We Free the Stars

ACT I

DARK AS A HOLLOW GRAVE

CHAPTER 1

Darkness surged in his veins. It exhaled wisps from his fingers and feathered his every glance. And when he thought too hard too fast, it bled up his arms in streams of black.

Fear becomes you.

The high sun drew Nasir Ghameq’s shadow across the planks of Jinan’s ship as he slid, for what felt to be the thousandth time since they’d left Sharr, the crate’s lid back in place. A steady pulse thrummed against his fingers, emanating from the four hearts resting inside. Hearts that once belonged to Arawiya’s founding Sisters of Old, sourcing the kingdom’s magic from the five caliphates’ royal minarets, amplifiers that rationed morsels of magic to the masses. And until the organs were restored, magic was as good as gone—as it had been for the past ninety years.

Yet magic continued to exist in him, a fact he couldn’t keep to himself because of the shadows ghosting his presence.

The fifth heart isn’t going to materialize the harder you look. Neither is he, for that matter, Kifah said, lithely climbing down the crow’s nest. The cuff on her upper arm glinted, the engraved crossed spears a reminder of who she once was: one of the Nine Elite who guarded Pelusia’s calipha. With a pang, Nasir realized he was waiting for a certain golden-haired general’s response to her lightning-quick words. Something silly, or clever, followed by an endearing One of Nine.

The silence that echoed was as loud and unsettling as the Baransea’s crashing waves.

Nasir made his way to Jinan. The gash across his leg, courtesy of an ifrit on the island of Sharr, forced him to limp about the ship.

We’ve been at sea for two days. What’s taking so long?

The Zaramese girl squinted at him from the helm. Unruly dark curls slipped from the folds of her checkered turban, the cloth casting her brown eyes in a reddish glow. "‘Anqa is the fastest ship there is, your highness."

"Not that there are any other ships, kid," Kifah pointed out.

Nasir tucked the crate with the hearts safely into a nook near her as Jinan frowned. "I’m not a kid. ‘Anqa means ‘phoenix.’ You know, like the immortal bird made of fire? Named after my favorite star. My father—"

No one cares, Nasir said, gripping the rough wood as the ship rocked.

Jinan gave an exaggerated sigh.

How much longer?

Five days, she pronounced, but her pride deflated at Nasir’s withering stare. What, his highness’s ship took six days, at most? Forgive me for not having the sultan’s might at my back.

My ship, he said slowly, took less than two days to reach Sharr, even with the dandan we defeated along the way.

Jinan whistled. I’m going to need to take a look at those ship plans when we get to the fancy palace, then. What’s the rush?

Irritation flared beneath his skin, and a streak of black unfurled from his fingertips. Jinan stared. Kifah pretended not to notice, which only irritated him further.

Did you go to school?

Jinan’s eyes narrowed. What does that have to do with anything?

Then you would know how dire it is when I say the Lion of the Night is alive, said Nasir, and the assassin in him reveled in the fear widening her eyes. He didn’t tell her of the heart the Lion had stolen. He didn’t care about that, or even magic—not as much as he cared about Altair, but the girl wouldn’t understand. Nasir himself didn’t understand the strange compulsion in his blood, this concern for another human that he thought had faded with his mother’s supposed death. Did you think Benyamin tripped on a rock and died?

Jinan turned away with another frown and Kifah leaned against the mast, crossing her arms as she studied him. We’ll get him back.

It wasn’t Benyamin she spoke of.

I wasn’t worried. He didn’t look at her.

No, of course not, Kifah drawled. I’m just reminding myself aloud that he’s Altair and he can handle himself. He could talk so much the Lion would beg us to take him back. I wouldn’t be surprised if he left the bumbling fool somewhere with a sign saying ‘He’s all yours.’

It was a lie, and they both knew it. Uncertainty rang painfully clear in her normally grounding voice.

Nasir looked to the sea beyond, toward the island of Sharr. Part of him expected to see another ship in pursuit, dark and fearsome as the Lion himself. A fortnight ago, Nasir had been ready to kill Altair—he was ready to kill anyone in his path, but when he closed his eyes now, he saw the blinding beams of light extending from Altair’s open palms. He saw the sharp facets of the Lion’s black stave protruding from Benyamin’s heart.

Sacrifice, Benyamin had murmured. Sacrifice was nothing but death in a romantic farce. Nasir knew—he’d been born for death and darkness, and it was hard to have a heart when one had stopped that of so many others. It was hard to do good when it would be shadowed forever by his wrongs.

Somewhere on Sharr his heart had found a beat, and he intended to keep it going. He intended to make himself worthy of it, even if it meant restoring the very magic that had destroyed his family.

