“Ah, but I would be loath to place my trust in a mortal. Let me propose something else: Until you bring me the Jawarat, I will keep him here. Continuing the rows of scars his father placed for him.” He furrowed his brow, looking at the prince. “Or was it I who did that? Pity, I’ve lost track.”
He was cruel. He was—
“Some villain you are, toying with the shackled,” Zafira said, gritting her teeth.
The Lion laughed softly, raising a hand to trail down her cheek, searing her calm when he swept his thumb across her skin. Nasir watched, stiff beside her. “What a mouth you’ve developed, azizi. Let me teach you to tame it.”
And then the Lion of the Night pulled aside the collar of Nasir’s robes and pressed the poker to his skin.
* * *
Nasir
fell apart
at the seams.
He gritted his teeth against a cry, the sound clambering up his throat from a time that existed years ago in a palace far beyond.
Shock became pain became anguish. Pain was nothing. A reaction to an incursion, an emotion instinct begged him to act upon.
But he was the Prince of Death.
Pain, for him, was always confined to the enclosures of his heart. In memory, and what each infliction uncovered. Forty-eight times.
Today marked forty-nine.
And then he could take it no more—he wept.
He clenched his teeth and bit his tongue until copper crimson spilled from his mouth, twining with the salt dripping from his chin and welling in his eyes. Melding into the darkness spilling from him.
As he remembered and remembered and remembered. Forty-eight times.
“Stop!” she cried out. Kulsum. His mother. The Huntress. Zafira.
Her chains rattled as she begged. But it was done, wasn’t it? The poker was discarded, glowing in the firelight. Just as it had been discarded forty-eight times before.
Smoke rose from his skin, the stench of burnt flesh besieged him, reminding him. Fitting, since he had run out of room on his back.
Nasir slumped in his chains. Skeins of black bled from his form, as if he were fading into shadow himself.
The Lion only laughed. The Lion of the Night, who still lived.
Nasir fought to remain lucid. Pain is nothing. Pain is a reaction. He thought of the medallion around the sultan’s neck. The Lion, staring back at him every time his father ridiculed him. Hurt him.
That poker had touched his back again and again and again. He had screamed, at first. He had bit his tongue until it bled, next. He would have taken each press until his body was covered in black, but his mother had interfered.
Only once, a black teardrop on the skin of her arm that Nasir would never forgive himself for.
His mother. Whose grief had overtaken her. Whose love had turned around and plunged a dagger through her beating heart.
And then Nasir had killed. Bloodied horizons across innocent throats. Final exhales that sighed across his knuckles as he tore his blade from left to right. Endless feathers tipped in red. A woman when she was nursing her child. A man as he was saddling his camel. Owais when he was scribing on papyrus. The Caliph of Sarasin when he was dining with his wazir.
Death upon death upon death.
The smile he had carefully folded into his memories rose behind his closed eyes. His father, before the Lion laid claim to his mind, body, and soul, making him a monster.
Making Nasir a monster.