We Free the Stars (Sands of Arawiya 2)

It was her, down to the ice in her eyes and the angry set of her brows. Exactly her, except for one thing.

Her hair was the color of splintered bone.

A silver vial filled with something thick and crimson hung around her neck, and when the white-haired version of herself slid the Jawarat beneath her cloak, Zafira saw a fresh gash across her palm, nestled in a sea of scars, flesh knitted back. Dum sihr. She strode to a black steed, boots slicing snow before she mounted and disappeared into the streets.

Leaving behind a tomb.

The lavender door of Bakdash hung on its hinges. Araby’s colorful sweet shop was a pile of rubble. She saw men, boys, children—dead. All of them. Struck with stone, cut in half, innards and organs spilling out, bleeding, bleeding, bleeding.

Because of her.

“Please,” she begged. She didn’t know to whom she begged; she merely repeated the word until her surroundings blurred and she lost her balance.

And then, nothing.

Zafira dug the heels of her palms into the stone and lifted her head with a wheeze. The alcove surrounded her. The Jawarat was by her knees.

Do you see, bint Iskandar?

She only saw something far more sinister than the Lion of the Night. Something small and unassuming, with centuries of memories from Arawiya’s most powerful beings, and nearly another with far worse: the evil that had seeped within Sharr.

And it had controlled her.

“Why?” she whispered. “Why me?”

The purest of hearts will always triumph the darkest of souls.

Footsteps hastened just around the bend. Zafira closed her eyes and gathered both her breath and the Jawarat before rising on shaky legs. Three figures drew near, their cloaks coruscating silver. The Sultan’s Guard. Khara. She flattened herself against the wall, but they hurried past the alcove without so much as a glance, their low murmurs urgent, hands gripping the simple black hilts of their scimitars.

“Show me something useful,” she hissed at the Jawarat. “Show me what the Lion can do with a single si’lah heart.”

Nothing.

Laa, peevish silence.

With a growl, Zafira willed the Jawarat’s vision away and crept after the guards as a chanting began, snippets of shouts and demands carrying along the errant breeze. The Jawarat’s insistent voice broke through them.

We will be seen.

“Now you can talk?” Zafira asked. She darted from the shadows of one building to the next, but she didn’t have to live here to discern this emptiness as unusual. It was the sultan’s city. It was meant to be bustling at all times, not eerily quiet here and noisy there. Before an alley, she paused, squinting at the square up ahead.

Dread halted her breath. Chants met her ears.

Taxes kill. Break the till.

Protests. People were protesting, marching—running in the direction of the palace. Toward her.

Her heart leaped to her throat, and her fingers slickened around the Jawarat as she turned and made for Aya’s house, the heated stones scorching her bare feet. She stumbled on a pebble with a curse. Don’t fall, don’t fall. She thought of the Arz and her hunts, when not even her prey heard her agile footfalls.

The distance between her and the crowd grew, and she allowed herself a moment to pause. A terrible mistake.

An explosion shook the earth, and Zafira fell to her knees as a stampede of people charged toward her.

CHAPTER 14

Underground. That was where Nasir was now, in a room barricaded and reinforced to muffle all else. After he’d dragged his gaze from the double doors for the umpteenth time, shadows wreathing from his hands like an oil lamp just snuffed, Aya had suggested they train.

It would have been a suggestion, if she’d accepted Nasir’s refusal.