And he would start by rescuing Altair and vanquishing the Lion.

He looked at Jinan. Five days is too long. Make it three.

Jinan sputtered. That’s impos—

He was already turning for the steps leading belowdecks. Make it three and I’ll double Benyamin’s silver.

The young captain’s shouts were instant. Chaos erupted as her ragtag crew leaped to attention, the rough inflection of Zaramese at home with the crashing sea. He didn’t know what the girl would do with so much coin, but he didn’t exactly care. The throne had enough to spare.

Nasir limped down the steps. Three days was still three days too long. Now that the Lion was no longer shackled to the island, he had no reason to remain there, particularly when the Jawarat—the key to what he wanted most—was getting farther and farther away from him. The zumra needed to reach shore before the Lion did, or their troubles would be infinitely worse, and if there was anyone who could quicken their journey, it was no mortal girl from Zaram.

The must of burning oil clung to the salty air within the ship. Lanterns flickered as Nasir made his way past cabins cramped one against the other like a mouthful of teeth, bolted beds and other sparse furnishings dark in the dim, reminiscent of the palace.

His exhale broke and suddenly he was standing in front of Ghameq, telling him of the mission. How he’d failed to kill the sultan’s general. Failed to kill the Hunter. Failed to bring back the Jawarat.

Failed, failed, failed.

He shook his thoughts free. It was different now, he reminded himself. The leash between him and his father had gnarled, tangled in the lives of many more. Zafira, Altair, Kifah, his mother, and most important, the Lion of the Night, who had sunk his claws into Ghameq, controlling his every move.

His gaze flicked to the farthest end, where Zafira’s cabin stood like a ledge just out of reach.

During her rare emergences on deck, the Jawarat was always clasped to her chest, her gaze distant and detached. It worried him, seeing the ice in her eyes fading as something else took its place, but coward that he was, he couldn’t approach her, and as the insanity of their final moments on Sharr continued to recede, Nasir didn’t know how to halt the rapidly swelling distance between them.

He paused to rest his leg, leaning against a splintering beam. The Silver Witch—his mother, rimaal—had chosen a cabin just as far as Zafira’s, and when he finally reached her door, a dark gleam on the floorboard made him pause.

Blood?

He tugged his glove free and touched two fingers to the splotch, bringing them to his nose. Sharp and metallic—most certainly blood. He wiped his fingers on his robes and lifted his gaze, following the haphazard trail.

To where it disappeared behind the door to the last cabin: Zafira’s.

CHAPTER 2

Power bled from her bones. It leached from her soul, dregs draining into some unseen abyss. Emptying her. Zafira Iskandar had ventured into the cursed forest known as the Arz for as long as she could remember, magic gradually sinking beneath her skin, always there, within reach.

And now it was gone.

Stuffed into a crate, shoved beneath a rotting nook beside a too-sure Zaramese. The Jawarat echoed her angry thoughts.

I planned to destroy that book after magic was retrieved. Anadil, the Silver Witch, Sultana of Arawiya, and Sister of Old pursed her lips at the green tome in Zafira’s lap. The lantern cast the angles of her face in shadow, white hair shimmering gold. Zafira’s cabin paled in her splendor.

She does not like us, the Jawarat reminded.

Zafira no longer flinched at its voice. It was nothing like that soothing whisper that once caressed her from the shadows near the Arz. The one she had thought belonged to a friend, before she learned it belonged to the Lion of the Night.

No, this voice was assertive and demanding, yet it was filling the void that magic had left behind, and she couldn’t complain.

No, she does not.

Instead, she had begun speaking back to it.

After all the trouble Zafira had gone through to retrieve the forsaken thing, she wasn’t going to let a scornful witch destroy it. Skies, was this why the woman had come to her cabin? You’re afraid of it.

The Jawarat is my Sisters’ memories incarnate, the Silver Witch said with a withering stare from the cot. Now that Zafira knew the woman was Nasir’s mother, she could see the resemblance in that look. What have I to fear?

She does not know. She is oblivious to what we gleaned upon Sharr.

The reverberation in her lungs was an order of silence as much as a reminder: Zafira didn’t even know the extent of what she had gleaned on Sharr, in accidentally slitting her palm and binding herself to this book. For the Jawarat was more than the Sisters’ memories.

It had steeped on Sharr for ninety years with the Lion of the Night. It held some of his memories, too, and the Silver Witch hadn’t the faintest clue. No one did.

Tell them. Her conscience was barely a whisper beneath the Jawarat’s weighted presence, but that was not the reason why she didn’t heed it. She simply couldn’t. She could not tell them of the Jawarat any more than she could tell them of the darkness that once spoke to her. Fear mangled whatever words she summoned. She was afraid of them. Afraid of how the others would see her.

