We Free the Stars (Sands of Arawiya 2)

Nasir studied him in a way he had never seen. It was how Benyamin once looked at him. It was how one looked at another that they knew as well as themselves.

“You loved her.” His voice was quiet.

Altair’s eye fell closed.

“I saw the way you spoke of her. Of us. Of loss,” Nasir clarified.

“I loved him more.”

“What does that mean?”

Altair’s grip tightened around the reins as Haytham’s son woke from his slumber. “It means that no matter what needs to be done to make the children of this forsaken kingdom smile again, I will do it.”

Dawn gave way to morning, clinging to the edges of the earth as they pressed deeper into Sarasin, the towns silent and empty. As if fear ruled these streets, dread clogging the air.

“We’ll cross the Dancali Mountains by nightfall,” Altair said.

“And then home?” Haytham’s son asked.

At least someone wanted to speak to him.

After a hearty silence filled with nothing but the clatter of hooves, Nasir looked to the distance. “The sooner we pass Sarasin, the better.”

Though Sarasin was considerably brighter than it was when he and the Lion first arrived, it was still darker than the rest of the kingdom. They stuck to the main roads, avoiding the shadows where ifrit might be, sometimes splitting up, sometimes pausing to visit the house of a spider, always vigilant. It meant they were seen by more people than Altair liked, including a little girl with ice chips for eyes that reminded him of Zafira.

He had failed her. He had failed Nasir, who was burrowing into himself and shutting out the world once more, his already broken spirit slowly degenerating. He was only a boy the world had thieved endlessly, giving nothing back. Altair hadn’t seen a single wisp of his shadows since their escape.

He was stifling his emotions again, caging his heart once more. Altair had spent years loathing the prince, but Sharr had changed more than the course of the future. Nasir stared at the remnants of the compass their mother had given him before this journey began, brushing his thumb across the fractured glass with the sorrow of a thousand lost souls. If someone had told him his brother was capable of such compassion, such tenderness, Altair would have laughed in their face.

“Aren’t you going to ask me how I escaped?” The words were light, but he still felt the weight of the black shackles that had restricted him.

Nasir reluctantly eyed Altair’s red wrists. “How did you escape?”

“Let it be known that I am not one to shy from the use of tongue,” Altair said.

Nasir released a long breath, but at least the prince was focusing on something other than misery. They didn’t have the might of Pelusia to quicken their pace; this would be a long journey.

“Do you have something to say, brother dearest?” Altair watched him struggle between the desire to ignore him and the need to retort.

The latter won. “No one wants to hear of the filthy things you do to get around.”

“You, princeling, need to extract your dark little head from the trenches. I was referring to words. My impeccable sense of charm that transcends the likes of race.”

Nasir ignored him, just like old times, but when did that ever stop Altair?

After Aya’s death, the ifrit had come, spurred by the Lion’s command. There were far too many for Altair to overpower in the state that he was in, and he knew it. He was too weak, too drained. Emotionally and physically.

So he’d held up his hands. The ifrit weren’t mindless beasts, he knew. He avoided looking at Aya, an unceremonious heap on the floor like a discarded doll, and gestured to their fallen brethren, prone and unconscious. At least, he had hoped they were only knocked out and not dead.

“You see what happened to your friends?” Altair asked. They only blinked, but Altair didn’t mind. He was adept at one-sided conversation. Anyone who tolerated Nasir had to be. Conversing with ifrit was as easy as kanafah.

“Don’t think I won’t do the same to you.”

The ifrit paused to speak among themselves. If Altair made it out of this ordeal alive, he was going to learn their tongue. He blinked his working eye, vowing it now.

“Look at you, chittering and scrambling around to do his bidding without a second thought,” Altair continued.

They considered him and his words, and four of them looked to the fifth, clearly the leader of the bunch.