You know, a wedding or my beloved Nasir’s coronation or—akhh, words fail me. But beggars can’t be choosers, can they? I suppose this, uh, the Skirmish of Hearts, is just as special—”
“Shut up, Altair,” Nasir growled against the twitch of his lips.
His half brother only winked, and Nasir realized what he was doing. Drawing attention to himself, for Altair’s every action was done in deliberation, carefully calculated.
Then Altair al-Badawi lifted his hands to the skies, a crooked grin upon his face, and Sharr exploded with light.
CHAPTER 89
Zafira paused her desperate search when light erupted across the world of marble and wood. It took her a moment to find its source amid the blinding white: Altair’s outstretched hands. This was his affinity. He truly was the light to Nasir’s dark. As Deen had been to mine.
Panicked screeching filled the silence as the ifrit skittered to the shadows of the ruins. She saw Nasir, Kifah, and the kaftar snatch at what Altair had given them—a distraction—and returned to her task.
Her fruitless task.
She dropped to her knees and grabbed fistfuls of sand. Digging, searching. Looking. Begging. The others trusted her to keep the Jawarat safe. She swiped sweat from her brow as Altair’s light began to fade. But even in the dim she could see: sand upon sand, no bolt of green.
Her fingers snared against something beneath the sand, and her heart clambered to her throat. Please. She wrenched it free—but it was only a stone. She hurled i
t away with a cry. The island mocked her even now.
Someone grabbed her wounded hand and ran, pulling her along. Fear pounded in her eardrums.
“We have to go,” the voice said, and for a moment, she thought it was Benyamin before she remembered he was dead, and it was only Kifah.
The cut in her hand throbbed. She had been a fool, and that gash was the reason she had inadvertently bound herself to the Jawarat, body and soul. She had failed.
Some must be given for us to succeed. She startled at the Jawarat’s words. She hadn’t been a fool. She was suddenly glad for the gash in her palm that had gifted her this connection. That had given her such immeasurable knowledge.
But the Lion was nowhere to be seen. Which meant he had the Jawarat.
“We have to go back,” she protested, wrenching free from Kifah’s grip.
The warrior grabbed her hand again. “For what?”
“I dropped the Jawarat. The Lion must have it!”
“Oh, keep your wits,” Kifah snapped, and leaned close, her whisper almost lost in the din. “I’m a miragi, remember? I have the blasted book. I took”—her voice cracked and she drew in a steadying breath—“I took Benyamin’s book and illusioned it to match the Jawarat. Then I grabbed the real thing from you and threw the decoy onto the sand. The Lion grabbed it in the frenzy.”
Zafira nearly wept with the realization. Safe. The Jawarat was safe.
“It won’t last long, though, now that Sharr’s magic is gone,” Kifah said with a slight frown before spearing another ifrit. “So grab your bow, Huntress.”
“Wait, what about the kaftar?” Zafira said as her mind slowly cleared from the haze of panic.
Kifah shook her head. “They fought well. I offered them passage back to the kingdom, but they refused. Sometimes, when you live a life of captivity, trapped for so long, freedom becomes a thing to fear.”
Zafira understood that. It was how she feared the defeat of the Arz. The loss of her cloak. A life where she wasn’t the Hunter.
They joined Nasir, who limped as he slashed at the ifrit brazen enough to step into Altair’s fading light. Slowly, they battled their way out of the confines of the towering palace of marble and stone with the help of the Silver Witch. As Zafira, biting her tongue against the pain in her hand, nocked arrow after arrow, she guiltily recalled how she had lashed out at Benyamin for trusting the witch.
Without the sorcery of Sharr, the shore was not so far from them now. Dawn returned to the island, a beatific sight after the depthless dark skies they had been cursed with these past days. They were soon rushing past the island’s gates, prim between the towering hewn stones of the wall. Benyamin and Kifah had come in from that front entrance, the one Deen had wanted to find.
Loyal, softhearted Deen. There is no man in Arawiya more loyal to the Hunter than I.
He had believed in her until his very last breath, and now he was all but a ghost in her thoughts, a fragment of her past. What would she tell Yasmine?
Yasmine. Oh, Yasmine.
They hurried through the gates, steadily nearing the ship. An arrow whizzed past Zafira’s ear, and everyone froze. It had come from the ship. Another volley headed for them, and Zafira ducked. The Silver Witch hissed as an arrow struck her.
Kifah sighed and shouted, “Oi, Jinan! Quit firing at us.”
“Cease!” someone yelled, and the arrows stopped. A waif of a girl stepped to the rail, a checkered turban on her head, an ochre sash at her waist. “About time. Wait—where’s Effendi Haadi?”
“Dead,” Nasir said in the silence.
Something cracked on the girl’s face before she nodded and ordered for the plank.
The ship was as extravagant as expected, with gleaming golden rails and sails of cream emblazoned with the tiny diamonds of Alderamin. It reminded Zafira of Benyamin, and a wave of grief crashed in her chest.
Even in death, the safi was assisting them. They would have been stranded without him.
Kifah pivoted her spear. “Yalla, zumra. Let’s get off this damned island and start making sense of all this.”
Even the Prince of Death smiled at her words.
* * *
Nasir surveyed Benyamin’s ragtag Zaramese crew as they studied him back.
