We Free the Stars (Sands of Arawiya 2)

He turned the golden crown over in his hands. “I don’t know if this will fit, but—”

“Are you out of your mind?” Altair growled.

Kifah was grinning ear to ear.

“You are quite something when flustered,” Nasir said in full seriousness.

Altair shoved a hand through his hair, mussing it even further and dropping his turban. He turned to the wall and gulped down several deep breaths.

“If I take the crown—” he started, turning back.

“There’s no ‘if.’ I’m not going to step back outside to say I spoke in jest,” Nasir replied.

“What will you do?”

For once, Nasir had an answer waiting. “Sarasin’s throne sits empty.”

“Sarasin?” Altair asked, surprise arching his brow.

Nasir’s answer was wry. “I am my father’s son, after all.”

It was more than that. He vowed to begin righting his wrongs, and it was Sarasin that he had wronged the most. Sarasin that had suffered beneath his blade. Sarasin, where he had learned he could not live without her, as they had traveled and fought and triumphed as one, prudent and tactful.

When he found the strength to seek out his mother, he found shock and understanding. Uncertainty, but also surety. There were tears in her dark eyes, not ones welled from sorrow, but those of pride.

She said nothing, knowing she did not have to.

Altair regarded him as cheers continued to ripple outside. “You’re more than that. We both are.”

Nasir swallowed the sudden barge in his throat and struggled against the tantalizing fear in his veins that signified change. “If I didn’t know you any better, I’d think you were going to kiss me,” he said, pulling a page from the general’s book.

Altair scoffed. “If you weren’t my brother, perhaps. That’s a little too much, Nasir. Even for me.” He looked at his trembling hands with a shaky laugh and wrapped his turban with haste. “Wish me luck, One of Nine?”

Kifah couldn’t stop grinning. “You gave up your eye for Arawiya. Make your own luck, Sultani.”

Nasir watched as Altair flicked his gaze, uneasy and fleeting, to their mother. The nod that was exchanged seemed indifferent, though it was anything but. And then the announcer was clearing his throat, prompting him to follow with a fortifying breath.

Altair hurried back inside.

“Wait—is my turban crooked?”

Nasir smiled. “Just the way you like it.”

CHAPTER 106

He had been born for this. He had been bred for this. Zafira had—skies, what had he done?

“Why do you look surprised?” Lana asked.

“Did you not hear what he said?” Zafira shot back. “He just gave up the daama crown like it’s kanafah. He’s lived his whole life for this moment, for the crown, and he just gave it up.” Her voice was louder than it should have been. People were turning to stare.

Lana tilted her head, a laugh in her eyes. “Because of you, Okhti. Didn’t you see?”

Zafira closed her eyes, exhaling a slow, slow breath as Yasmine watched. Her stomach dropped, not because of Lana’s words, but because she knew she was one of the reasons why he had done this. Some part of her had seen it flicker in his gray eyes before he even opened his mouth.

Altair ducked beneath the curtains and closed his hands around the burnished rail, his bare arms glistening in the full sun. People murmured of his eyepatch, threaded in gold. They murmured of their love for him.

“Arawiya mocks me even now,” Yasmine murmured with some of her usual bite.