Altair was used to being second in all things. He didn’t mind, he told himself.
Then why did it feel as if knives were tearing at his heart? Why did the veins in his arms strain against his skin with sudden fervor?
“And you chose me?” Altair asked, mocking. “Is that what this is about? If you did, I wouldn’t be fettered like some kind of beast.”
The Lion dropped his amber eyes to the chains, ruminating. “Perhaps it is time for a new alliance, then.”
Altair cast him a look, ignoring the thrum in his blood, the buzz. The feeling that came with change, with being … needed.
“Vengeance doesn’t suit me, Baba.”
The Lion contemplated his words, considered his son as the sun rose higher and the winds streamed between them.
Then he turned, and Altair barely heard his low order—“Stand aside”—before a volley of black rushed past him, unleashing themselves upon Sarasin. The horde in their true form. Shifting, shapeless beings of smokeless fire, some of them winged and clawed and unrestrained by human limitations.
The Lion smiled. “Go forth, my kin,” came his soft command.
Altair was not proud of his awe.
“Arawiya is ours.”
CHAPTER 6
Death commands the tremor in the living.
Live as if you are death himself. Command him as if you are his master. Depend on no one, for even your shadow will forsake you in the darkest hour.
In the end, it wasn’t death that roused fear in Nasir, for his mother had taught him well. It was the darkness. The isolation it brought, reminding him that he was always alone. The way it thieved his sight, an abyss with a nightmare to tell:
A boy, silver circling his brow, shackled by shadows.
A sun, swallowed whole by gaping jaws.
A girl, hair crowned as regal as a queen’s, the fire in the ice of her eyes bringing him to his knees.
And a voice, saying: You needn’t fear the darkness when you could become it.
Nasir came to with the evening’s light in his eyes, dust frenzying at his exhale and the dull throb of a needle prick at his neck. He dug his fingers into the rug beneath him—woven of the finest sheep’s wool—and noted the high sheen of the stone floor. None of it was familiar, but wherever he was, dinars were not in shortage.
Neither was audacity, clearly. Kidnapping the Prince of Death was no act to be taken lightly. He hadn’t expected to be welcomed with open arms in Sultan’s Keep, but he hadn’t expected to find himself in trouble this early.
Zafira stirred with a rustle of clothes. Her hair was coming undone upon the pale wool, and the rise and fall of her chest drove him to the brink. The rug beneath her became qutn sheets within the Sultan’s Palace. Her crowned hair became a circlet of silver and a shawl of silk. He drew a wavering breath.
It wasn’t like him, to dream. To wish.
It was barely a handful of heartbeats, but she stared back with fire in her hooded gaze as if she knew what plagued him. As if she had a thousand and one questions to ask, but it was his fault silence held them captive. Those three words had grown to a day, stretched to the moon’s rising, on and on, an ugly thing festering as the days wove past. This means nothing.
He had never been good with words, but he had never expected to lament the fact.
Kifah groaned from his other side, and Nasir looked away first as she sat up, unsure why he was so irritated. He flexed his unbound wrists. His boots were gone, as were the rest of theirs. It was customary to remove one’s shoes indoors, but less so to have them removed by someone else.
“The hearts!” Zafira uttered suddenly, sitting up.
Nasir jerked, jamming his elbow against a box beside him. The crate. He shoved open the lid, releasing a bated breath when he saw all four organs pulsing inside. His suspicion tripled.
“Oi. Where’s Jinan?” Kifah asked, taking in the ample room with growing trepidation: the majlis seating flush against the floor, cushions barely worn, as if the inhabitants of this construction never sat for long. A scattering of maps and old papyrus, reed pens, an astrolabe, and unfinished notes. Shelves lined the opposite wall, sagging with books and aging artifacts that looked in danger of crumbling. A single door stood to the side, closed.
The Zaramese captain was nowhere to be seen.
“This place.” Kifah’s voice dropped. Slowed. “It reminds me of home.” Her discomfort was a reminder of why the ink of the Pelusian erudites didn’t span both her arms.
Zafira rose with the agility that always made Nasir’s throat tighten, and he noted the quickness with which she reached for her bag to ensure the Jawarat was still inside. Lucky book.
He parted the curtains at one of the narrow windows and looked out: date palms, tended gardens, the ornate edging of a sprawling building. He couldn’t see much, but these were no slums. The palace couldn’t be far from here. His father couldn’t be far from here, controlled by a medallion and a monster.
“Kidnapped,” Kifah said, her voice a tad high. “Of everything that could have happened in Sultan’s Keep.”
“Do you know where we are?” Zafira asked.
It took him a moment to realize the question was directed at him, icy eyes catching him off guard. Rimaal, he was going soft.
“I don’t know the inside of every house in Sultan’s Keep,” he said a little too harshly.
“If you did, I would question whether you were the prince or an ambitious housekeeper.”
He clenched his fist around a flare of shadow. “No, I don’t know where we are.”
“That wasn’t too hard, now, was it?” There was a satisfied smirk on her mouth and a crackling in his chest.
“Men are like fish,” Kifah said, the break in her voice giving away her unease.
“Shiny, and of little brain?” Zafira replied.
Kifah hefted the crate after a beat. “I half expected a response from Altair.”
That was his cue, his jolting reminder: They’d wasted enough time. Nasir tried the door’s bronze handle, pausing when he found it unlocked.
“The Lion could be out there,” Zafira warned. She lifted her bow and gestured to his sword and Kifah’s spear. “Jinan’s gone. We’re unbound, unharmed, and still armed. Whoever’s out there doesn’t fear us.”
Nasir ignored the chill of her words.
The short hall opened to a room drenched in evening light. The aroma of herbed venison and warm bread assaulted his senses, rumbling through his stomach before the distant hum of a terribly depressing tune dampened the air. Zafira stiffened, shoulders bunching.
And the air shifted as someone unfamiliar drew breath. Nasir pivoted, shoving the tip of his gauntlet blade against the stranger’s throat in the span of two heartbeats.
“Apologies for taking the liberties precautions necessitate.”
Benyamin, said the drowsed part of his brain, conjuring umber eyes and a feline grin, but though the words were unnecessarily languorous and markedly safin, the tone wasn’t as genial.
Nor was the stranger deterred by the blade at his throat. He didn’t seem to notice it at all, and Nasir felt a fool as the light caught the two rings glittering from the peak of one elongated ear.
His skin was as dark as Kifah’s, a smooth brown accented by the gold tattoo curling around his left eye. Nasir relaxed slightly at the sight of it, before he made out the tattoo itself: “nuqi.” Pure. A reminder that not all safin were as amicable as Benyamin. Many valued the so-called purity of their race and their perfection, looking down upon everyone else. As if his tattoo weren’t prideful enough, the safi’s high-collared thobe boasted panels in shades of cream and gold, most of the buttons undone to expose his torso.