We Free the Stars (Sands of Arawiya 2)

“He was cut in daama half,” Kifah said, frenzied. “They all were.”

“Pin the death on someone else,” Lana suggested, oddly calm.

They turned to her.

Lana didn’t back down. “After everything she’s done—”

“We’ll fix the blame on an ifrit,” Nasir said. “One we disposed of before opening the doors. It’s violent enough that the guards will believe it.”

It was far more believable than the truth.

Lana touched the Jawarat pensively, as if listening for a tune none of the others caught. “And there’s nothing wrong with her mind. It was the Jawarat.”

“Then we take it away from her. I’ll keep it,” Altair said.

Lana held it close. “The only way to rid someone of a poison is with the poison itself. We can’t rip it away from her,” she stressed. “She’ll go mad.”

“And until she learns to control it, she will be capricious.”

“Until she learns to control it, she’s dangerous,” Kifah growled.

Lana shook her head, staring unflinchingly at what remained of the caliph. “She was always angry. If you lived beneath his rule and lived the way my sister did, you would know that the caliph had invited thi

s upon himself a long time ago.”

There came a pounding on the doors. More guards, no doubt.

“I will never forget the day I first saw her, when I learned the selfless huntress was no ruse but who she truly is,” Kifah said with a shake of her head. “If that book is going to make her as unsalvageable as the heart the Lion stole might soon be, then I suggest we destroy it.”

“At the cost of her life,” Nasir growled.

Kifah paused as if she had forgotten that one, terrible fact, then said in a measured tone, “I would rather die at a merciful hand than live a monstrous life.”

Nasir glanced at Altair, mortified when something akin to agreement shone in his eyes. She had done something wrong, horribly wrong, but if there was anyone who understood the desire for a second chance, it was Nasir. If anyone understood what it was like to wish they could begin afresh, unjudged and untainted, it was him.

She had given that to him. She saw him as a boy when everyone else deemed him a monster. Even if the world and all it contained gave up on her, he would not.

“No one’s taking it away from her,” Nasir ruled.

Lana was watching him, relief bright. “Nothing is without salvation, right?”

CHAPTER 72

Nasir nudged open the door with his foot and carefully set her down on the bed, uncaring that Lana was witness to him tucking a pillow beneath her arm and straightening her clothes. Lana clutched the Jawarat to her chest, and as much as he loathed entrusting it to her, she was right. She set the book out of reach and curled against her sister’s side without a word.

It was only now that he noticed how distraught Zafira had been. As she slept, the groove between her brows was smooth, the harsh cut of her lips supple.

His life was full of loss and pain, and he would not lose her again.

In the hall, he came face to face with a girl—the one he’d seen at Zafira’s side before. She was as slight as Kulsum, her curves more ample, her eyes doe-like and heavy-lidded, the color of honey.

She was not pleased to see him closing the door to Zafira’s room.

“She’s asleep,” he said.

Her eyes narrowed in mistrust, for she didn’t yet know of the attack. Laa, she thought Nasir had been in Zafira’s bedroom for a reason other than laying her motionless body across her bed. If only.

Her voice might have been melodic, if it was not full of the hate he was used to. “If you hurt her—”