We Free the Stars (Sands of Arawiya 2)

Only then did Zafira realize what Aya had taught Lana that their mother never had: confidence. A surety that Demenhune women lacked, even those who had fathers or brothers like the Iskandars once had Baba.

“Oh, and Kifah came. She wasn’t happy to know you were asleep, but I took care of it. None of us are any use half-dead.”

Zafira pursed her lips at the word “us” and the reminder that her sister was no longer a little girl. She hadn’t been a little girl in a long time, but that was all Zafira saw: Her small figure tucked against Baba’s side. Her eyes wide in wonder, her nose in a book.

And yet she had kept their Umm alive. She had kept herself sane when Zafira disappeared into the Arz for hours on end. She might not have wielded a bow, but she had done just as much as Zafira. She had gone through as much as Zafira had.

“You didn’t have to do that, you know,” Zafira said, rolling off the bed. She tossed her one of the coins Kifah had given her.

Her sister gave her a half smile. “No one ever has to, and yet someone always must.”

“Lana, the philosopher,” Zafira teased, disappearing into the adjoining bath. She poked her head out in the silence. “Lana, the pensive?”

The beautiful. The burdened. The girl who had grown up without Zafira knowing it.

“I saw the sultan,” Lana said, turning the coin over in her hands. “When you think of him, Okhti, do you ever want to kill him?”

Zafira hid her surprise behind a blink.

“It wasn’t he who killed Ummi,” she said carefully. She had told Lana about the sultan being steered like a puppet by the Lion. “You know this.”

Lana’s eyes were ablaze. “If being controlled was his mistake, then it was his mistake all the same.”

Lana, the girl with murder in her lungs.

“Nasir said the sultan doesn’t want us using dum sihr,” Zafira found herself saying.

Lana’s brow furrowed. “Oh? Does this mean you’ve forgiven him?”

It took Zafira a moment to realize Lana was speaking of Nasir. Was she that obvious? Why did she have to be the one to forgive first? Skies, she felt like an old married woman. She shrugged. “He didn’t tell me that.”

“I see,” Lana said, a laugh in her voice. “But you will, won’t you? Use dum sihr?”

Zafira nodded as she changed out of her tunic.

Lana flopped on the bed. “You’re being rebellious. I like it.”

“I’ve always been rebellious. I hunted in the Arz—”

“For years, yes, I know. You’ve only repeated that a thousand and one times. But you were never rebellious. You were secretive. If the caliph had forbidden you from hunting, you wouldn’t have gone.”

Zafira considered her words as she threw open the window. A crop of orange trees ranged outside, tender white flowers in bloom reminding her of Yasmine every time she inhaled.

“See? You’re changing.”

But it wasn’t about rebelling against the man who had murdered their mother. It was the act of dum sihr itself, something strictly forbidden for good reason. Lana didn’t know about the Jawarat’s vision and the force of Zafira’s newfound rage. About how it seemed to be draining the good out of her, leaving only the vilest paths to follow.

She was changing, but it wasn’t for the better, and when Lana flashed her a grin, Zafira couldn’t smile back.

* * *

There were claims that the Lion had been seen in Sarasin, asserting he was climbing the Dancali Mountains, heading for Demenhur with a horde of ifrit at his back. A few had seen clusters of darkness racing for the ether, blanketing whole villages and creating havens for his ifrit kin. Others swore they saw a black lion bounding through crowds, leaving behind bloody entrails.

How the people knew the Lion of the Night was here at all, alive and well, Zafira couldn’t tell. She wouldn’t be surprised if the rumors could be traced back to the tiny Zaramese captain. Secrets were like mold, Zafira had learned. They found a way to spread no matter how diligently they were contained.

“I don’t trust any of it,” Zafira said airily as she and Aya waited for the others. Night had steeped across Arawiya long enough for the sky to brighten, and she had spent most of it in her room, hearing a soft knock every so often only for disappointment to flood afresh when she found the hall empty.

Aya’s sky-blue abaya was out of place in the war room’s dark dressings. Lana was dozing on the majlis with a papyrus in hand, the sheaf detailing some mixture or another that stanched the flow of blood. Apparently, the materials could no longer be found, but Lana swore she had seen them in Umm’s cabinet in Demenhur.