We Free the Stars (Sands of Arawiya 2)

A startled, relieved laugh broke out of Yasmine, faltering between them as quickly as it had come, replaced by Deen with a bleeding chest. With a ring in his trembling hand. Acting out of love until his body released his soul.

Zafira held herself stiff, waiting for Yasmine to speak of Altair again. Or of Zafira being a murderer, Zafira not caring, Zafira dragging

Deen to Sharr and burying him in its depths. She inhaled slowly, smoothing the ruptures inside her.

“I’m trying, Zafira,” Yasmine whispered.

She was, too. But it was as Nasir said: Not every grief needed conquering. Acceptance was a feat in itself.

“I’m trying to look at you and not see him. I can’t. It hurts, and I can’t.”

A knock sounded at the door, and a girl swept in with a tray. She set it on the low table and poured qahwa from a steaming dallah. Zafira refused the proffered cup with a slight shiver. She had avoided the bitter coffee and those handleless cups ever since Sharr.

“Bring her tea,” Yasmine said. “With mint, if you can.”

“Sayyida,” the servant replied with a slight dip of her head.

The girl left, and Yasmine stared down at the steam wafting from her cup. Zafira stared at her. The silence was a twisted thing between them with thorns and teeth, strange and foreign, and she wondered if they could ever return to what they once had.

She would try, though. It was what Deen would want, she told herself. It was what she wanted. She couldn’t lose them both. “How is Misk?”

The change was instant. Yasmine stiffened, a loose ribbon gone taut. Her fingers fluttered to her throat as she swallowed her qahwa.

“What’s wrong? What happened?” Zafira said slowly, less question than command.

Yasmine’s fingers curled around one another, nails digging into her unblemished skin.

“Yasmine,” she repeated, voice hard. “Where’s Misk?”

“We fought. He left.” She paused with a slant of her mouth. A snarl tangled in Zafira’s throat. He had left her—

“Or rather, I sent him away.”

Oh.

The servant returned, and Zafira gratefully gripped the warm cup of tea. Anger etched scores between Yasmine’s brows, sorrow shaped the bow of her lips. Still, Zafira waited. This was new, between them. The guard in Yasmine’s eyes. This uncertainty, this fear that a misstep would cause the silence to remain forever.

Zafira brushed her knuckles over the ache in her chest. If only wishes were things she could make real. If only pain were like lint on a shoulder, easily brushed away.

“Misk is a bookkeeper, I said. His pockets are lined with silver because the flour merchant’s men pay well.” Yasmine was trying to force anger into the words, but it had already worn away, agony in its place. “You know what I’ve always wanted.”

Zafira had known forever: a normal life. Her parents had been apothecaries in the army, her brother a soldier. The sister of her heart disappeared into the Arz every day. The same sister’s mother had murdered her own husband.

Misk promised what she had always dreamed of: simplicity.

Yasmine laughed without mirth. “It was all a lie. He came to Demenhur for you. To spy on me. To befriend me and learn about you, the Demenhune Hunter. I was supposed to be flattered that he fell in love with me along the way.”

Zafira froze, remembering what Benyamin had said on Sharr. Misk was one of his spiders—one of Altair’s spiders. Still, she held her tongue; the last thing Yasmine needed was to think Zafira had known about Misk before then.

“He could have been a murderer, a cutthroat, the worst of the worst, and I wouldn’t have cared, if only he’d give me his truths,” Yasmine murmured.

Because lies were what had thrived in the relationship between Yasmine’s parents. Zafira had seen proof of it, when Yasmine’s mother would come to their house, tears charting paths down her cheeks.

“Maybe he couldn’t. Maybe it was a secret he had to keep,” Zafira ventured. Guilt churned through her afresh. Was this, too, her fault in a way?

Yasmine stiffened, and Zafira knew it was the wrong thing to say.

“Am I incapable of keeping a secret?” Yasmine asked. “Did I not hold yours for years? Had it been mine, I would have told him long before our wedding vows.”