We Free the Stars (Sands of Arawiya 2)

She gathered the folds of her blue abaya and left, while Lana snored softly and Nasir watched her.

“That’s Yasmine,” she said, because she needed to fill the silence.

“I know. She doesn’t like me very much.”

“She’s Deen’s sister.”

“I know that, too,” he said.

“She’s a seer, and she knows Altair killed him. We can’t—we can’t let them meet. Not now.”

This, he didn’t know, and so he was silent. Zafira dropped her gaze to her hands. Every sound was amplified and thunderous. His sigh. The whisper of his limbs as he moved closer.

“Why didn’t you do it?” she asked finally. The fire in the hearth did nothing to warm the cold, cold hole in her heart.

His fingers flexed in his lap. “Do what?”

“Use your scimitar.”

She had mutilated three men and still had the impudence to be hurt by the sight of him armed against her.

“You were supposed to be with Lana. I didn’t expect it to be you.”

There was a pause before it, as if that small thoughtless space encapsulated what she had done.

She laughed. “You didn’t expect me to be a monster.”

Laa, that was too tame a word for what she was. Butcher. Monsters could be misunderstood. Butchers did one thing alone. Nasir said nothing.

“We can’t lie to people,” Zafira said, grappling for what little virtue she had left. “I have to answer for what I’ve done.”

“You will be stoned,” he said without preamble. “You will die.”

Outside, the sky was the darkest hue of periwinkle as the sun roused, pressing through the glass of her window. A limb for a limb, an eye for an eye.

“Tell me how it happened,” he said.

She lifted her head, surprised to see him so close, so intent. She’d told no one of the Jawarat’s vision. Of the fact that it had collected more than the Sisters’ memories on Sharr. What was one more secret in a sea of them? But this was Nasir, and she could not refuse him. Laa, she found it easy to remain true, to bare even the darkest parts of herself. He never judged her, he never pitied her. He understood.

He mistook her silence, or thought to console her as he breathed a whisper of a laugh. “There’s nothing wrong with a little bloodlust.”

She shook her head. If only.

“Your mother called me pure of heart,” she said softly. “The Sisters, when I stepped into the glade where I found the Jawarat, called me pure of heart, too.”

And more—their voices rose to her ears even now. Pure of heart. Dark of intent.

Had they known, in their infinite wisdom, that she would come to this?

“But when I fed my people, not once wishing for repayment, I was angry. I would look at someone and hate them for being happy. I would think of the caliph, and wish him dead so that women and girls wouldn’t have to suffer his bias. I would hunt in the Arz and crave its darkness, desire it because I thought it understood me. After it fell, despite knowing it would have killed us by the year’s end, I missed it.”

“Why?”

“Why what?” Hysteria crept into her voice. Skies, look at you. Sitting and discussing her internal state with Arawiya’s sultan as if he had nothing better to do.

“Why do you miss it?” he asked. “Because it shaped you in ways you never imagined? That does not make you a monster.”

“You don’t—”