We Free the Stars (Sands of Arawiya 2)

“I came back here,” Yasmine began haltingly, “after you left. And I was … I was lost. I don’t know what got into me, but I went to the Arz, because I missed you so daama much, and I saw it. It—flashed behind my eyes. As if I were suddenly elsewhere. I saw Deen jumping in front of an arrow, and the golden-haired demon who fired it.”

Zafira’s brows knitted. The Arz didn’t present its visitors with visions—it fueled their affinities, which meant Yasmine was a seer. If magic was restored, Yasmine would be able to see snippets of the future.

The revelation made Zafira inhale deep, and she flinched at the sharp sting in her breast. At the change in the room. The charge that hadn’t been there before. She had expected it, but she had not anticipated the amount of pain that would thrive upon it.

“I’m sorry,” Zafira whispered, and the chain around her neck heavied into a noose. “I’m sorry I didn’t love him enough. I’m sorry he died so I could live.”

I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Sorry. Who could have created a word so callous, so insignificant?

“I would never have let him marry you. You know that, right? If your hearts don’t beat the same, what does it matter?” Yasmine’s mouth was askance and razor-sharp, her tone dripping poison.

Zafira held her breath, waiting for the lash.

“That didn’t mean you had to kill him.”

Zafira stared at her. Her friend, the sister of her heart. It took every last drop of her will to hold her features still and stoic, to keep from falling to pieces. Wars could wage and swords could cut and arrows could pierce. None of them compared to the pain of a well-poised word.

“A murderer,” Zafira said, void of emotion, surprised to learn her heart could indeed suffer more. “You’re calling me a murderer. This is a new low, Yasmine, even for you.”

Yasmine crumpled in pain, and that was somehow worse. Because it meant she knew it wasn’t true, but she was hurting and wanted Zafira to feel the same.

Couldn’t she see that Zafira did? She relived his death when the light bled gold across the desert, when a stranger on the street smiled without malice, when she passed stalls of colorful fruit.

“I didn’t take him,” Zafira said, her voice careful and slow and—sweet snow, she sounded like Nasir. It was easier than screaming, pretending she felt nothing. It was easier to ignore the burn of tears, the guilt she felt guilty to feel. “I didn’t even ask him. He stood on his own two legs and decided according to his own daama conscience, and if you expected me to be his caretaker, you should have given me a wage.”

Yasmine was aghast. “And now you have the gall to mock him. To mock me and my pain.”

“Your pain,” Zafira repeated. “Your pain. He was your brother by blood, but he was mine by choice. Did you think I was happy when he died? Do you think I’m happy now? My best friend is dead. My parents are dead. My life as I knew it is gone.”

“Are you listening to yourself?” Yasmine asked, voice rising. She threw the pillow aside and stood. “All I hear is me, me, me.”

“As if you didn’t marry and leave us both,” Zafira scoffed, heat rising to her face. Anger clouded her head and made her speak so uselessly.

“He didn’t die for me,” Yasmine enunciated. “He died for you.”

“And I wish he hadn’t, Yasmine! I lived five years of my life with the guilt of Baba’s death. Don’t think I’m a stranger to any of this. Altair—”

“Don’t,” Yasmine bit out. “Do not speak that name in my presence. I know it’s his. Misk told me enough to let me connect the daama dots.”

Zafira had hated him, once, because of the notion that he had killed Deen. But when she learned that it was true, she’d felt sad instead. When he’d turned away from them at the Lion’s hideout, she’d believed it with a sinking, drowning certainty, but when he’d come to their aid later, his face streaked red, wrists raw and chafed, she’d felt remorse and contrition.

She loved him in the way she loved Kifah, and she could not fault herself for it.

“He is my friend,” Zafira whispered. Not the way Yasmine was, not the way Deen had been, but enough that her heart could not summon hate, not anymore. “And I will say Altair’s name as I see fit.”

Yasmine whirled, but Zafira beat her to it, clenching her jaw against the sting of her wound as she rose to her feet and threw open the door, slamming it in Yasmine’s face.

Kifah lifted her brows from the hall, where she would have heard every last word. “Already bustling about, I see. It’s good to have you back.”

She tipped her head toward the other room, Umm’s room, and Zafira found Lana asleep inside, beneath a mound of blankets, the soft pink one Yasmine had gifted Umm tucked beneath her chin.

“Zafira?”

She paused. Kifah never called her by her name.

“I am bound by duty to the Nine Elite, but I am bound to you by honor. Did you think I’d forget you saved my life?”

The events of Sharr seemed far and foreign, a story rooted in the past, an adventure that seemed less wrought in danger than the reality they faced now. Zafira had forgotten it. Or she would have thought twice before firing her last arrow.