We Free the Stars Read online

  Was that how Zafira was to live the rest of her days, burdened by the death of her loved ones?

  “Okhti?”

  Zafira went still. Now I’m hearing things. But Nasir looked past her, then Kifah.

  “The kingdom is indeed a small place,” Aya said with a soft smile.

  But Lana couldn’t be here; she was in Demenhur, with Yasmine and Umm and Misk. Where she would be safe. Zafira held her breath as she turned, as if by breathing she might lose the delicate cadence of her sister’s voice.

  A girl, too small for fourteen years, stood frozen in the doorway, her shawl sliding back from her dark hair. She was freckled and slight, soft brown eyes wide and disbelieving, features Zafira could have painted blind.

  Lana.

  Zafira ran, bow and quiver falling to the polished stone as she threw her arms around her sister, burying her nose into her hair with a broken sob. “Ya, sweet one.”

  Lana laughed as tears streaked her cheeks. Zafira wiped them away with her thumbs. Pressed a kiss to her brow. “What are you doing here?”

  “Waiting for you,” Lana said with a shy smile as the others continued to stare. “I missed you, Okhti. I’ve been so alone.”

  “Liar,” Zafira teased, and she didn’t think she’d ever been so happy to see her. “I left you in good hands. You had Yasmine and Misk, and I’m sure Ummi kept you busy. I was the one who—”

  Zafira stopped when the color drained from Lana’s face. She pulled back, dread coiling in her stomach at the weight clinging to her sister, a prudence she should not have had to bear. “What is it? Lana, what happened?”

  “Ummi,” she said, almost soundlessly. “She’s dead. She died the day you left.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Nasir didn’t hear what her sister said, but when Zafira dropped to her knees, her sheathed jambiya striking the floor, it was telling enough. Go to her, you fool. His feet grew roots, tethering him to the ground, and the crate in his arms readied to shatter, so tight was his grip. Aya’s inhale shook. If there was any more melancholy within these walls, they would collapse.

  Kifah broke the silence, shuffling forward and making him feel infinitely worse. “Zafira—”

  “How?” she whispered, tugging the shawl from her neck as if it were a noose.

  Her sister’s eyes widened in fear and anguish.

  “Lana,” Zafira ground out, lifting her head, and Nasir was surprised by her anger. “How?”

  “Okhti,” she whispered, gaze darting from Nasir to Kifah to Aya. “Not here—”

  “Tell me.”

  It wasn’t anger, Nasir realized. It was an attempt to hold herself together, to stop from falling apart. She held her shoulders tight, though he saw the ripple across them, the tremble that worsened as the heartbeats ticked on. He thought of closing the distance between them, reaching for her and rubbing the tension from her shoulders. That was what people did, wasn’t it?

  Nasir gripped the crate tighter. He wouldn’t know—he was typically the one doling the killing strike, disappearing from the repercussions. Altair would know what to say and what to do, how to make her feel like living again.

  “Do you remember when the Arz came back?” Lana asked. She shared Zafira’s delicate features, but where Zafira’s were sharpened by her colder coloring, the younger girl’s were warm, down to the bronze glint in her hair. “Right after you and Deen left.”

  Nasir clenched his jaw at the mention of Deen. Zafira’s shoulders fell even lower.

  “Soldiers started pouring into the streets, in black-and-silver uniforms, and … and masks. It … People stopped what they were doing. They couldn’t breathe, they collapsed in the middle of the street and choked until their lungs stopped working. I heard it. Saw it.” Her gaze flicked to Aya’s and back.

  Nasir’s own lungs ceased to work as he pieced together the girl’s words.

  “How is that possible?” Kifah breathed.

  “It was a vapor,” Lana murmured, an edge to her voice. “It destroyed my entire village. I watched people die.”

  Nasir had never detested anything as much as he detested himself in that moment. For though he had never had a hand in the vapor, in the fumes that had been harvested in Sarasin, his cowardice was to blame. His inability to stand against his father.

  Kifah crouched beside Zafira. Aya strode to her, brushing a hand over Zafira’s hair. Lana held her hands.

  Nasir remained where he was, the crate in his hands, the truth on his shoulders.

  Because he had done it. He had killed Zafira’s mother.