She had been judged long enough simply for being born a woman.

But we need it, Zafira said at last, smoothing her features. The trunk beneath her had been bolted to the ship, but her stomach lurched with the waves. "To restore magic."

I’m a Sister of Old, girl. I know how magic must be restored. It is the book I know little about, for it was created in their final moments, in their last attempt to triumph over the Lion.

And they had. They hadn’t been strong enough to destroy him, but they had trapped him upon Sharr and created the Jawarat. The way Zafira saw it, the book had been created for a single reason: to house their memories so that one day their story would be known. To say why magic had been severed from Arawiya that fateful day, why they had died, and most important, where the hearts were located.

The removal of the hearts from the minarets left Arawiya without magic, but the spell entrapping the Lion drew upon so much that it cursed the kingdom, leaching energy from every caliphate and causing havoc. Snow in Demenhur. Darkness in Sarasin. Sharr became frozen in time, the Silver Witch said, catching Zafira’s surprise. Indeed, life spans stretched beyond reason. Death became an impossible wish. By freeing the Jawarat and the hearts, you freed Arawiya, including those trapped upon the island. They were at last given the peace they sought.

Then the kaftar… Zafira trailed off, tugging at the fringe of the scarf around her neck. She hadn’t been fond of the way the men who could shift into hyenas had leered at her, but they’d come to the zumra’s aid. They had helped fight off the Lion’s horde of ifrit.

Dead.

Zafira released a breath. How long did one have to live before death became a wish?

Jinan’s shouts echoed in the silence, the crashing waves muffling the rushing of feet on deck. Her contract with Benyamin would only take them to Sultan’s Keep, but they were heading for the mainland, close enough to Demenhur to rile a restlessness in Zafira’s blood.

If you know how to restore magic, then you won’t need me, she said. Or the book. I can return home.

She had left everything she’d ever known for magic. Journeyed across the Baransea. Trekked through the villainous island of Sharr. But that was before time and distance had created an insatiable yearning that came laced with fear.

Because she would need to face Yasmine.

To what? the Silver Witch asked without a drop of sympathy. The Arz is gone. Your people have no need for a hunter.

Her words were pragmatic, rational. Cruel. They stripped Zafira bare, reducing her to an insignificant grain in the vastness of the desert. Bereft, she reached for the ring at her chest—

And dropped her hand back to the Jawarat, running her fingers down the ridges of its spine. Almost instantly, she was filled with a sense of peace. Something that lulled the disquiet.

When I bathe, will the pages melt? Tendrils of sorrow lingered at the edges of her mind, too distant to grasp. She couldn’t remember being sad now. Nor even the reason for it. The Jawarat purred.

The Silver Witch paused. I sometimes forget you’re only a child.

The world thieves childhoods, Zafira said, thinking of Baba’s bow in her still-soft hands. Of Lana, brushing a warm cloth across Umm’s forehead. Of Deen, a ghost after his parents became bodies in a shroud.

That it does. The Jawarat is a magical creation, immune to the elements, or it would have crumbled to dust within its first decade upon Sharr. Its life force, however, is now tied to yours because you so foolishly bound yourself to it. Tear out a few pages, and you may well lose a limb.

Zafira hadn’t asked to be tied to the book. The Silver Witch was the one who had asked a child to go on this journey. It was her fault that Zafira was now bound to this ancient tome, and she hadn’t even needed Zafira for this quest. Only someone strong enough to resist the Lion’s hold. Unlike the Silver Witch herself, who had fallen deeper than any of them even realized.

Zafira had been certain Sharr had given them enough revelations to last a lifetime, but that was before Kifah’s pointed question. Before they’d learned Altair was the Lion’s son as much as he was the Silver Witch’s. Strangely enough, learning his lineage had only made her more partial to the general.

She bit her tongue. And there’s no way to undo the bond?

Death, the Silver Witch said, as if Zafira should have known. Drive a dagger through the tome’s center, and you’ll be free of it.

How kind, Zafira ground out. I’ll be ‘free’ of everything else, too.

She brushed her fingers across the green leather, thumb dipping into the fiery mane of the lion embossed in its center. The Silver Witch only hummed, studying the girl who knew the Lion almost as well as she did.

She envies us.

Zafira began to agree, before she clenched her jaw against the Jawarat’s whispers. They could be far-fetched, she realized. Why ever would a Sister of Old envy a mortal girl?

We will align with time.

Whatever that meant.

