He listed his head, and Altair paused at his calm.
Sultan’s teeth—Zafira. The daama thing was connected to her life. If he tore it apart, she would die with it.
“Is that concern I see?”
Altair clenched his jaw.
“You betrayed your zumra by telling me where they were. You’ve killed and mutilated and betrayed to rise up Arawiya’s ranks. I’ve seen the atrocities you’ve committed under the name of the kingdom’s well-being.” The Lion lowered his voice, temptation in his words. “What’s one more life to ensure your people’s future?”
Nothing.
Everything.
The fight bled from him when the Lion pried the Jawarat out of his grip, and four ifrit wrenched back his arms.
The Lion gloated, knowing Altair could not harm him, not when he had used Altair’s own blood as protection. Or Altair would have lunged for far more, gouged those unnatural eyes from their sockets, ripped the man to shreds with his bare hands.
The Lion set down the Jawarat with a soft, dawning laugh as Altair fought against the ifrit. “You love her.”
Altair was not like his mother. He loved freely, abundantly. It was admiration that came rarer, for him. “Only a fool wouldn’t love her. After all that she’s endured and all that she’s lost, she still fights for a world that failed her.” The true definition of a lionheart.
The Lion only hummed.
“Unlike you,” Altair said with anger.
The Lion’s gaze shot up.
It was a warning, a sign he should stop, but he did not. He couldn’t. “You endured loss and turned into a monster. You suffered, and now you want others to do the same.”
Stop talking, sanity whispered in Altair’s ears. The Lion’s eyes were like flint; his mouth a straight, hard line; his body as still as when Altair spoke of his days in the palace, abandoned by his mother.
“Isn’t that right, Father?”
In a burst of speed, the Lion flicked his wrist and Altair was wrenched back against the wall, arms flung to either side. He let out a splintered breath, unable to move. The man must be terribly furious if he was wasting magic on Altair’s insolence.
“I need you alive, Altair,” the Lion said as he stepped close, his voice low. “I need your blood, and that, too, for merely a while longer. I do not need you whole. I kept you unbroken because I believed we could be together. Work together.” Sorrow flitted across his gaze. As if he lamented the lies they had shared together. “Did you consider that before your tongue ran loose?”
The Lion’s livid eyes dropped to his mouth, and for the first time in Altair’s life, he felt it: pure, unrestrained terror. He clamped his mouth closed, blinking back against the perspiration dripping down his brow. The Lion gripped the underside of his face, nails like claws raking his skin, and held him still.
“No, not the tongue, my dearest son,” he taunted. “We both know you value something else far more than your voice, and you’ll have much to say when I rid you of it.”
Altair saw the glint of a small knife, and that was all he could do: watch. As understanding struck. As a distinct before and after were born in this moment. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t fight back, but he would never beg.
He grasped the shreds of his composure as the Lion of the Night shoved the blade through his eye.
CHAPTER 47
Something caught in Nasir’s left eye, making it hard to see for the briefest of moments before he blinked it away. Zafira might as well have told him to leap into a chasm. That was how it felt to speak to his father.
A bride. The mere thought weighed heavier than the Lion having the Jawarat, a heart, and Altair. Nothing in Nasir’s life ever went right, but everything seemed to be going more wrong than usual.
“I will,” he promised softly. For you. There was something in his chest. A wild beast, perhaps, desperately trying to claw its way free. To leap into her hands and let her do with it what she willed.
He had rehearsed an apology and an explanation when he had lifted his old dagger from the crate in his wardrobe. Words upon words that he had painstakingly strung together, things he needed to say before tonight. Before the feast, when he would have to choose a bride.
Every last syllable vanished when he saw her.
I want to, she had said, and he wanted to know the limits of those words. He wanted to speak every word he had jumbled inside him, but he needed—he didn’t know what he needed. Time, perhaps.