The black dagger was in his chest.
His blood stained the courtyard stone. He was dying.
The safi he called Baba continued to approach. Dark-haired and blue-eyed, aristocratic in a way much like the Lion. And changing—features shifting, figure curving, hair fading to stark white.
Recognition lurched in Nasir’s stomach.
It was his mother. Wronged by the Lion, wronged by the world. She had done as she’d vowed, and Nasir’s pride was fierce.
The Lion rasped a laugh. “That was cruel, Anadil. Even for you.”
He sounded sad, broken.
“You wronged me,” the Silver Witch lamented, and Nasir heard every last drop of pain in her words. “Far more than anyone ever will.”
“I loved you as no one ever did.”
Her mirthless laughter cracked. “You loved my power, as you claimed my Sisters had. You ruined me. Even in death they granted me a second chance.”
Remorse reshaped the Lion’s features. “No. Some part of me loved you, as you had loved me.”
A lie, Nasir thought in his bewildered state, but he trusted his mother. The Silver Witch knew the Lion more than any of them could imagine, and when she slowly knelt beside him, Nasir tried to ignore the warning bells as they tolled.
The Lion rolled his head to face her, and Nasir wondered how different life might have been if the Sisters hadn’t locked the ifrit away. If the safin hadn’t taken to pride so violently.
Perhaps, if Nasir hadn’t given in to wishful fantasy, he would have been ready when the Lion’s amber eyes flashed, an instant before he lunged.
And the Silver Witch screamed.
Nasir’s blood turned to ice, and he acted on instinct. On rage. On memory.
His mother screamed.
CHAPTER 96
Altair loved her as he did most things: even when they did not love him in return.
He’d had years to reflect, to try to understand his mother. When he was young, he’d wished she had never existed. When he was older, he’d been angry when she’d died. When he’d learned the truth upon Sharr, that she had fabricated her death, breaking the soul of the one son she loved so deeply, he’d felt, well, sad.
Power begets pain. She wasn’t a cruel mother, or an evil one. Rather, she was ill-equipped for motherhood, too mired in her own mistakes and failings and their recompense, and both he and Nasir had paid the price.
Still, she was his mother. He was her son. There were some bonds that remained no matter how they were tested.
You’ve a heart of gold, she had once said.
Is that why it weighs so heavily? he had replied.
And so, when his mother screamed, every last drop of blood in his veins came to a halt.
CHAPTER 97
Zafira saw the moment the Lion lunged and sank his teeth into the Silver Witch’s flesh. One last attempt for si’lah blood. For power. Terror gripped the very air when Anadil screamed.
Then both brothers moved at once.
They did not think, they did not hesitate. It was innate, their actions. Unrestricted by sentience.
Shadows swarmed from Nasir’s palms, light roared from Altair’s.