She jumped when the two lanterns struck with a sudden clang. Her quiver tipped, arrows spilling and dust swirling like the sands of Sharr. The Silver Witch didn’t flinch, though Zafira noted the tight bind of her shoulders, so unlike the languid immortal, before the door swung open, revealing a silhouette in the passageway.

Zafira recognized the mussed hair, the absolute stillness she had only ever seen in deer before she loosed a fatal arrow.

A cloak of darkness followed Arawiya’s crown prince inside. He was effortless, as always. Almost careless, if one wasn’t paying close enough attention to his deliberate movements. His gray gaze swept the small space and she couldn’t stop the flitter in her chest when it locked on hers.

And strayed to her mouth for the barest of moments.

Are you hurt? Nasir asked, in that voice that looped with the shadows, soft and demanding. But there was a strain to it, a discomfiture that made her all too aware of the Silver Witch watching every heartbeat of this exchange.

Zafira had known the context behind that question, once. When she was an asset that needed protecting. A compass guiding his destructive path. What was the reason for his concern now that they had retrieved what they once sought, rendering her purpose—on Sharr, in Demenhur, skies, in this world—obsolete?

Before she could find her voice, he was looking at the Silver Witch and gesturing to a dark trail on the floorboards that hadn’t been there before. Red stained his fingers.

So this is why the ship isn’t going any faster.

Waves crashed in the silence.

I can perform the mundane tasks any miragi can, his mother said finally, but time is an illusion that requires concentration and strength, neither of which I currently have.

And why is that? His tone was impatient, his words terse.

The Silver Witch stood, and despite Nasir’s height, everything shrank before her. She parted her cloak to reveal the crimson gown beneath, torn and stiff with blood.

Zafira shot to her feet. The Lion’s black dagger. Back on Sharr.

Beneath the witch’s right shoulder gaped a wound, one she had endured to protect Nasir. It was a festering whorl of black, almost like a jagged hole.

The very same, the Silver Witch said as another drop of blood welled from her drenched dress. There is no known cure to a wound inflicted by cursed ore. The old healers lived secluded on the Hessa Isles, and if any of them still remain, my only hope is there.

What of Bait ul-Ahlaam? Nasir demanded.

Zafira translated the old Safaitic. The House of Dreams. She’d never heard of it before.

You can easily cross the strait from Sultan’s Keep and find what you need there.

At what cost? I will not set foot within those walls, she replied, but Zafira heard the unspoken words: Not again. She had been there before, and it was clear the cost had little to do with dinars.

The Silver Witch was not easily fazed, so the flare of anger in her gaze and the frown tugging the corners of her mouth was strange. Notably so.

Then you’ll leave us, Nasir said, and Zafira flinched at his harsh indifference.

I will be a walking vessel of magic. Of no use to you, but of every use to the Lion when he inevitably gets his hands on me, the Silver Witch replied. With my blood and his knowledge of dum sihr, no place in Arawiya will be safe. There is only so much he can do with my half-si’lah sons.

Nasir looked down at his hands, where wisps of black swirled in and out of his skin. Almost as if they were breathing. His shadows hadn’t retreated like Zafira’s sense of direction had. He didn’t need the magic of the hearts when he could supply his own. He didn’t have to suffer the emptiness she did.

Something ugly reared in her, choking her lungs, and Zafira nearly dropped the Jawarat in her panic. Just as suddenly, the rage cleared and her heartbeat settled.

What— Her breath shook.

This mess began because of you. Nasir’s words were too cold, and she had to remind herself that he was speaking to his mother, not her. We left Altair in the Lion’s hands because of you.

The Silver Witch met his eyes. There was a time when the steel of your gaze was directed elsewhere. When you looked to me with love, tenderness, and care.

Nasir gave no response, but if the tendrils of darkness that bled from his clenched fists were any indication, the words had found their mark. He loved her, Zafira knew; it was why his words manifested so hatefully.

I’ve taught you all that you know, his mother said gently. There is still time—I will teach you to control the dark. To bend the shadows to your will.

Just as you taught him?

The silence echoed like a roar. Nasir didn’t wait to hear the rest. He turned and limped away, shadows trailing. Zafira made to follow, careful to keep her gaze from sweeping after him, for she was well aware that nothing passed the Silver Witch’s scrutiny.

Heed me, Huntress, the Silver Witch said. Always carry a blade and a benignity. You may never know which you will need.

Zafira felt the stirrings of something at her tone.

And you cannot return home.

Purpose. That was what she felt. Something dragging her from this sinking, burrowing sense of being nothing.

If you do, your entire journey to Sharr—including your friend’s death, Benyamin’s slaughter, and Altair’s capture—will have been in vain.

