We Free the Stars (Sands of Arawiya 2)

“A fragile peace,” Nasir said quietly. “Barely enough to withstand the Lion.”

“Not all will fear the Lion. Even in the past, during his reign of darkness, some believed he signaled the beginning of a new age,” Aya said, pearls gleaming, and had she been anyone less pensive, Zafira would have mistaken her fervor as support for the cause. “They claimed he was the bearer of a golden era of greatness, and had the Sisters not clung to the old ways, we would never have been led to this dark point.”

“Right.” Kifah dusted her hands and rose. “We need blood.”

“There’s an infirmary nearby,” Lana said without thinking twice.

“Si’lah blood,” Kifah clarified with a note of impatience. “Blood with magical properties. You can’t find that in an infirmary.”

“What for?” Zafira asked, though the dread in her veins was answer enough.

Kifah met her eyes. “For you. For our compass to begin working again. You can easily track down Altair, the Lion, and the heart in one go.”

Easily. As if they were in a basket waiting prettily for her to snatch away.

“That requires dum sihr,” Zafira said. She pursed her lips, feeling guilt for her irritation over Kifah presuming she had no qualms about using forbidden blood magic.

“No.”

The command was sharp, the edges strung with loss. Everyone looked to Aya, who shook her head, something like madness in her gaze.

“No. No dum sihr.”

Lana stepped forward. “Ammah—”

“What he wants can never be as terrible.” Aya’s voice cut like a lash. It took Zafira a moment to understand who he was: the Lion.

The price of dum sihr is always great. Benyamin’s words on Sharr. She remembered then that he had used blood magic in an attempt to save his and Aya’s son. That he had failed. That pain made reckless fools of them all.

“What he wants,” Kifah spat through gritted teeth, “is vengeance on your kind and an Arawiya fettered by darkness.”

A home for his people, the Jawarat said.

Violence was not how one established a home.

Aya continued to shake her head, hysteria wavering in her eyes. Lana reached ag

ain for her hand, and Zafira saw Umm then, folded in her sister’s arms, fragile and lost. She murmured something too soft to hear, and Aya shuttered her gaze, collecting herself enough to press her lips to Lana’s brow.

Zafira’s limbs were suddenly restless, her eyes prickling.

Nasir sat in silence, gray eyes unreadable. He lifted his arm and dropped it. Turned away with a sigh.

“My mother feigned her own death. My father pressed a poker into the fire and branded me. Forty-eight times. Belittled me. Likened me to a dog.”

He spoke in the voice that looped with the darkness, the one that was at once quiet and imperious.

“It was magic that did it. Magic that gave the Lion a conduit to my father. Magic that made my mother forsake the Gilded Throne.” He looked to his hands, breathing tendrils of shadow. When he exhaled a broken laugh, darkness curled from his mouth. “Yet here I am, contributing to its restoration.”

Zafira knew he had suffered, she’d seen it firsthand in the Lion’s palace on Sharr. Yet she had never linked his suffering to magic.

How was it that the thing she loved so deeply, craved so fiercely, had caused him such undeniable pain?

Aya looked as if she wanted to reach for him, before she remembered who he was and smiled instead.

“This fight is no ordinary battle,” she placated softly. She drew a careful, trembling breath. “We must do what is required of us.”

Seif shook his head and gestured to the empty bottle he had brought in. “We had blood. I’ve used the last of it to protect the house, and it will wear out quickly. The Silver Witch is on her way to the Hessa Isles. In the time required to reach her and extract a vial of her blood, the Lion may very well come to us. Worse, every moment the hearts spend outside the minarets puts them at risk of perishing. An entire journey with the woman, and you did not think to ask her?”