“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. I
t 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.