He didn’t wait for her to finish. “If I hurt her, I will bring every weapon at my disposal and lay them at your feet for you to do to me what you will. If I hurt her, I will no sooner carve out my own heart than dare draw breath again.”
She was silent. Her eyes were no longer narrowed.
“Do you understand?” he prompted.
“You love her.”
She spoke the words like a subtle knife: rife with disbelief. As if it was impossible to comprehend that the Prince of Death would care for anyone.
No, he did not love her. The word for what he felt for Zafira bint Iskandar did not yet exist.
* * *
When at last he stepped into the room where the others had gathered, conversation ceased for a beat. He paused with a raise of his eyebrows, but when he dropped the curtain behind him and joined them, they continued again as if nothing had happened.
It took him a moment to note the tension. The stiffness of Kifah’s movements, the stillness in her restless limbs. Wariness tugged at Altair, haunting his one-eyed gaze.
They were trying to continue as if nothing had happened.
“I don’t think we can wait for her,” Altair said.
Nasir leaned against the wall, knowing full well whom he spoke of. He agreed. “No, we can’t.”
Haytham slid a look across them in the silence, and Nasir wondered how easily he’d believed the lie.
Kifah unfurled a map across the table. “Haytham has received another report. Seems the Lion still hasn’t left the palace grounds, not even to visit the Great Library.”
“Imagine the temptation,” Altair murmured.
“But why not give in to it? Is he afraid?” Kifah mused.
“Or preoccupied,” Haytham offered.
Nasir remembered the haunted look in the Lion’s eyes, the pain. He wondered if that played more of a part than fear did. He was powerful and protected, and the Great Library was hardly a journey from the palace. His father had made the trip often enough. Nasir knew, because he would note Ghameq’s comings and goings to time his own excursions to the mollifying edifice. Each time, his father would return with a stack of—
Only, that hadn’t been his father.
“He’s gathered enough reading material for the time being,” Nasir said.
“Perhaps,” Altair ceded with a tilt of his head. “But we can agree that standing within the walls is an entirely different experience.”
True enough.
“Let’s hear your plan, then,” said Nasir, catching the hope in Altair’s tone and clinging to it for dear life.
His brother looked pleased. “We will, woefully, need to part ways, habibi.” He tapped the map with a finger, trailing two upward paths from their present position in Thalj. One path stopped in Sarasin’s capital of Leil, the other in the vicinity of Sultan’s Keep. There was a third path, too, crossing the sea. “Three parties. Kifah and I. A falcon in the skies. You.”
And no mention of Zafira.
“Your job involves doing what you do best,” Altair said.
“Killing,” Nasir said, stepping closer to look at the plans spread across the table. It was what he did best. Still, it stung.
Altair noticed, but his next words didn’t help ease daama anything. “You do have experience sneaking into the Sarasin palace and killing a caliph, so—”
Nasir released a breath.
“Oi, don’t be upset!”