Perhaps the witch had always known someone with the rare affinity of finding whatever they set their heart to—a da’ira—wasn’t needed for the job. Perhaps she saw in Zafira what Zafira could not see in her, but knew from the memories of the Jawarat to be true. Someone like herself, guided by a good heart and pure intentions, before she fell prey to a silver tongue.

The hearts are dying. They are organs removed from their houses, deteriorating as we speak. Restore them to their minarets, or magic will be gone forever.

CHAPTER 3

Under his philosophy, retrospect was the antecedent of wrinkles. Yet shackled and shoved into the dank bowels of the ship, Altair al-Badawi could do nothing else.

He had spent most of his life vying for his mother’s love, trying to atone for the curl of her lips every time she turned his way. Though it hadn’t taken long to understand that she saw him as the culmination of her failures, it wasn’t until Sharr when he learned the extent of it: that she was a Sister of Old and the reason magic was gone, that she had—

Altair halted the thought with a grimace.

It wasn’t often one learned he was the Lion of the Night’s son.

The sun crawled through the tiny excuse for a window, marking two days since he’d labored with the ifrit on Sharr to salvage the ship they now sailed in. And in the two days since, he’d been fed and given a chair to sit upon. Not bad for a prisoner.

If he wasn’t being milked like a prize goat.

Every so often, an ifrit would come to secure his chains to the wall, rendering him immobile before slitting his palm to fill a tankard for the Lion to get drunk on. He loathed being the fuel for his father’s dum sihr, forbidden magic that allowed one to go beyond one’s own affinity. But worse than the chains and the bloodletting, perhaps, were the shackles, spanning at least a quarter of the length of his forearms and suppressing his power. Heavy black ore wrought with words in the old tongue of Safaitic.

The odd push and pull in his veins was taking its toll. It slowed his mind, a thought more troubling than the loss of his physical strength—for it meant the Lion would always be one step ahead of him.

Laa. Half a step.

A latch lifted, and he flopped back in his dilapidated chair, propping his feet atop the worn table despite the rattle of his chains, and when the Lion of the Night stepped into the hold, the flare of his nostrils pleased Altair far too much.

Your horde is slow, Altair announced as if he were speaking to his uniformed men. Simply because he was in chains didn’t mean he had to sacrifice dignity. The rich flaunted chains all the time. We’re nowhere near shore, and with the Silver Witch on Nasir’s side, spinning illusions as well as you do shadows, they’re guaranteed to reach the mainland before you. Time is merely another mirage for her to bend. And when we dock wherever it is you plan on docking, my brother will be waiting.

This was where Altair’s bluster faltered.

For his half brother was the same Prince of Death he had accompanied to Sharr, fully aware that his orders were to bury Altair upon that forsaken island. He had left him instead.

Nasir and the zumra, strangers who had become family, had turned and fled, abandoning him to their foe. Laa, he didn’t truly know if his brother would be waiting.

But if there was one thing he did better than look impeccable, it was bluff.

Your freedom, Lion, will be short-lived, Altair finished somewhat lamely. Akhh, valor was a fickle temptress as it was.

The Lion gave him the phantom of a simper that Altair himself had worn far too many times. Like father, like son. It was unnerving to think the man was his father when he looked barely a day older than him. Then again, Altair himself was ninety, the exact age of Arawiya without magic. More than four times Nasir’s age, and if he was being humble, he’d say he looked a year younger than the grump.

How should I begin? the Lion asked. Anadil will be dead in three days.

Perhaps he could bluff as well as Altair could.

And then, when your friends reach shore, you and I will take from them the Jawarat and the remaining hearts. The Lion tilted his head. See, I think long and far, Altair. Something you might find familiar.

Altair’s long and far thinking had never been for his own personal gain, or for incomprehensible greed. Assemble a team, restore magic. A simple plan devised by him and Benyamin that became more convoluted with each passing day.

He refused to believe his mother was dying. He refused to believe the zumra was outnumbered, not when he’d ensured there would be allies waiting for them in Sultan’s Keep with dum sihr to protect their whereabouts. And more: Nasir had magic. Zafira had the power of the Jawarat bound to her blood.

It had to be enough. For the first time in a long time, Altair had to remind himself to breathe.

Why? he asked. That was what he could not discern—the reason for the Lion’s need. He refused to believe someone who shared his blood could simply hunger for power. There was truly no drive more boring.

His father’s gaze froze, brilliant amber trapped in glass, there and gone before Altair could comprehend it.

