He peeled off the ivory cloth, unveiling a tome bound in green leather. The Jawarat.
Her breath hitched. A wave of emotion rolled over her when she curled her fingers around it, remembering what it had last wanted of her. To kill the Lion. To rend him in two. She closed her eyes against the senseless savagery it had roused. Kifah looked displeased but said nothing. Nasir watched her.
They knew that the book had used her to speak, but how differently would they react if they knew the extent of its influence? Only Altair was blissfully unaware.
She set it in her lap as if she weren’t itching to hold it in her hands.
“I felt his pulse,” Zafira said in an effort to shift their attention. “The Lion’s.”
She thought of telling them about his memory, the stones striking his father to death, but couldn’t summon the words. It didn’t feel right. Laa, like her strange connection with the Jawarat, it made her fear how they would view her. More fearfully. As if she couldn’t be trusted.
And sweet snow, there was enough of that with Yasmine.
A thousand questions rose with Altair’s eyebrow in the silence. “You, dear Huntress, have come a long way from the innocent lamb I met on Sharr.”
The Jawarat hummed with the same thought. Skies, how empty she had been without it. She had missed it deeply, and she knew without a doubt that the Lion, with his newfound throne and newfound power, missed it, too.
For he would forever be a slave to that which he didn’t know.
We missed you, too.
“Even with everything he has now, he’ll still want it,” she said, running her fingers over the fiery mane. “The Jawarat’s knowledge is endless, and the Lion couldn’t possibly have gleaned even a fraction of it.”
We do not want him.
If a book could pout, the Jawarat did just that.
You were quite eager to leave, she thought in her head, not at all unsmugly.
For which we are sorry. We were wrong to have left you. To have forced you to an unwanted fate.
Zafira paused at its apology. It was bowing its head, yielding to her. And she, jaded as she was, was instantly wary.
The Jawarat sighed.
“He may seek it out at some point, but he’ll make use of the Great Library in the meantime,” Altair said.
Zafira had seen much of Arawiya due to this mission, but not the inside of the library her father once lauded. Alabaster floors, gleaming shelves stocked with scrolls upon scrolls arranged in a code only few knew. Librarians, those few were called. The scrolls had interested Baba less than the books, rare and treasured, for the process of binding them was no simple task.
He would have loved the Jawarat.
“Knowledge is his neighbor now that he’s king, but we might have something bigger to worry about. Baba dearest believes that magic must remain in the hands of the powerful. And by that, he means himself. He will destroy the hearts.”
The Lion was many things, but never wasteful. He would go for them nonetheless.
“He won’t prioritize them. They’re useless to us, and safe in the minarets,” Zafira contended. “There’s no reason to choose them over establishing the throne as word of his coronation spreads. He’ll want to be loved.” As his father once loved him. “And there’s no better time than now. Demenhur’s snows are melting, Pelusia’s soil is returning. The kingdom is returning to what it was, because of us, and he’s going to use that to his advantage. And then, with the people appeased and tolerant, he’ll make room for ifrit.”
The zumra stared at her. She was unable to remember a time when Demenhur had been so warm.
Altair smacked his lips. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t just say my father wants love.”
“She’s right,” Nasir said, and she held still against the weight of his scrutiny.
He knew the Lion had come to her room back at Aya’s house—she’d told him as much. He had witnessed her relationship with him before then, too. On Sharr.
“We can’t go around re-collecting the hearts,” he continued. “The minarets are safest, specifically with the High Circle protecting them.”
Speaking of the High Circle … “Where’s Seif?” Zafira asked.