  CHAPTER 9

  Zafira thought of her people, of the ones she had scorned for their jubilation, for their laughs and their glittering eyes when the snow hindered their lives as the Arz crept close. She thought of Bakdash’s lavender door. Of Araby’s sweet shop, and old Adib’s stall. Of the Empty Forest, where Deen chopped wood, and his little creations sprinkled throughout hers and the Ra’ads’ houses.

  She thought of everything but Umm, anything to keep her alive a little while longer.

  Black and silver, Lana had said. Sarasins.

  Zafira remembered Benyamin’s warning, of the sultan turning to Demenhur once Sarasin was under his thumb. Arawiyans, just like everyone else, whose only crime was the soil their houses stood upon.

  Ummi, Ummi, Ummi. With her cold blue eyes and her warm smile. With her strength and resilience. With Baba’s blood on her hands.

  “And your mother,” Kifah prompted Lana gently from Zafira’s right. “Was she not able to escape with you?”

  Lana crouched, and the wide hem of her jade abaya, one Zafira had never seen before, fanned around her. “She’s like you, Okhti. Laa, you’re like her.”

  Zafira tried not to listen to the words. Tried to stop the pain.

  “She went to the old schoolhouse. You know the one near our street? She took thirteen elders and six children and whatever food they could find, and helped barricade the windows and the door.” Lana dropped her gaze to her hands. “Then she went to the well for more water.”

  That was the Umm Zafira remembered, with her head held high and her knife-grip sure. The Umm Lana was less acquainted with. In the pause that followed, Zafira realized she was waiting for Lana to say more. Like a child hoping the truth wasn’t so.

  “Maybe she hid elsewhere.” Zafira would leave for the western villages. She was a daama da’ira, and she could find anything, anyone. “Maybe she’s still—”

  Lana stopped her with a shake of her head. “Misk found her. She saved them at the cost of her life.”

  Zafira caught on the word “found.” It was used in the way one spoke of a fledgling in the snow. The way one spoke of a lost purse that was discovered with all its coins spent.

  “Yasmine?” she asked, something squeezing her ribs.

  “Alive,” Lana said. “Safe. She’s in the Demenhune palace.”

  Zafira’s relief was a heavy exhale everyone noted. The scrutiny was suddenly too much. The eyes trained on her, the sympathy clouding the room, the Jawarat’s silent regard. She shot to her feet and whirled to Aya, only to nearly crash into Nasir.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Confusion wrinkled her brow, more at the sorrow in his eyes than the words he spoke.

  “Why?” she asked. “Did you have a hand in her death?”

  He flinched.

  He daama flinched. Zafira paused. If the vapors were the work of the sultan, had Nasir played a part? She halted her dark thoughts. Skies. He would have left Sultan’s Keep when she had left Demenhur. That meant he’d been preparing for his journey to Sharr, not planning the massacre of a village.

  She dropped her gaze, annoyed and ashamed and hurting and everything at once.

  “Come,” Aya said, knowing what she needed. “I’ll lead you to your room.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Nasir leaned against the smooth door of the room Aya had given him. It was ample space with rich decor, but the bed was simple and neat, lit by the moon streaming
from the open window. He hadn’t realized how long he’d spent in close quarters with the others—cramped ship cabins excluded—until Aya had closed the door behind him and the air quivered with his breathing alone.

  He undressed and folded his clothes before stepping into the tub with its lazy wafts of steam. As always, scrubbing himself clean reminded him of everything he hated about himself—the scars on his back, the wrongness of his life. There was another scar now, beside his collarbone, still slick from the salve Zafira had tended to him with. He leaned into the last of the bath’s warmth, remembering her fingers on his skin. The weight of her. The heat of her gaze unraveling him.

  Her anguish now. The way her face fell when she understood the depths of his monstrosity, for he had done nothing to stop his father from harvesting the vapors that claimed her mother.

  The clothes that had been left for him were his most garish: a deep burgundy qamis, dark robes edged in blue and silver. There was only one way these clothes could have gotten here, and he imagined Altair digging through his wardrobe, grinning like mad when he found this tucked in a corner. Nasir tugged the qamis over his head and hung his robes on the back of a chair. He straightened the books on the shelf and aligned the bowls on the table.

