We Free the Stars (Sands of Arawiya 2)

Lana glowed with admiration, and Zafira was glad for it, even if it came with a sting of jealousy, for Lana’s awe was usually reserved for Zafira.

“I tried to help her the way I used to with Ummi, and she liked it, I think,” Lana went on. “She liked having someone who knew what she needed before she could ask. We were attuned to each other. Everyone else mostly harassed her with questions upon questions, you know?

“I helped people, Okhti. I finally understood what it was like to be you.”

Zafira tamped down her smile at that, quelling her pride and a flush of embarrassment for thinking she had been replaced.

“Seif claims Ammah Aya is the best healer Arawiya has ever known,” Lana continued, and Zafira remembered Benyamin’s son, Aya’s melancholy tune in the dreamwalk. How skilled a healer could Aya truly be if she couldn’t save her own son? Or perhaps that was the greater evil, having power in your hands but being powerless to alter a reality.

“And she couldn’t have found a better apprentice,” Zafira said honestly.

Lana ducked her head with a shy smile. “Well, I know what half of Ummi’s little cabinet is for now, though I haven’t had a chance to go back home and fetch it. I’ve learned so much, Okhti. Ammah Aya stayed in the Demenhune palace until the Arz fell.”

And that was when Aya would have made her way here, to Sultan’s Keep, to see her beloved again. Only to learn he had died leagues away.

“And Yasmine just … let you leave with her?”

“She, er, didn’t.”

Lana didn’t elaborate, but Zafira knew Yasmine.

“I see. If you haven’t already, you do know you’re going to suffer for this, yes?”

“As well as you do when you have to tell her about her brother,” Lana taunted, and Zafira could tell she was trying to make light of something she wasn’t ready to just yet.

Zafira cast her a look. “My point here is that Aya could have been a murderer who had taken a fancy to you. Did you ever consider that?”

Lana laughed before she realized Zafira was serious. “You could have died on Sharr, but that didn’t stop you.” She closed her small hands around Zafira’s. “I had nothing left to lose.”

There was always more to lose.

“Besides,” Lana added with a wrinkle of her nose. “Ammah Aya doesn’t strike me as the murderous type. I trust her.”

Zafira sighed. What mattered was that Lana was safe, and that Aya wasn’t a monster working for the Lion or someone equally terrible. Zafira trusted Aya, too. She was Benyamin’s wife, after all.

“Anyone who can mend a body must find destroying it just as fascinating,” Zafira teased, and when Lana didn’t disagree, she nudged her. “I’m proud of you, Lana. So, so proud.”

She beamed. “You’re the one who took down the Arz. You saved Arawiya.”

Zafira had missed being the focus of her sister’s unhampered admiration.

“I’m afraid I’m not as grand as the heroes in your stories. Nor did I do any of it alone,” Zafira said. And yet she and the others hadn’t saved Arawiya. Not yet. She closed her hand around the Jawarat, meeting Lana’s curious gaze. She deserved to know, didn’t she? That her sister had bound herself to an ancient tome. That her sister lived and breathed with the memories of the Sisters of Old. “Nor have I returned unchanged.”

She told Lana of their journey. Of meeting the Lion of the Night. Of the Jawarat and the ifrit. The Silver Witch. Lana gulped down every last word, and when Zafira finished, she realized there were fates worse than the Arz.

She saw it when the lantern light reflected amber in Lana’s eyes. When a girl as tiny as her knitted a man’s flesh together, undeterred by blood.

Lana was far from her little reading nook in the foyer of their tiny house, deep in the crux of danger, yet it was a blessing, wasn’t it? The Lion had stolen their home, their parents, their village, but Lana was safe, and that meant Zafira could finish what she had started: end him, find Altair, restore magic, and then face Yasmine, which was altogether more frightening than everything else combined.

The very thought of telling her of Deen’s fate filled Zafira with fear and dread and a deep-rooted sorrow that crowded her throat.

Lana was watching her, and Zafira forced a smile. “Is Sultan’s Keep everything you imagined?”

For a moment, she was afraid Lana would push. Needle her about the Jawarat’s whispers, about Benyamin’s dreamwalk. About Baba’s cloak, which she would never see again.

“I was afraid I’d have nothing to do here,” Lana said instead. “It’s the sultan’s city! I’m a village girl with nothing to my name. But you know how weeds grow no matter where they’re planted? That’s me.”

Zafira didn’t point out that she was one of the most beautiful weeds in Arawiya.