We Free the Stars (Sands of Arawiya 2)

erself: death and vengeance and magic. Stolen kisses. The rare smile of a boy with sad eyes.

Death for the Lion. Vengeance for Baba. Magic for herself, for her people, for her kingdom. All fair desires, but it was the extent that she would go to get them that frightened her.

She was young, still. She would want for as long as she could, and then some. To want was to live, was it not?

Reem paused to tilt her head, birdlike. “You are pretty when you smile.”

She made it sound as if Zafira were a corpse otherwise. But the oddly detached observation reminded her of Aya, and her smile vanished as quickly as it had come.

The sun had begun its final descent when they slid a dress over her shoulders. The hem fell with a whisper, the fabric fine. Silky gray, edged in silver threads. She wrinkled her nose. Whose idea was it to dress her in ashes? She wouldn’t be surprised if it was the sultan’s.

When she looked up from the dress, all three girls were staring.

Lana’s eyes were wide, a slow smile transforming her face. “Not even the moon can compare.”

Sanya clapped her hands again. “You are exquisite.”

Reem nodded enthusiastically. “Come to the mirror.”

Zafira ducked her head as they dragged her to the wide glass. She started at her feet, slowly roving from the embroidered hem and up the pleated length to the intricately beaded collar, studs like pearls glistening in the sun’s fading light. Her arms were visible through the gossamer sleeves, the fabric fanning like the delicate wings of a butterfly when she moved. The neck wasn’t as plunging as she expected, thankfully. It was modest enough to keep both Deen’s ring and the vial from being too conspicuous, though low enough that the birthmark above her collarbone was in full view. She warmed, remembering the brush of a trembling mouth.

Remembering how little she saw of him now, even when they were in the same room.

Twin strokes colored her cheekbones, a metallic shimmer on her skin. Diluted carmine smeared her lips with the barest of stains, and her unbound hair was as bold as the deepest night. Reem swept kohl with a practiced hand, dark birds taking flight, and finished with a touch of perfume almost exactly like the oud-and-rose of her soap.

“The seamstress didn’t want a wide skirt,” Reem braved as Zafira adjusted the waistband of the matching, form-fitting pants. The dress had slits, invisible among the pleats, so she could run if she had to.

“Akhh, it’s incredible!” Lana looked more delighted than Zafira did.

Sanya crouched and strapped a sheath around Zafira’s leg.

She froze.

Reem looked anxious. “Sayyida?”

“That won’t be necessary,” Zafira said softly. “I don’t—”

Sanya nodded in the mirror. “The seamstress didn’t think you would want to go without it. She called you a gazelle.”

“But I don’t—”

“I see it now. Don’t you, Sanya?” Reem interrupted, canting her head in that birdlike way, oblivious to the ache of Zafira’s heart, the emptiness filling that sheath against her leg. “Innocent to the bone, even as she outruns the beast.”

Zafira swallowed her protest once more when someone rapped on the door, sharp and sure. Sanya hurried to the receiving rooms to answer, chattering all the way, and Reem laughed as she gathered her array of cosmetics and other things for Lana, shooing her away when Lana moved to help. Zafira stole another glance in the mirror.

“Yasmine would die,” Lana whispered by her side, and Zafira allowed herself a wistful smile. If only Yasmine were here. And Umm and Baba. And—

A shadow fell in the doorway, and then her heart was stuttering, her gaze lifting up, up, up, then crashing into a gray abyss shrouded in kohl.

Reverence. That was in the look he gave her. It was the same look from that night on the rooftops outside the palace. The same look that caused something strange and bold to blossom in her veins, more powerful than any magic the world could lay at her feet. The look she had feared she would never see again.

The feast was this evening. Tonight, he would be bound to another. Tomorrow, the Lion could come and sweep them all into a den of shadows.

Now, this moment, she would steal for herself.

“You—” He stopped and glanced at Reem and Sanya, dismissing them even as he commended them. “You did well.”

“Sayyidi,” said Reem.