  Standing here, so far from Sharr, so close to his father and the air still raw with Zafira’s pain, he felt lost. He didn’t know how to function without orders. How to act without being told.

  Before he knew it, he was leaving his room, crossing the carpeted hall, and stopping before another door. He knocked once, softly.

  It opened almost instantly.

  Her hair was unbound, soft waves caressing her face. She looked younger this way, more vulnerable, and he was at once relieved to find she didn’t look at him with blame.

  I’m sorry, he wanted to say. To make her understand.

  How are you, he fought to ask, but was it callous to ask what the weight in her eyes already told him?

  “I was about to bathe. What’s wrong?” she asked finally. It was a guarded question. The Jawarat was in her hand.

  Nothing.

  Everything.

  “I didn’t mean it,” he breathed in a rush, as if his heart had decided it had listened to his stubborn brain long enough.

  Selfish idiot. She was mourning and he could only think of himself, but he was tired. So daama tired of the vines those words had twisted between them.

  She tilted her head, curious gazelle that she was. “Didn’t mean what?”

  He tried but failed to stop the shadows leaching from his fingers. How was it that words were impossible, when drawing a blade and ending someone’s life wasn’t?

  Because words cut deeper than swords.

  He took a slow breath and lifted a hand to the back of his neck. Dropped it.

  “What I said on Sharr. That it—that it meant nothing.” It was only after he spoke that he could look at her again.

  In time to see her eyes drift to his mouth, to the burgundy linen of his qamis and back up again.

  “What did it mean, then?”

  Everything, he wanted to say, but there was a cloth in his mouth, woven from fear and suppression.

  He’d been a fool to say what he’d said, he knew. He had closed the distance between them to stop her destructive path, to bring her to her senses, to distract her. He’d never expected to feel so much, to want so deeply, and that flood of emotion had terrified him.

  She made a sound in the back of her throat when he said nothing, her disappointment damning, and then she was closing the door, bit by bit, as if waiting for him to put out his hand and stop her.

  He was the crown prince, born to lead but forced to follow, follow, follow all his life.

  And so he did nothing.

  CHAPTER 11

  Zafira pressed her head against the smooth wood and heard his heavy sigh on the other side, a reminder of how easily his aloof mask could fall apart.

  Then, a long while later, his door slipped closed.

  She knew there was more he wanted to say. There was chaos in his eyes and a barricade across his lips. She could have helped him along, but he was the prince. He should be more than capable. Skies, she was as pettish as Seif.

  “Who was that?” Lana asked from the bed, wider than any Zafira had ever lain in. She spoke as if Zafira had just returned after a day of wandering through the stalls of the sooq. As if there weren’t a death or two strung between them and a new world cresting the horizon.

  Again, Zafira waited for the burn of tears. Instead, there was a strange unraveling in her chest that made it easier to breathe.

  Lana tilted her head, silently repeating her question. What could Zafira say—that he was a friend she had made? A boy she had kissed? A prince she must bow to? The assassin whose father was responsible for their mother’s death among hundreds of others?

  “Nasir,” Zafira replied, setting aside the Jawarat. There we go. The world was full of Nasirs, wasn’t it?

  Lana shot up. “As in the Prince of Death?”

  Clearly not enough Nasirs.

  “I wouldn’t … call him that,” Zafira said as Lana turned away so she could drop her clothes in a heap and sink into the cool bath.

  “I didn’t know he would look nice,” Lana contemplated, and Zafira bit her lower lip, thinking of the crimson linen stretched across his shoulders, the little triangle of skin framed by his unbuttoned collar. The way the fabric of his sirwal clung to his thighs. He didn’t look nice, he looked … Zafira lifted her hands to her cheeks.

  Something about knowing he was a short distance away when she wasn’t dressed terrified her more than the Arz ever had. It allured her more than the Arz ever had.

  Lana came to the side of the tub. “You’re pretty when you’re happy.”

  Zafira leaned her head against the rim. “I’m not.”

  His soft voice caressed her ears. I didn’t mean it.

  Some part of her had known it was a lie, even then. That moment between the marble columns was too real, too raw, filled with too much. It was how easily he spoke the lie that had angered her. How easily he would dismiss her, and himself.

  “But you’ve caught the attention of the prince!”

  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?”