We Free the Stars (Sands of Arawiya 2)

“Wait—what about the fire?” Zafira asked.

“What about it?” Nasir asked.

“It’s quite a sight,” Altair said with a tilt of his head.

“Started just now,” Kifah said with a shrug. “Which means word will reach the Lion soon enough.”

Not one of them was concerned, or worried, or even upset at the decades of knowledge burning into the ether. Laa, they looked impatient. With confusion, Zafira remembered the Silver Witch at the inn, Nasir asking her to come to Sultan’s Keep, that he had left too soon to know the “exact timing.”

The daama Silver Witch.

“It’s … not real,” she realized aloud, slumping in relief.

“It’s an illusion,” Nasir said unnecessarily.

Zafira’s features flattened. “Thank you, my prince. I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

Altair snickered as Nasir’s ears burned red and Kifah rolled her eyes. Zafira immortalized this moment in her heart. This reminder that the zumra was still a family to which she belonged.

“Did you have any trouble killing the ifrit in Sarasin?” Altair asked Nasir.

Nasir glanced at Zafira. “I didn’t kill him.”

Kifah gaped and Altair looked to Zafira with alarm. “You killed him?”

“I might have tarnished my pristine reputation, but I’m not some creature of habit,” Zafira said with a lift of her chin.

“The ifrit is alive,” Nasir said. “I’ve promised residence to ifritkind across Arawiya, and a caliphate of their own. They’ll cultivate the Wastes with aid from the crown and the Silver Witch.”

Altair’s eye widened in surprise, then softened in pride. “You, brother dearest, are quite the diplomat. I always knew you’d make a good sultan. Not as good as I would, of course, but good enough.”

Zafira watched as Nasir tried but failed to mask his pleasure at the acknowledgment. She had always assumed it was easy, being sultan—or king, as the Lion had now dubbed the title. For though the sultan ruled over the kingdom as a whole, he mostly presided over the caliphs and emirs, leaving day-to-day governance to the leaders themselves. It was clearly a misguided belief.

“I didn’t do it alone,” Nasir said, looking at Zafira.

Altair dipped his head at her, his gaze solemn. “And you would make a good queen.” His single eye flashed a wink. “Every leader has a healthy dose of blood on their hands.”

She wrinkled her nose, ignoring the weight of Nasir’s gaze. Negotiating with the ifrit had been thrilling enough, but it made her realize the difference between working with common folk and working with their leaders. How a calipha did for her people as she had done for her village.

“Oi, no time to stand around.” Kifah saluted with two fingers off her brow and jogged backward as she reprimanded them. “We’re counting on the Lion’s love of the written word, and we only have one shot. Yalla, zumra.”

Swords passed from hand to hand, and grinding stones clattered on the ground. Arrows thudded into quivers, and though Zafira felt the absence as acutely as their impending doom, she wasn’t about to be ousted from history simply because she couldn’t wield a bow. There was glory to be had in battle, victory as sharp-edged as her name.

We will be with you.

It was comforting, those words. Zafira and the Jawarat had come to an understanding, one she didn’t fully comprehend as yet. Laa, she could still barely believe the events that had unfolded in the shadows of the Sarasin palace. The peace she had ushered and Nasir had enacted.

An admirable team, the three of us.

She wanted to tease it, but a voice slipped from one of the second-story windows, freezing her in place.

It was impossible for the owner of that voice to be here in Sultan’s Keep and not far beyond these borders, beyond Sarasin, all the way back in the secur

e confines of the palace in Thalj.

Zafira hurried up the stairs to the open door, heart leaping, crashing, stilling.

Yasmine.