ces of the broken medallion from his pocket and placed them in her hand. The remnants of the Lion’s control. The gift to her beloved that had proved deadly.

She whispered a word and fled to the hearth, her cloak catching wisps of firelight. As if she could mend herself with every last spark. As if she could turn the tides of the world. He had believed that, once. When he was young and lost and believed in the safety of his mother’s skirts.

She, unlike Nasir, had been born to lead. She had been born with a place in the world. And she had given that to him, too, until the Lion came and took it all away. Now he was poised to take away more. Far more.

“Si’lah are solitary creatures, drawn to assisting the weak. I was young, naive. I did not understand that ‘solitary’ does not mean bereft of companionship. I wanted more than to reign as a warden with an iron fist over the ones who had wronged Arawiya. I reversed the sentences of those imprisoned on Sharr even as the walls of my fortress barred magic. I gave them jobs, homes, allowed them to live as those on the mainland did. And yet I was alone.”

He’d seen proof of it, in the ruins of the island. The edifices too elaborate, too luxurious for the incarcerated. In the hollowness of her words, Nasir found the answer to a question he had long asked himself: Was it possible to be surrounded by life yet feel nothing but the emptiness of death?

“I wanted and I was weak. I desired to be loved and understood. He preyed on me. Stripped me of my defenses, exploited my weaknesses. He used me in every possible way even as I deluded myself into thinking I was in love.

“I had never known loss as deep as what I felt on the day of my Sisters’ deaths. The day I fled Sharr and stopped at each of their palaces: Demenhur, Zaram, Pelusia, Alderamin, to tear their thrones apart. Of the five Gilded Thrones, only one remains. The one he sits upon now was never mine, for I’d never had one. It was Afya’s.”

Her favorite of the Sisters of Old.

“I dragged that throne to the old city of Sultan’s Keep and cemented my reign, appointing my Sisters’ most trusted as caliphs. This is what you hear of my reign. The change I wrought, the ropes I held to keep our fragile kingdom from falling apart. But there is only so much one can salvage of a ruin, isn’t there, my son?

“He thieved and pillaged. Deceived without abandon. He took from me my Sisters, my kingdom, my husband, and my sons.”

She turned to him, and in her face, Nasir saw his own. He saw Zafira, and Altair. Kifah, and Benyamin. He saw those whose lives were forced onto paths they should not have had to tread.

“He took from me my life, and now I will take from him tenfold.”

He felt the chill of her words in his bones.

How did you find me? he wanted to ask, but pride refused to let him. It was magic, he knew. Zafira had slit her palm to find Altair, but his mother’s magic wasn’t restrained to the volume of blood in a vial when it was her own that fueled it.

“Did you receive Altair’s note?” he asked.

She frowned. “Note?”

CHAPTER 81

When Zafira woke, she barely blinked at the Silver Witch sitting on the cushions against the wall. After everything that had happened, the appearance of a witch who wasn’t deterred by doors or locks felt like child’s play.

“How strange it is to be loved by the one who hates all else,” Anadil said softly.

Was it Zafira she spoke of, or herself?

She looked at the Jawarat. “It is changing you.”

Instead of the anger that raged whenever anyone accused the book, Zafira felt shame. Because Anadil was different. She had been witness to Zafira over the years, even before Baba’s death.

“What should I do?” she asked.

The Silver Witch tilted her head. “You are the pure of heart, not I.”

Was she still pure of heart, when she had split a man in two? When she had given the Lion the means to embrace the si’lah heart as if it were his own? When her night had passed whispering things to the Jawarat she could barely remember moments later?

“You recall what I said of you, once—that you are very much the people’s queen?” the Silver Witch asked. “It remains true, Huntress. Now, more than ever.”

“What does that mean?”

The door opened with a soft knock, and the true king stepped inside with Zafira’s washed and dried tunic. He handed it to her awkwardly before he stepped back and flicked his gaze between her and the Silver Witch, guarded and hesitant.

“We have to leave,” Nasir said unceremoniously.

The Silver Witch rose. “As do I. It seems I’ve a falcon to find.”

Tags: Hafsah Faizal Sands of Arawiya Fantasy
Source: readsnovelonline.net