Vengeance, the Lion said, but the word was spoken in a tone accustomed to saying it. No vitriol, no vigor. Only habit. And more, of course. There must be order. Magic must remain in the hands of those capable. Do you think the common man understood the extent of what the Sisters of Old had so freely given?

Equality. That was what the Sisters of Old had given Arawiya, despite their faults.

Akhh, the creativity of men when it comes to their vices, Altair droned, unsurprised. Order, in this case, was only another word for greed. But if that is indeed why you crave magic, then you, with your endless desire for knowledge, should already know the old adage: ‘Magic for all or none.’ There is no in between.

Unless one was si’lah, like the Silver Witch. Like half of Altair and half of Nasir. Yet another revelation Sharr had given him—he’d spent his entire life thinking himself fully safin, thinking Nasir was half safin, despite the boy’s round ears.

He supposed he should be grateful he wasn’t too much like his father—the man didn’t even have a heart. The Lion opened the door leading to the upper deck. It was strange that he came so often to see Altair for seemingly no reason at all. His dark thobe caught the barest sheen of purple in the dying light, and despite himself, Altair didn’t particularly want him to leave.

The silence was too loud, the ghosts too real.

Altair’s mouth worked without permission. Do you mourn him?

How the living felt mattered little to the dead, but the longer he spent alone, the more he thought of the brother of his heart.

I know all about Benyamin’s circle of high safin, Altair continued, even as the words ripped through his ancient heart. He took you into his fold against their wishes, and you butchered him with cursed ore. You know precisely how much pain he suffered in those final moments.

The Lion turned back, cool and assessing. As if he’d been waiting for Altair to speak. He should not have tried to save someone so worthless.

Benyamin had never liked Nasir. Even in their years of planning, when Altair’s goal was to see Nasir on the throne, Benyamin had been against it. Somewhere on the island, that had changed. To the extent that the safi had decided Nasir was worth sacrificing his own immortality for.

You truly are heartless, Altair said with a tired laugh.

The Lion’s smile was sardonic. I would need a heart to claim otherwise.

For a long moment, he looked at Altair, and Altair looked back.

The dead feel no pain, he said gently, and Altair’s eyes fell closed of their own accord. Perhaps it was this show of emotion that made his father continue. Your friends, on the other hand, knew precisely the pain you would feel when they left you. You put on your little light show, saved them, and for what? How does it feel to be abandoned?

Altair stiffened. He liked to think he was prepared for anything. This, however, was still a sorely sore spot. He loosed a laugh, one of the many at his disposal. You want me to talk to you about feelings.

The Lion’s eyes glowed and the ship rocked, the slow creak of swaying ropes haunting in the quiet. If anyone can understand, it would be your father.

I’m flattered, Altair drawled, rattling his chains. He had filled this place with light the first night, before he’d learned what the shackles were doing to him. But this is no way to treat your son.

The Lion only looked at him. They left you, Altair.

Altair pressed his lips together. He would not give him the satisfaction of a reply, but the Lion, like his son, was dedicated.

Knowing I would be your only refuge.

Altair didn’t need to close his eyes to see them running for the ship. Sand stirring behind them. Nasir. Zafira. Kifah. His mother, who had never loved him. Not once did they look for him.

Not as the distance grew between them.

Not as they lifted the anchor on Benyamin’s ship.

They took what they needed and left the rest, the Lion said in his voice of velvet darkness as Altair bit his tongue against a response. Without a glance.

Not even as he was forced to his knees, shadows knotting his throat.

Even Benyamin’s corpse.

Altair finally snapped. I was there. I don’t need to relive it.

The Lion did not smile. He did not gloat. No, he looked at Altair with sympathy, as if he understood his pain. Then he left him in the dark.

Altair dropped his feet to the floor, and his head in his hands.

CHAPTER 4

Death began with a rattle before dawn. It was soon deafening, the hold quivering so fiercely that Zafira’s teeth were in danger of falling out. The swaying lanterns showed her shadows that looked like the zumra stumbling to their deaths. The hearts, crumbling to dust.

She tossed the Jawarat into her satchel, gathered her arrows into her sling, and darted up the steps, nearly tripping on her way. It was almost as if she could think clearly only when the book wasn’t in her hands.

Zafira had spent the past three days thumbing its worn pages, struggling and failing to focus on the old Safaitic, which made her think the book didn’t want to be read. It wanted to be held, for its pages to be parted, for the swift curves and trailing i’jam dotting the letters to be seen. It was a notion she found herself able to understand, as absurd as it was for a book to want such a thing. As absurd as an object being able to speak.

And influence.

