Magic collided in a crash of thunder and a cresting hum. Both beams struck the Lion, black and white merging into a coruscating, iridescent pillar of magic that rose from the palace courtyard and disappeared into the clouds, dappled in every color Zafira could imagine.
“Bleeding Guljul,” Kifah exhaled.
They were draining him, siphoning every last dreg of his power into Arawiya. Ifrit shrieked, scattering into the shadows. Zafira struggled to breathe, something raw and broken upending her insides. It tugged her as close to the iridescent skeins of magic as she could go before Kifah shouted for her to step back, step away.
The Silver Witch clutched Zafira’s hand. Her face was wet with tears.
“Finish what they started.” She had drawn Zafira here. “His mind belongs in the Jawarat.”
Before she could ask how, Zafira staggered backward. Memories plowed through her, a violent and powerful barrage of emotion. The Lion as a child, in adolescence. As an adult. Lonely, always lonely. The Jawarat trembled in her hands as his memories joined the Sisters’, flooding Zafira with yet another life she had not lived but would always hold because of her bond.
The hum faded to silence.
Nasir and Altair lowered their hands, and the haze steadily cleared.
Where the Lion had lain, a tree now stood, dark branches curling into the sky like fingers seeking something out of reach. At its base, a body lay slumped, amber eyes closed to the world.
Mind, body, and soul, the Jawarat said softly. It was how the Sisters had wanted to defeat him, years and years ago.
“Why?” the Lion whispered. Only, his voice came from elsewhere. No—from the Jawarat, from her heart, where a part of him would live forever.
She closed her eyes against the anguish in his plea. Hadn’t she stood before the Arz that had stolen her father, and asked that very same question?
Against the black tree, the manifestation of his soul, the Silver Witch placed her hand. Lovingly, almost. Part of her truly did love him, the way the Lion might have loved her.
Zafira watched as Anadil closed her eyes and opened them to a new world.
“We are born with the promise of death,” Zafira said softly as a single rose, wild and white
, blossomed on one of the branches. It was a gift. “You had merely outlived yours.”
CHAPTER 98
Nasir could scarcely believe it to be true. That the monster who had controlled his father, held his leash, belittled him without end, was gone. The Silver Witch spoke first, breaking the trance that had fallen across the courtyard.
“The heart. We must make for Sarasin at once.”
In Zafira’s fist, the heart that once belonged to one of the Sisters of Old pulsed direly, a shade of crimson so dark it was nearly black. Nasir met her gaze and saw doubt, for the Jawarat had called it impossible.
Nasir had never cared for magic the way Zafira had. He hadn’t spent decades working for its restoration the way Altair had. It did not signify vengeance for him the way it did for Kifah. Laa, for him, magic had signified destruction and pain. It had ruined his family and burned darkness into his life.
And still, he wanted its return—for them, for this new family he had built himself.
He led five horses to the palace gates.
CHAPTER 99
It was a thrilling kind of freedom to ride in the dead of the night, the thunder of hooves carrying one through. Kifah ululated as they charged through the streets, making it a little easier to ignore the destruction of the city, the heart dying in Zafira’s hand. The loss she felt, every time she recalled those amber eyes, closing to the world.
Magic, she reminded herself. What she had dreamed of and desired for years and years on end.
It will not work, the Jawarat said again.
Zafira ignored it, just as she had ignored the black gleam of the organ, far from the crimson it should have been. The pulse had been steady, promising. Corrupt. Surely the minaret, created by the Sisters’ hands, could rid the heart of the Lion’s evil.
The Jawarat only sighed.
It was still learning how stubborn she could be. How much she would give up to hope. They had come this far. If she couldn’t believe the heart would survive, how could she expect it to?