We Free the Stars (Sands of Arawiya 2)

Aya let loose a soft cry. Seif went still, surprise freezing his stare.

“He—he died a noble death.”

“Noble?” Seif barked, and Nasir flinched, no doubt remembering why the safi had died. “Death is a mockery and an inevitability for your kind. Only mortals decorate corpses with titles. Do you hear how they speak of your beloved, Aya?”

If Zafira had to guess at what Seif loved more than himself, it was the word “mortal.”

“Do you remember how you spoke of him, Seif? How the High Circle shunned my love when he acted out of the good of his heart?” Aya asked quietly. Her eyes fell closed, and she drew a careful breath through her nose. “How? How did Benyamin come to die … a noble death?”

Nasir floundered in silence, turmoil ablaze in his eyes. This time, Zafira answered. “He leaped in front of a stave of cursed ore.”

She didn’t say the stave was the Lion of the Night’s, to whom Benyamin had once shown kindness, losing his people’s favor in the process. It didn’t seem right, when Seif clearly still loathed him for that reason. Laa, Zafira would not tarnish her friend’s legacy in such a way.

“We couldn’t have made it through Sharr without his guidance, and we couldn’t have made it off the island without his sacrifice.” She bit her ton

gue. He was her friend. Her guide and mentor. She didn’t know how Aya was holding together when Zafira still trembled with his loss. “He sacrificed himself for Arawiya.”

She ignored Nasir’s sharp intake of air, because it was true. Benyamin had trusted the zumra to see this through. He believed them capable, or he wouldn’t have done what he had, would he? For, like Altair, he did nothing without purpose, though it seemed his actions had more heart.

She didn’t say Benyamin had died saving the prince whom Arawiya loathed and feared, either. The very one he had scorned for being a prince with no control over his life. In the end, Benyamin had seen something in Nasir. Something worth sacrificing his life for.

Aya stifled a sob.

“Altair still lives,” Zafira added, “but he is no better off. The Lion of the Night has him.”

Seif shared a look with Aya. “Haider?”

“Indeed. Your good friend is alive and well,” Kifah said dryly, and when she noted Zafira’s furrowed brow, she murmured, “That’s the Lion’s true name.” She lifted a tattooed arm. “Half a scholar, remember?”

Seif dragged a hand down his face. “I always knew this plan was too far-fetched. We should never have trusted Altair—”

“Enough.” Nasir’s low voice cut him off. It amazed her, how far the prince’s sentiments surrounding Altair had come. “How long had he planned for? Years? No one expected the Lion of the Night to be alive and waiting. We found the Jawarat, and we found the hearts of the Sisters of Old. We fought a battle against Arawiya’s greatest foe, and all you did was traipse from one place to another, so I suggest, safi, that you watch your tongue.”

Seif crossed his arms, and though he had to be older than a century, he looked like a petulant child.

“Their hearts?” Aya inquired numbly.

“The hearts were what lit the royal minarets and fueled magic,” Zafira explained. It seemed everyone knew the minarets were lit by something—they just didn’t know what. “And they’re dying.”

Kifah looked to her sharply. “What?”

Zafira told them what she’d learned from the Silver Witch.

“Oi, wait. How were the Sisters’ hearts in the minarets while they were leading Arawiya?” Kifah asked, lines creasing her brow.

Zafira would not have known, if not for the Jawarat. She startled at the sudden flood of memories that didn’t belong to her. “They didn’t need their hearts to live.”

Laa, the hearts were like jewels to the powerful women. Adornments that made them powerful, nothing more. They did not need them to breathe, to live, to feel. Not like men and safin.

They could remove them as easily as one would a thorn in a palm, and replace them just the same.

“But by storing their hearts in the minarets, rather than their own bodies, they diluted their powers,” Zafira added, once more awed by what the Sisters had sacrificed for the good of the kingdom. “They were almost like us.”

She wondered if the Silver Witch had ever removed her own heart. If she was like her sisters, or if she loved her power too much.

Nasir didn’t seem to care about magic any more than he ever did. “Magic has been gone for ninety years. The hearts can survive another week. We go for Altair first.”

Kifah set her spear against the wall, cream and ornate, and rubbed at her temples. “I want magic back for reasons no safin will understand, but I’m with the prince. Altair first, magic second.”