We Free the Stars (Sands of Arawiya 2)

Aya studied Zafira. “You know the Lion well for such a young mortal.”

Something weighted her dreamy tone. Envy.

“I didn’t have much of a choice,” Zafira said dryly.

Aya stared at the vial. “The whispers escalate. They claim he is here to help us.”

They had more to worry about than crazed claims, but Zafira could see how they were made logical. With the freeing of the hearts came the Arz’s disappearance, and Arawiya was returning to what it once was: Sarasin’s darkness was receding, Demenhur’s snow melting. The Lion had only to seize opportunity.

She fastened the vial’s chain around her neck and opened her mouth, about to ask how dum sihr worked. Aside from knowing it was forbidden and required the slitting of one’s palm, she didn’t know much else.

“‘He will fix our broken world’ they say,” Aya murmured.

Zafira paused, brow furrowing. She remembered what Aya had said in that moment of hysteria, when she’d protested dum sihr. What he wants can never be as terrible.

“The Lion wants vengeance,” Zafira said, as if Aya didn’t know. “And the knowledge that brings power.”

He might still want a home for his ifrit. He might still be driven by the pain of his father’s loss, but neither were as prevalent among his desires as his thirst for knowledge and the throne. Laa, that was greed.

Aya hmmed and touched a hand to her tattoo, turmoil on her face, and Zafira realized the Lion she remembered was different from the one Zafira knew. He had to be, if Benyamin had welcomed him, befriended him when none of the other safin could look past their pride.

The door opened and Nasir strode inside, Kifah and Seif at his heels. Zafira struggled to meet his eyes, nodding at Kifah and tossing a fleeting glance at Seif instead.

“You’re not following me,” Zafira told Lana, who had bolted awake.

She started to protest, but slumped back when Zafira lifted a brow. “Fine.”

Zafira didn’t know if she’d be wholly conscious once she slit her palm and melded the bloods together. She didn’t feel particularly inclined to stoop low enough to ask Seif, or even Aya, who was still lost in her strange thoughts.

“I’ve received word from Demenhur. The heart has been restored to the minaret there. Nothing from the others as yet,” Seif said.

No one rejoiced. The marids’ hungry eyes flashed in her thoughts, but Zafira shoved them away. No word from the others only meant they were still on their way, she reassured herself. They were prideful creatures. They wouldn’t write letters detailing their whereabouts every half day.

Two hearts had been restored, two more were on their way. It was the fifth the zumra needed to focus on. When Zafira said as much, Kifah nodded sharply.

“We’re working on it,” she said, armed and ready.

“Will it work?” Aya asked.

“Did word of the Hunter not reach Alderamin?” Kifah asked with a raised brow. Zafira ducked under the sudden praise. “Not only will it work, but if all goes well, we’ll catch the Lion unaware. Now, shall we?”

Zafira tightened her hand around the vial of si’lah blood. Kifah was right, this would work. It was the act of dum sihr that scared her. The line down her palm from when she had fortuitously slit it on Sharr was still pink, the skin barely knotted together, reminding her of the Jawarat’s vision. How much more of herself would she lose before this was through?

A chorus rose in her veins when she gripped the knife Aya handed her, a barely contained excitement born from her bond with the Jawarat. But her hand shook with the weight of ten eyes boring into her, judging her. The tip of the knife meandered across her palm. Skies, couldn’t they leave? She opened her mouth, heat tight across her skin.

Then her insides screeched to a halt when a hand closed around the knife.

Nasir’s shadow draped over her, reassuring. He slid his palm beneath hers and brought the blade to her skin. Zafira forgot to breathe. Her heart forgot to beat.

She relaxed her hand, as every part of her longed to lift her gaze up to the gray abyss of his. To remember what it felt like to be assessed by him. Watched. Revered. Understood.

“Forgive me,” he said softly, and drew the knife across her palm with a flex of his wrist. She hissed at the sudden pain. Red swelled along the blade’s path.

She heard voices in the hall, but they were distant and muffled, dreamlike. Perhaps she was dreaming and not tearing at the seams. Seif came forward and carefully measured out three drops of si’lah blood into her palm, murmuring something she couldn’t catch, before he

closed the vial and dropped it back against her chest.

The effect was instant.