We Free the Stars (Sands of Arawiya 2)

CHAPTER 58

There were moments before moments, in which the world was framed in startling clarity, a defined before hurtling toward a horrible after. Moments in which the powerful were powerless, in which promises became failings.

This was such a moment.

Nasir did not think Zafira saw Kifah running toward her after the briefest hesitation, or she would have waited before firing her last arrow. No—she had acted in defeat. She had opened her arms to the embrace of death, armed for one last fight.

He saw the arrow impale her chest. Heard the horrible rasp of her breath.

And his

soul rent

in half.

A shattering so great, he could not breathe for an eternal moment. It was then that he knew his soul had found its match. Bright, burning, gone.

Some word tore from him, foreign in its loudness, as if sound itself could stop and reverse time. He shoved people out of his path. The massive elder ifrit readied for another attack, and someone gripped Nasir by his middle and held him back. Forcing him to watch when he should have been there. To hold her. To stop them. To save her. He would give her his lungs if it meant she would breathe for him again.

What was the point of a throne and a crown and the power it wrought, if he was powerless?

“Let me go,” he shouted as the elder impaled the ground where Nasir almost stood. The force of it made something slip from his robes and fracture, pieces scattering across the stone. He snatched up as much of it as he could. The compass, silver and crimson. That small, insignificant trinket that had led him to her time and time again, gone. Like her.

“No,” Altair growled in his ear. Would that something as impossible as a mirage had become true, and still lay out of reach. “I’m not going to lose you both.”

Fair gazelle. Please don’t go.

“Please,” he whispered and begged. His compass. His queen. His life. “Don’t go.”

But death listened to no one, not even the Amir al-Maut. And Nasir watched as her butterfly wings fluttered once, and Zafira Iskandar fell to the ground, a silver star driving the light from his world.

His yesterdays and his tomorrows, gone just like that.

CHAPTER 59

To live was to swear the oath of death.

A cup from which every soul was destined to drink. So why, then, did it feel like she had been cheated? As if she had gambled away something precious?

The stone was hard. Her lungs dragged breath after stubborn breath. The arrow shaft protruded from her chest and she laughed bitterly at the irony. Dizziness rolled through her with a flood of pain, but she felt the cold embrace of death, a stillness in the chaos.

She would never apologize to Yasmine for failing her brother. Never again kiss Lana’s cheek. Never see a world of magic. Her last moments were recorded in a series of blinks:

Kifah. Her bald head shining with the moon’s glow.

Blink.

The elder. Shrieking as it tore through Arawiya’s greats.

Blink.

The sky. Its endless stars glittering with prospect.

Then a sound: the broken voice of a sad, sad prince. A king, unthroned. It filled her with an ache worse than the arrow. She should have said the words when she had the chance, because she meant them. With every last fiber of her bleeding soul.

Her world went dark.

CHAPTER 60