We Free the Stars (Sands of Arawiya 2)

You are made from night, my lion, and no matter what my people say, you are one of us. Mightier than us.

What is he now? An orphan. A half-breed left to die.

Inside, he is ifrit: black blood, heartless. Outside, he is safin: peaked ears, heightened abilities.

Outside: He is tears and boyish fear. Inside: He is fire and he makes an oath. It is brash and angry, but he will keep it. Shadows pool in his palms.

He is a lion and he will claim the night as his own.

They will fear him.

CHAPTER 55

Zafira lurched back into the present, gasping for air, teeth clattering from the force of her trembling. The turmoil continued around them, the same spear she had seen at mid-impact only now impaling an ifrit. An arrow in the air only now landed true. As if barely heartbeats had passed.

The Lion was on his knees before the throne, his cloak sliding back from his shoulders. The high collar of his thobe was drenched in sweat.

Discarded to his side, like an unwanted pamphlet, was the Jawarat.

She froze when he lifted his head, but his gaze was dull. She’d seen it in the mirror: the look of a person who had shattered so many times that the pieces no longer fit together. All bruised edges and angles.

No child should have to watch their father die. No child should have to stomach the smell of their own father’s blood.

What did it mean when a monster became human? Because it wasn’t the Lion with his palms on the cold, hard stone. It was Haider, a boy who had witnessed the world’s cruelty firsthand. A boy who had once been like her.

She carefully picked up the Jawarat.

We promised you protection, bint Iskandar. Look at him. Pathetic. Weak.

Rushing, roiling anger flooded her. Like when she realized Nasir still had his magic—anger that wasn’t her own but felt every bit as if it were.

He is not pure. His will is too heavy, too fixed. He tried to control us, and now we will end him.

She picked up Nasir’s jambiya—her jambiya—from beside Ghameq’s lifeless form. The blade sang to her, coaxed her even as some distant part of her fought against it.

No, you fool. Steel is powerless. Use us.

She loosened her hold, remembering her failed arrow at the Lion’s hideout. Remembering the Jawarat’s vision, slicing men in two.

No. She fought back, sheathing her dagger. That was not her. Not like this.

Perhaps they were all monsters, masquerading in costumes of innocence.

For the first time since binding herself to the Jawarat, she finally understood what it had done. It had festered on Sharr long enough to sift through the Lion’s memories, to record the ones it had deemed most important and poignant. Most raw. Only, it hadn’t just recorded them.

It had stolen them.

It knew flesh and blood, sorrow and power. Somewhere on Sharr, it had become a being of its own.

Yes. We are of the hilya.

The Lion had wanted vengeance for centuries, but because of the Jawarat, he didn’t remember why. He had no recollection of why he hated the safin. He didn’t know why he wanted a home for his mother’s kind. She was struck by the way he had frozen in her room when she had asked. He truly hadn’t remembered.

Until now, now of all times. Now, with the inexorable power of the si’lah heart surging in his veins.

Her mind reeled with the fragments of his past, connecting one to another despite the chaos around her. His will is too heavy, the Jawarat had said. And by stealing his memory and stripping away the driving force of his vengeance, it had hoped he would lose his single-minded purpose, making him malleable, controllable.

It had not worked.