We Free the Stars (Sands of Arawiya 2)

She glared at him, finally reaching a ledge wide enough to allow her to rest her cramping toes. Him and his daama idea of fun. She slid her hands along the wall, and panic cut her breath when she found nothing.

Nasir reached down. “You’ll have to jump.”

He was insane. She wasn’t going to leap in the dark, this far off the ground, only to miss his—

“Trust me,” he said softly, a weight to the words. A question behind them.

She was insane. With another glare, she bent her knees, inhaled deep, and jumped. His hands wrapped around her arms almost immediately, warm and sure, and he pulled her up with a heavy huff of air.

His touch lingered an extra beat, and Zafira was so relieved to be on solid stone, she nearly leaned into him before catching herself. Feathery curtains hung from spaced-out posts along the open rooftop. Latticed arches with intricately cut-out shapes cast alluring shadows on the cushions and rugs arranged inside, the moon’s breeze winding through like a coy shawl, the entire layout doing nothing to stop her head from leaping to the conclusions that it did. Zafira might have been inexperienced, but she wasn’t daft.

“We’re almost there,” he said with a smirk, because, unlike her, he wasn’t daft or inexperienced.

“I’ve had enough of your fun, I think.”

He replied with a slow shrug, catching her lie. The stars crowned his hair. The heavy moon threw everything into a forgery of twilight.

“You know the way back, Huntress.”

She growled. “Lead the way, Sultani.”

He melted into the night, his feet barely touching the ground as he sprinted along the edge. Her heart crammed half a croak into her throat when he leaped at the end, arms spreading, a falcon in flight for the barest of moments before he tumbled onto the next rooftop, silhouetted against the night.

If a boy can do it, why can’t I? She was the girl who had conquered the Arz, who had tamed the darkness of Sharr. Leaping across rooftops was child’s play.

Zafira stepped back, the limestone rough beneath her slippers. With a quick inhale, she darted across the expanse, the sharp drop pounding closer with her every heartbeat. Don’t stop. Don’t stop. She pushed off at the very edge, and then she was airborne. Throat-wrenching fear shot through her veins, reminding her of the fragility of life. She savored that moment when fear teetered

into adrenaline and hurtled into exhilaration.

His definition of fun.

And then her feet struck the ground, stone scraping her palms, the impact jarring her jaw.

Alive. Even if she’d left her heart back on the other rooftop.

She rose on shaky legs, blood pounding in her ears. They were on a circular rooftop now, with a slender minaret rising from its center. Moonlight bathed the stairs cut into its outer walls, reflecting off the glossy obsidian tiles.

“Fair gazelle,” Nasir said, and the teasing in his tone made her go very still. “We don’t want the people to think a rukh landed.”

She scowled. “One more insult and I will shove you off the edge of this roof.”

He smiled that half smile, and Zafira wondered if it would ever rise higher. If he would ever find joy enough to carry his smile to the gray of his eyes.

“I’ll take you with me.” That tone.

“Then we’ll both die.”

“You seem to have no trouble being the end of me.”

He was watching her in that odd way of his, as if she would be lost among the stars if he looked away. It was reverent, almost. Wishful. She loosed a tight breath and averted her gaze. In the end, when this journey and mission was done, none of it would matter, would it?

He was her future king, and she his subject.

CHAPTER 12

Nasir saw the shift in her. The sudden guard that dampened the brightness in her eyes. He didn’t know what he had done wrong this time.

“We’re almost there,” he said again, because he didn’t know what else to say, and started up the stairs spiraling around the abandoned minaret. He had forgotten about his leg until it throbbed painfully beneath him at the second rooftop, but he wasn’t going to cede like a frail old man because an ifrit had gotten the better of him on Sharr.