She wasn’t daft; the Jawarat’s whispers toyed with her, she knew, and the more she listened to discern what it wanted, the more dangerous her every action would become. It made her wary, for she held more than a bow in her hands now: not just the fate of an unlucky deer or a hare, but the future of Arawiya. The hearts that once belonged to the daama Sisters of Old.

The problem was, she couldn’t stop listening.

On deck, the rough Zaramese shouts weren’t heightened by chaos or fear, and when the vibrations ground to a stop, she frowned at the abundance of beaming faces and tired grins.

What was that noise? she asked over the wind.

The anchor, Nasir said distantly as she set eyes on the reason for it.

The hem of the sea wended lazily along an umber coast. Dunes billowed inland, sand painting the awakening horizon in strokes of gold that reminded her of Deen’s curls and Yasmine’s locks, ebbing and flowing with the breeze.

She swallowed a mix of fear and longing at the reminder of her friends. She wanted to see Yasmine, to tell her she was sorry she could not save her brother. To say she was sorry she didn’t love him enough. But as desperately as she wanted to see her again—and Umm and Lana—she couldn’t deny her trepidation.

Sultan’s Keep. The city that belongs to none yet commands all, Jinan announced.

Every Arawiyan child knew of Sultan’s Keep. They studied maps in school, history from papyrus. Before the Arz had emerged, a bustling harbor bordered the city and life unfolded from the shores—stalls topped by colorful fabrics, windows arching one after the other, minarets spearing the skies.

It was all there still, but duller and lifeless. Aside from the lazy falcon circling above, only ghosts lived here now.

The people chose fear of the Arz over fear of the sultan, Nasir explained.

Zafira could see it up ahead, life signified by the stir of sand far, far in the distance, where hazy minarets rose, the bustle of the day drifting on the breeze.

It won’t be long before the population drifts back here, Kifah said as the Silver Witch joined them. Now that the Arz is gone.

The Arz was indeed gone.

It had left disorder in its wake—brambles and twigs, rocks and carcasses. Barely a week had passed since Arawiya’s curse had lifted, but sand was already swallowing the remains of the forest. The dark trees were nowhere to be seen, almost as if they had retreated into the ground, Sharr’s claws—or perhaps the Lion’s—now gone.

Not an animal in sight, Huntress, Kifah teased. I’m beginning to think you were a myth.

They would have fled inland, said the Silver Witch.

Zafira had known the Arz was gone ever since they’d lifted the five hearts from within the great trees of Sharr. Ever since the Lion had stolen one and the zumra had fled, leaving Altair behind. Every forward surge of their ship had been a reminder that the Arz, that ever-encroaching tomb, that dark, untamable forest that had made Zafira who she was, had fallen.

Seeing its absence was different. The finality carved a hollow somewhere inside her. The knife of the Silver Witch’s words dug deeper, and she shivered at the stillness in the air. The change.

Who am I? she asked the sea. It whispered an answer she couldn’t comprehend, and she recalled another moment like this, when she had stood on the shore, amid smooth black stones.

She saw Yasmine in her pale blue dress, waving her off. Precious Lana, glued to her side. Misk nodding in farewell, a spy not one of them had thought to suspect and wouldn’t still, if Zafira hadn’t learned of it from Benyamin upon Sharr. The safi’s ominous words about Demenhur echoed in her thoughts. About the sultan eyeing Arawiya’s second-largest army and taking it under his control the way he had done in Sarasin.

We should have gone to Demenhur first, she said for the thousandth time as Nasir followed her to the longboat with the hearts, and because she didn’t want to sound as selfish as she felt, she added, And sought the caliph’s aid. Who knows where the Lion is?

She looked away from the little crate with a surge of guilt. Was it selfish to think of her family? To want to see if they were safe? Was it selfish to choose the restoration of the dying hearts over her family?

He who pays the coin turns the wheel, Jinan recited, and Effendi Haadi’s instructions were to come here.

He’s also dead, Zafira didn’t say. She stepped into the boat with a sigh, and every bit of her came alert when Nasir’s knee brushed hers as he settled across from her. Pull yourself together.

They were going to Sultan’s Keep, where people would bow at his feet and a crown would sit at his brow. There was death at his hip and darkness at his command.

Still, her breath caught when the tender sun glossed his hair, when he gripped the oar as a lost memory ticked the left of his mouth up, crinkling his skin like the wrapper of a sweet.

And then he was looking at her and she was looking away, a flash of silver drawing her eye from the deck of Jinan’s ship as the boat began its descent into the sea. This was where they would part ways with the Silver Witch, she realized.

Anadil inclined her head, and Zafira was surprised to find she would miss her. Only a little.

The Silver Witch met her son’s eyes in farewell and Nasir seized, his mouth hardening. He kept every emotion on a tight leash, hidden behind the ashes of his eyes.

