We Free the Stars (Sands of Arawiya 2)

Which was precisely it, wasn’t it? She had been drawn to him as he had been to her, and it wasn’t as if there was an abundance of women on Sharr to rivet him. It would be different now. “Didn’t you just call him the Prince of Death?”

“Prince of Death, Demenhune Hunter. Titles don’t tell you who a person is.”

Zafira sighed. “How can I be happy, Lana? I lost friends on Sharr. Ummi is dead. Our village is gone.”

Lana stared at Zafira’s hands for a beat. “Was Deen one of those friends?”

Zafira jerked, splashing water on her face, and Lana gave her a small, wavering smile.

“I had a feeling when I saw him stepping after you and boarding the ship. He was never as … resilient as you. You would fight your way out of the grave for us. You would kill for us. He was content enough with the chance to die for the ones he loved.”

Zafira studied Lana: the deeper layer of sorrow in her words, the glisten in her gaze. Sweet snow, her sister had loved Deen. Not in the way Zafira had loved him, for he had been one of her dearest friends. Not in the way Deen himself had loved Lana, as a doting older brother. But more.

Deen was soft where Zafira was hard. He was ready to see the best in the world, where Zafira saw darkness. Would it come as any surprise that Lana had fallen in love with him?

“One moment we were safe,” Zafira said softly, “the next there were three bowstrings snapping at once.” She would never forget that sound, or the breathless lack of it that followed. Her fingers closed around the ring hanging at her chest from a golden chain, and Lana’s eyes followed. “I’m sorry.”

Lana’s throat shifted. She struggled to find words, for the grief in books was a mere fraction of what the real world inflicted. “It was meant to happen, even if I wish it weren’t so.”

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If Zafira had loved him, perhaps. Accepted his proposal. Married him.

She shook free from the line of thought and hastened to change the subject. “How did you escape the attack?”

“Misk,” Lana said, still somber. She boxed away her sorrow with a heavy exhale. “He was ready when the soldiers came in. As if he knew before it happened. A few of his friends ushered the caliph and sayyidi Haytham into their caravan.”

Of course he had. Because he was Altair’s spider, sent to spy on the Demenhune Hunter, and he would have received word as spies were wont to do. Clearly not early enough, if there had only been time to vacate the bigoted caliph and no one else. She felt a needless sense of betrayal, as if by knowing moments before, Misk had somehow played a part in the massacre.

The Jawarat hummed. Water dripped from her hair. Plink, plink, plink.

“I tried to go back for Ummi, but he wouldn’t let me, and when he went back, she was gone. There wasn’t time to keep searching, because we had to leave for the palace.”

There was a kind of sand, rare in the desert, that appeared as harmless as normal sand until it sank beneath one’s feet, swallowing the unsuspecting, worsening the longer they struggled, loosening its grip only when they did the opposite. That was how grief was. The longer one wallowed, the more it hungered.

Zafira tossed her towel onto the chair and tugged on fresh clothes.

“I thought it would hurt more,” Lana said, searching for a way to understand as Zafira pulled her to the bed.

“When we buried Baba five years ago, we buried part of Ummi, too. She’s been dead for as long as Baba has. She loved us, but not the way she loved Baba,” Zafira said carefully, as she herself tried to make sense of why she felt relief more than sorrow, guilt more than pain. “He was her life. We were the reminders of it.”

Lana looked away.

“Don’t,” Zafira said, gripping her chin. “You were steadfast by Ummi’s side, and you did your part. You have no reason to feel guilt.” Unlike Zafira, who had reconciled with her mother only to lose her. “How did you get here? How did you find me?”

Lana toyed with the tiny door on the lantern, twisting shadows across the room. “The Arz erupted back to life just after you left Demenhur. The soldiers came in moments later, and it was chaos, Okhti. People were running and screaming, and then they just … stopped. Some people have that power, don’t they? They only have to exist and everyone around them abandons reason. That was how it was when Ammah Aya came. Tall and beautiful and dreamy.

“I saw her helping people, ushering them to safety. Yasmine dragged me into our cart then, but I saw her through the flaps. She was bent over a boy lying on his back, pumping his still chest and holding something against his nose. When we reached the palace, I found out the boy had lived.”

Zafira blinked. Color bled across Lana’s cheeks. Sweet snow below.

“I was focusing on you and Aya, but maybe I was wrong. Do I need to be worried about this … boy?”

Lana gave her a look. “He’s a friend. We don’t talk much, because he’s always wearing a mask to protect his lungs, but the company is nice when I’m working.”

“You work in the palace?” Zafira asked. That wasn’t part of the bargain she had made with the caliph when she’d agreed to journey to Sharr.

“I’m getting to that,” Lana said sternly, pulling the covers over her tiny feet. “Once Ammah Aya cured the boy, the palace healers wouldn’t let her go. She tended to everyone they brought in. Soldiers, too. The caliph and most of the palace men frowned at a woman being lauded, but she didn’t care. And there wasn’t much they could do because she is safin.”