We Free the Stars (Sands of Arawiya 2)

Sultan’s teeth.

As he ducked beneath the thick clustered branches of a lifeless tree, Altair threw open his satchel’s flap with a curse. He pulled out the Jawarat, bound in green leather and embossed with the head of a lion. In its center was a hole, the result of a dire injury to the one it was bound to, and if Altair were mad and a fool for hope, he would say the tome was gasping for air.

Fighting for breath as it knitted itself together, right before his eyes—eye. Altair sighed.

That would take some getting used to.

CHAPTER 63

Death wasn’t supposed to be so painful. Laa, it was supposed to be an end.

At least, that was how corpses made it seem. Yet Zafira wavered in pain even while she lay on her back, something sharp stinging her nose despite the warmth in the air. It reminded her of Demenhur, and how the cold never really left no matter how loud the fire crackled.

The only things missing were Baba and Umm and—

A string of curses echoed in her dead ears. Then: “If she doesn’t wake up in the next two beats, I’m going to slap her.”

Yasmine?

“I’m beginning to see why she keeps your company.”

She recognized that dry tone, the lightning-quick string of words: Kifah. Skies, the dead did dream. How else were her two friends conversing with each other?

“Aside from my looks?”

Dream Kifah barked a laugh, and a door thudded closed. Zafira couldn’t remember the last time a door had closed in one of her dreams. Perhaps the dead dreamed more vividly.

“I can see your eyeballs rolling around in there.”

Zafira opened one wary eye and then the other, blinking back against the onslaught of light. Only in Demenhur was light so white, so blinding. Everywhere else it streamed gold, glittering with enchantment.

“I—I’m not dead?” Her voice was hoarse.

A face framed by hair like burnished bronze pressed close, half hooded by a blue shawl. Warm eyes lit with emotion and rimmed in kohl, rounded features cast in worry, beauty etched into every facet of her creamy skin. Zafira ducked her head, suddenly shy. Laa, fear prickled through her chest.

Because being daama dead was easier than facing Yasmine.

A sound between a sob and a laugh broke out of her friend. “You’ve always been a corpse walking. No one else could be so boring.”

Zafira looked down at herself, stretched on a mat, and remembered the shaft of the arrow protruding from her chest. The surprise she felt, even as her body succumbed to pain. How was she alive? How was she in Demenhur? Every thought tangled with the last.

“What am I wearing?” she asked.

Strips of gauze had been wrapped from the right of her chest to the opposite crook of her neck. The muscles in her back were strangely knotted, making it hard to ease herself up, but her dress was a bright hue of yellow, taut across her shoulders and a good length too short. It was no wonder she felt cold.

“You were ready to die, so I thought you might as well go looking nice. It’s mine. Khara, you’re as ungrateful as ever. I cleaned you up and washed your stinking hair. Cleaned your filthy nails. I should have left you out to freeze. That would have served you right.”

Zafira stared at her for a few breathless moments until she couldn’t hold back her grin any longer, yearning and jubilation and happiness because her friend was right there.

And then Yasmine began to cry.

Zafira choked on her pain when Yasmine wrapped her into her arms. Orange blossom and spice flooded her numb senses.

Yasmine’s sky-blue gown hugged her generous curves, accentuated her ample bosom. She looked regal. She had always been regal in a way that everyone in their village understood. She was the sun in the gloomiest of days. The joy in the despondence of death. Life as a royal suited her, even if she was only a guest in the palace and leagues away from the suffering of the western villages.

“Lana sent me a letter,” Yasmine whispered, “and I came as fast as I could. You were—you were bloody and still, Zafira. So still. My heart stopped.” Her voice was small and shaky. “I stayed with you. Even when they said it was hopeless, I stayed with you.”

What was it Lana had learned from Aya? Only half of a sick man’s life was owed to a healer, the other to hope.