We Free the Stars (Sands of Arawiya 2)

“Huntress.”

She almost didn’t hear the Silver Witch’s voice, as if she herself wasn’t certain she wanted to be heard. Zafira wanted to laugh. There was no Huntress anymore. There was no Hunter. There was no Arz, no Sharr, no whispering shadow, no magic.

No magic.

Still, Zafira turned to face her. The last remaining Sister of Old. The vanishing moonlight illuminated her and the blood on her palms, a trickle smattering the dark stone at her feet.

In her hands was a heart. Pulsing and alive, brighter than all the others she had seen.

Hers.

“Magic for an entire kingdom versus magic for one warden who has lived far too long,” the Silver Witch said wistfully when her sons looked to her inquisitively. “I was the only one of my Sisters never to remove my heart. I was one with my power, and could not understand how easily they relinquished their own. They had never asked me to, and I realize now that it was not they who would ask, but you.

“My kingdom.”

Zafira sputtered, a sob becoming a laugh. Altair joined her, bewilderment making him rasp.

“I don’t think I can take any more of this,” Kifah choked out, clutching her chest with her free hand.

Nasir couldn’t contain a smile of his own, and the moon crept from the clouds, an eager witness.

Zafira stepped forward. Stopped. She didn’t know what to do with her hands. She wanted to scream, she wanted her joy to be felt across the caliphate, across Arawiya.

The Silver Witch gestured for her to take it. “This honor is yours.”

“Mine?” Zafira said breathlessly. “I—I’m no more worthy of it than any of you.” She looked across them, her friends, her companions. “Kifah, this is your vengeance complete. The Sil—Anadil’s redemption come full circle. It’s your heart. Nasir, this is the opposite of what ruined your life. Altair, you’re—you’re the one who plotted decades for this.”

“And yet none of it would have been possible without you,” Nasir said in that voice that looped with the darkness, and she warmed at the deep intent in his eyes.

“You didn’t think we’d forget, did you?” Kifah asked, cocking an eyebrow.

It is yours, bint Iskandar.

Zafira met the Silver Witch’s eyes and reached for her heart. The embodiment of her power, more supreme than any of the Sisters of Old. Zafira’s breath caught as the pulsing mass filled her hands, thrumming quick beneath her fingers, and knotted a blustering laugh in her throat.

Anticipation flooded her, rendered her mute.

She could tell they all held their breath once more as she turned to the stone hands. The familiar hum of magic set her veins at ease. The Jawarat basked in her joy. Blood dripped from her fingers, each plink a hiss, until she carefully placed the organ in the center of the pedestal.

For a long, drawn-out beat, nothing happened.

Then the hands lifted with a great groan, and closed around the final heart.

CHAPTER 101

For as long as Nasir lived, he would never forget this moment. The way the earth’s exhale ruffled his hair. The way the safin’s eyes fell closed, returned to a love long lost. In a way that Benyamin, the dreamwalker who had given his life for this moment, never would. It was only now that Nasir realized how deeply magic had been ingrained into Arawiyan life.

“So this is what it feels like,” Kifah contemplated, “to see vengeance through.”

“What does it feel like?” he asked.

“Freeing.”

A thousand troubles unraveled with the rupture of her laugh, a sound so untethered and unfettered to the world, so perfect for this night, that Altair joined her, and Nasir smiled.

His mother did not look like one who had lost a part of herself. Laa, she had gained something by losing her power, and Nasir knew it was the relief that only someone of si’lah blood could comprehend.

Perhaps more significant than any of it was her: Zafira. The way she alighted in untrammeled joy, the way her head fell back in victory, and still she stopped to look at him. Him of all people.