The longboat touched the gentle sea in the shadow of the ship’s figurehead. It basked in the sun, the curved beak of a bird drenched in gold, feathered wings curling into flames. A phoenix. Above the sails flew a sea-green banner, marked with Zaram’s emblem of a golden ax and three drops of blood. The oars turned rhythmically in the azure waters, lulling them until Jinan started up a chatter, her crew as eager as she was to talk about everything and nothing at all.

How can someone so small talk so much? Kifah finally asked with almost-comical exhaustion.

Zafira didn’t hear Jinan’s answer. As they crept toward land, a finger trailed down her spine. There was a heaviness in the air, a warning, and a hunter—a huntress—always listened to the signs of the earth.

Something’s not right, she murmured.

Kifah drummed her spear against her thigh and shook her head. What have we to fear? We are specters, righting wrongs. We’ll let nothing stand in our way.

Fancy words never kept anyone alive, Jinan pointed out when the boat lodged into the sand at shore.

It’s a shame you’ve never met Altair, Kifah replied.

Zafira stepped out first, but her unease only worsened with a smattering of goose bumps down her arms. She tugged her foot out of the sand with a wet pop as the crew began rowing back to the ship, their farewells loud. Jinan, as oblivious as her sailors, stretched her legs.

There’s nothing I love more than the sea beneath my legs, but I’d be lying if I said this isn’t nice.

Akhh, little firebird. You sound like an old man, Kifah said. There was an eagerness to her voice now that she was free of the ship’s confines. Oi, why aren’t you going back with the rest of them?

I’m afraid you’ll be seeing a great deal of my vertically challenged self until I collect my silver. In the meantime, my crew will take the witch to the Hessa Isles and circle back. Not sure if a witch’s coin can be trusted, but the offer was too good to pass up.

What do you plan to do with so much silver? Buy yourself a stool?

Quiet, Nasir said, and Zafira drew her bow in an instant, the taut string familiar and welcome. Kifah pivoted her spear as Nasir precariously hefted the crate under one arm and drew his scimitar with the other.

Sunlight winked through the shifting sands and abandoned edifices. Zafira didn’t see the hooded figures until something stung her neck, and the world fell dark.

CHAPTER 5

The lull that followed the deafening grounding of the ship’s anchor was infinitely worse than any silence Altair had heard before. Worse than the quiet that followed the anointing of a fresh corpse. Worse than the silence after an offer was refused.

Or maybe that was worse. How would he know? No one ever refused someone like him.

He recognized Sarasin’s dark sands and murky skies instantly. Though brighter now and the sands less black, it was the perfect haven for ifritkind, and foreboding laced with the hunger in his stomach. How had his mother felt when she fled Sharr after the Sisters had fallen and the Lion had been trapped, a new burden swelling in her womb? How had it felt to assume a new identity, to tell her sons that they were of safin blood, a heritage leagues beneath that of the rare si’lah?

Altair knotted the thoughts and trunked them.

He followed the Lion down the plank, swinging his arms to and fro and rattling his chains loudly enough to wake the dead all the way down in Zaram. The picture of abandon even as he scoured the decrepit houses looming near the shore, searching for aid while isolation sank into his bones.

Nothing. No one. They hadn’t arrived yet, or they would be here. Wouldn’t they? He knew Nasir and the others were due for Sultan’s Keep, but still. If he had lost one of his own, he would detour the world over to find them.

They are not here.

Altair started at the Lion’s voice. A portion of pita rested in his proffered hand. The second half was in his other, saved for himself. Only Nasir halved his food with such perfect symmetry. And yet your eyes continue to stray to the horizon for those who will never come.

Hush, hush, went the water. It lapped at the sands, eager for secrets to carry to new shores.

I’m a general, Altair replied finally. He took the food with cautious hesitance, hunger dulling his pride. Vigilance is habit.

The Lion hummed. We will find them, worry not. If they won’t come to you, we will go to them.

And how do you expect to do that? Altair asked tiredly.

With your blood and mine. Dum sihr. There is a spell that imitates the Huntress’s. I only need to find it. The Lion frowned at his unintentional pun.

Altair stepped off the plank with relief. The desert was far from solid ground, but it did not sway like the sea or lurch like the waves. It was as barren, however. Nothing spread for miles and miles. The emptiness bludgeoned his chest.

Why? the Lion asked him suddenly, curiosity canting his head. The sun stretched a ray, casting the bold lines of his tattoo in iridescence. You have no name. No throne. Arawiya has given you nothing, and you have given her everything.

To what end? was what he wanted to