“Is it alright to come in?” Shadi's voice drifts through a slight crack.
“Hold on.” Shay shifts the blanket covering her sister to hide her exposed breast. She resists the urge to jump up and greet him, not wishing to startle the baby after spending twenty beakers getting her to calm down.
Shadi sits on the floor next to her sleeping pallet. He stares quietly through the window, his eyes reflecting prisms in the starlight. Shay withholds the questions that bubble inside her, momentarily content to take in the contours and shadows of his profile. The slope of his nose. The strength of his jawline. The sweep of his brow. Even in the dark, he's as dazzling as any constellation could be.
“I'm deeply sorry about your mother,” he says softly. “I wish I had been here.”
Shay waits, wondering if the tears will come now. The force of a tidal wave bears down on her. But nothing falls. Maybe she's in shock. Maybe she cried too much while her mother was alive. Maybe she already spent every day of her life in mourning.
“Where have you been?” she asks, suddenly hit with the delayed sadness of his absence, this loss she's had to grapple with alone.
“Did Kabeer tell you I've been stopping by?” Shadi asks, a trace of annoyance making its way into his voice despite the measured expression on his face.
“No.” Shay makes a mental note that it's perhaps time for another “family” talk with the brothers, one hood-wearing brother in particular. “What did he say to you?”
“He told me you were resting, and to come back later.” His lips twitch as he fights to keep a straight face. “And when I came back, he told me you were still resting.”
Shay lowers her head, shaking it, her lips sliding toward a grin. “How did you get by him this time?”
“This time I went to the back door,” Shadi explains, and winks. “I bribed Hammu with a bag of shiny baubles.”
“Well, I'm glad you're here now.”
She adjusts her tunic under the blanket and tucks the edges of it around her sister's sleeping body, soaking in her dimples and pudge, imprinting this moment in her mind so she'll always remember why she must fight.
Why the Sisterhood must win.
Shadi leans forward, his eyes wide with awe. He smiles up at Shay. “She's beautiful.”
“Do you want to hold her?”
Before he can protest, Shay leans forward and takes his arm in her hand, guiding it around until the bundled infant is nestled in his elbow. He stares tensely at the baby for a few beakers before his shoulders relax.
“See?” Shay says approvingly. “It's not so hard.”
Shadi continues gazing at the baby for a while longer. Then he looks up at Shay with a new hesitation in his eyes. “You're beautiful.”
Heat fans up Shay's neck, and she's grateful for the cover of night. She's heard the words before, but those other times were unmemorable. This is the first time it's mattered. “I wish I saw what you see.”
“Shuika.” Shadi looks at her the way an astronomer might behold the mysteries of the heavens. “You're always thinking about other people, but I hope you know you're allowed to think about yourself sometimes.”
His words ring true, as if he can see into her soul, all the insecurities she clings to, the pieces of herself she gives away. As if he sees the parts of hereven she doesn't fully know yet—not only who she is, but who she could become.
He lays Najla gently on Shay's sleeping pallet and takes both her hands in his. “What do you want?”
His fingers twined with hers are warm and firm in the darkness, their breaths mingling in the air between them. Shay doesn't have an ultimate answer to his question, but she has an immediate one.
If she cannot release her sorrow by crying, she'd like to feel something good, at least.
“This,” she whispers, and closes the gap. Their lips meet, merging like two candle flames in a surge of heat and radiance. Despite the certainty of danger and the uncertainty of everything else, Shadi's touch, his kiss, feels like safety. It's a feeling Shay wouldn't mind getting used to.
A sudden scratching at the window breaks their fledgling kiss, striking a cold spear down Shay's spine. She tenses and slowly pulls back from the sweet cocoon of Shadi's arms.
Tarik? No, the bloodsucker isn't going to bother her. For now, they have an alliance. And Shay has to admit, she's relieved. Whether or not he deserves to live is debatable, but that wasn't her decision to make. She was lashing out, wanting to hurt someone else the way she was hurting. Wanting to take back a little of the power that had been taken away from her. And Tarik was … there. That wasn't justice, and she would have come to regret her rashness.
The bloodsucker was right. Shay isn't a killer.
Butsomethingis scratching at the window. And it doesn't sound like a tree branch shaken by the wind. The noises are too organized, purposeful, as if whatever is out there is desperately prying their nails under the pane, straining to lift it. Her heart balloons into her throat, but as Shay inches toward the window and draws the curtains, she realizes she can sense the friendly, if annoyed, nature of her visitor.