More than a few went slack-jawed as the Silver Witch swept on board, and Nasir noticed that Kifah never acknowledged the witch’s aid. Nasir hadn’t either, for that matter—no one had. They were still reeling from the battle. From Benyamin’s death.
The girl who had ordered the plank—Jinan, the captain, he guessed—stepped forward and shooed the others back to their posts. “Everything in order?” she asked Kifah.
Kifah nodded, removed the turban that had been knotted around her waist, and began spreading the cloth on the gleaming deck. She took out the Jawarat and he noticed Zafira lurch forward, barely holding herself back when the Pelusian laid it in the fabric’s center. Then Kifah held up the heart she had collected.
“Let’s see the rest,” she said to Nasir.
He carefully unwound the red organs from the folds of his robes, gently laying them atop the cloth.
“There are only four,” Zafira puzzled, leaning over them. They gleamed in the early sun, steadily beating. Pulsing, red, and wet.
“Oi, Altair has the last one. Where is that bumbling fool anyway?” Kifah asked, wiping sweat from her scalp and leaving a smear of blood behind.
Everyone looked up when the general gave no response. Nasir called for him, unease creeping into his veins in the answering silence. Realization swept the deck.
The general had vanished.
CHAPTER 90
Altair was gone. The Zaramese crew even searched belowdecks, but he was nowhere to be seen. Zafira had been so engrossed in reuniting herself with the Jawarat that she hadn’t even noticed his disappearance.
“We’re going back for him,” Nasir said in the silence.
“What if he’s dead?” Kifah asked, forever optimistic.
“I know Altair, and he won’t die so easily,” Nasir said. “He’d crawl out of the grave if he had to.”
The prince produced a wooden crate he had picked up during their search of the ship. With a nervous, jittery energy that Zafira hadn’t seen in him before, he placed the four hearts and the Jawarat inside. The book called to Zafira from the confines of the box. Do not forget us. It spoke only to her, she knew. No one else had cut a gash across their palm and bound themselves to it. It pulsed in time to her heart; it breathed in her.
Nasir hefted the crate toward Captain Jinan. “Protect this at all costs. Or I’ll put your head in one of these boxes.”
Kifah shot him a glare.
Zafira glanced at the captain apologetically. “That’s his way of saying please.”
“I’m not sure I want to know how His Highness repays favors,” Jinan said, taking it from him. “You’re lucky Effendi Haadi paid me well.”
Something swelled in Zafira’s throat, and she swallowed it against the burning in her eyes. She could never think of Benyamin without remembering how she had pushed him away after everything he had done. Because he had put her mental state first. When she closed her eyes, she was in the dreamwalk again, on that gilded balcony in Alderamin, at ease and at home, Benyamin’s grin broad and his tears raw.
Her first and only dreamwalk.
Kifah tugged her arm as she and Nasir turned to leave, but the Silver Witch stepped between them and the plank, her cloak blinding in the early sun.
“No one is going back.”
“It’s a bit too late to impart counsel, Sultana,” Kifah said.
Though Zafira thought the Pelusian’s words were harsh, she agreed. The Silver Witch was too late to be frank with them. Even if she had fought on their side.
Even if, without her aid, they would have perished as Benyamin had.
“We can’t lose one more of ours,” Zafira said.
“I don’t intend to lose my son,” the Silver Witch said curtly. Before Nasir could
protest, she continued. “You forget I know the Lion more than most. If we want to keep the hearts safe, we cannot fight him here. He has one heart, one of five of what he so terribly desires, but without the Jawarat as a guide, it is useless to him. A vessel of untapped power. He will follow us to the mainland and use Altair as leverage.”
Kifah pursed her lips at this, seeing the sense in the witch’s words.
But Nasir was not yet ready to acquiesce. “Maybe so,” he said, jaw clenched, “but there is no guarantee that Altair will be left whole.”
“That is a risk we have to take,” the witch said, looking to the sea. “I’m not losing both of you in one day.”
“I am not yours to lose,” he said coldly, but Zafira heard the hurt in his voice.
There was a touch of remorse on the Silver Witch’s face before she said, “And you are not yours to lose, either. Like it or not, you belong to the Arawiyan throne.”
Nasir held her gaze, a vein feathering in his jaw before he whirled around and half-limped to the prow of the ship, skeins of black trailing in his wake. He was like the Lion, Zafira realized. A study of darkness, a profile of shadows.
The last time Zafira had stood so close to him, she had pressed a dagger to his neck. Before that, her hands had fisted in his hair, her mouth on his.
She followed him after a moment, and he turned at her approach. His eyes were gray like the world fresh awakened from darkness, but they were shuttered and dim, just like when the Lion had pressed the poker to his skin. When she had tended to his wound and he had bared his soul.
This means nothing.
“Are you all right?” she asked, extending an alliance.
“Define ‘all right,’” he said quietly.
She reached for his arm, expecting him to pull away. He stilled when she tugged up his sleeve, where rivulets of shadow crept up his golden skin, swallowing the words inked upon his arm. His hand was warm in hers. “‘All right’ is when you’re bleeding black but it’s not as bad as bleeding red. When the world crashes but you’re not alone when it does. When the darkness is absolute but you hunt down the smallest flame and coax it brighter. When you carve the good out of every bad and claim it a victory.” She released his arm, but he didn’t move. “If Sharr has taught me anything, it’s that every breath is a victory.”
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