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knees.
He felt the impact like a blow to his stomach. He pushed past Kifah and Altair and dropped down beside her. She trembled. Her head tilted to the skies.
She stilled when he neared.
“Is it the darkness?” he murmured before the others were within earshot.
Benyamin approached her next. “Are you well, Huntress?”
“What is—” Kifah began, before the Huntress silenced them all.
“Look around us,” she said. Her voice was haunted. Raw.
Nasir’s eyes roved the brushwood, the crumbling limestone, the dunes of sand. The same patch of saltbush blooming with the same white flowers he had seen yesterday.
“Kharra,” Kifah murmured, dropping her spear.
“Do you think the Silver Witch considered what would happen when her compass failed?” The Huntress’s voice was a knife. She rose, fury igniting her features. Fury directed at him. “You should have killed me.” She was close enough to touch. To smooth, with his
lips, the harsh lines of anger marring her skin.
The last thought seized him.
When had he ever wished to kiss anyone? Even Kulsum had been the one to kiss him first, to … use him. Tribulation weighed him down. It matched the look in the Huntress’s eyes.
“What use am I now, Prince? All you have is a broken compass.”
Use. The word cut deep.
Altair broke the silence first.
“You aren’t broken.” He rested a gentle hand on her shoulder.
But she wasn’t looking at the general. She looked to Nasir, waiting to hear what he would say. He was skilled in many things, but not words. He couldn’t speak as those shards of ice begged him to.
“This is your fault,” Nasir said suddenly, eyes flicking to Benyamin. The safi jerked at the accusation. “If you hadn’t told her what she was, this would not have happened.”
Kifah seethed. “Of every self-centered thing you could say—”
“Laa, I think the prince is right,” Altair interrupted. “You aren’t broken, Zafira.”
Nasir flinched at the sound of her name from Altair’s mouth. He could scarcely refer to her by name in his head because he felt … he felt he did not deserve to.
“You’ve always followed the direction of your heart,” Altair continued. “It was a subconscious effort you trusted without a doubt. But now that you know what you are, you’ve begun to use your head. That has led you astray.”
“So now we’re stranded?” Kifah asked. Her words were followed by another layer of black, bleeding into the sky.
Benyamin clenched his jaw as he studied the unfolding shadows. “The night stirs,” he murmured.
Nasir did not know what to say to that.
* * *
There was something bittersweet about a day long awaited. She heard them speaking. But they were like voices singing a song, one she no longer heard.
She had reached the destination she always feared she would. And now that she was here, she felt it had been inevitable from the very beginning: She had always been on a steady journey toward finding herself lost.
It had only worsened the night before, when the Sultan of Arawiya had reminded Nasir of what he was sent to do. When Benyamin had reminded her she was a means to an end in the witch’s game.
