We Free the Stars (Sands of Arawiya 2)

A figure rose from beside the door.

“Nasir? Why are you—what are you doing out here?”

The moonlight from the far window caught the bewildered look in his eyes. Fatigue slanted shadows on his face.

“Did they not have any other rooms? Are we out of silver?”

He merely blinked at her tiredly.

Skies. She looked down either side of the empty hall and dragged him inside. “Why were you crouched out there?”

He lifted a hand to the back of his neck and dropped it. “What happened at that inn in Demenhur was my fault. I should not have left you on Afya alone. And not”—his voice rose, stopping her protest—“not because you’re a girl, but because you’re hurt.”

“So you were guarding my door,” she said, lifting her eyebrows. She set her boots together and moved them to the side, aware of her messiness in the face of his neatness. “Stay here. The room’s big enough. Akhh, the bed’s big enough for us both.”

Liar, the Jawarat taunted, and she thought of his mouth. His hooded gaze. His nose nudging hers.

When he took a measured step forward, igniting her blood, he acknowledged the lie. His chest rose and fell with careful reflection. “After what they said?”

She caught the anguish hardening his jaw. The prince’s whore.

“Do you think I’d let words from insignificant inebriates bother me? Is it true?”

“Of course not,” he bit out.

Skies, getting a reaction out of him was as impossible as the Arz. She hid a grin, trying but failing to act nonchalant. The bed might be large enough to fit three of her, but the room itself was too small for her to daama breathe in. She chewed the inside of her cheek and dared to meet his eyes.

I always knew your innocence was a farce, Yasmine taunted in her head.

The silence churned between them until he said raggedly, gaze darkening to black, “Well then. Time for bed, fair gazelle? You interrupted quite the dream I was having.”

She sputtered, parting the curtains surrounding the bed so he wouldn’t see the way her limbs shook.

“You can have that side,” she snapped.

He removed his sword and aligned it with the bed. Him and his neatness. “Do you think the people are aware the Demenhune Hunter is so … domineering?”

“Do you think the people know the Prince of Death dreams so indecently?”

Nasir paused, and Zafira froze in the midst of knotting the curtain, an apology springing to her tongue when he—

He laughed.

Not the quick bark of surprise that he quickly quenched. Not the whisper of one, but a whole and true laugh. It glittered silver in his eyes and tugged back his head, rattling his chest and exposing his teeth and making it oh so hard to breathe. She wished she were an artist to capture this moment. She wished she were bold enough to cross the room and press her mouth to his exposed throat. To taste the sound of his laughter with her own tongue. It filled her with such untrammeled joy that the world darkened a hue when he stopped.

Diffidence colored his cheeks as he unclasped his belt of throwing knives, long lashes sweeping downward with his gaze. He unwound his turban and shook his hair loose. Then he slid his robes free and hung them on the hook by the door.

If it was possible for a girl to incinerate as her prince undressed, she had done just that. It was strange watching him go about such simple tasks. Intimate, in a way. He settled into the bed in that burgundy qamis, armed still with his gauntlet blades and gloves, and all she could think of was the smooth, solid plane of his skin, his pulse heaving beneath her touch.

When she didn’t move to join him, he turned back and opened one eye, a laugh twinkling in its depths. “Should I leave? You’re not the only one to invite me to her bed tonight.”

Zafira’s eyebrows flicked up, and he shamelessly made himself more comfortable.

“The girl in the red bedlah?” she asked.

He regarded her. “Jealous?”

The word conjured the girl in the yellow shawl, Kulsum, and indeed, her spite was immediate. She tried to hide it away, to clear her open book of a face. Too late.