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“We will see how real he is.”
* * *
A wrought-iron door with a pointed arch marked the palace entrance. Nasir ducked behind the underbrush to the structure’s side and scanned the area. Though he saw no guards, he heard the unmistakable sweep of sandals—patrols making the rounds.
On the base floor were several large windows, all latched. He lifted his gaze—there. A window was open on the second floor, another on the third, gossamer curtains of crimson rippling in the dry breeze.
He swept past the foliage and crossed the paved ground, pausing before the dark wall of the palace. The scent of bakhour carried on the slight breeze, heady and sensuous. He set his jaw and scanned the wall, eyes snagging on the stones that jutted and dipped, noting where his footing was likely to slip.
A scratch of sandals broke his thoughts as a guard turned the corner.
Alarm crossed the guard’s eyes before Nasir slashed his gauntlet blade across his neck. He croaked and slumped to the ground, blackened blood oozing. Not a him. An ifrit.
Nasir hooked his arms beneath the ifrit’s and began dragging the corpse to the underbrush, but a scream stopped him. Knifed his chest.
Her scream.
Kharra. Nasir left the body where it was—stealth be damned—and rushed to the wall. His foot slipped twice as he scaled the old stone. He barely breathed as he pulled himself to the window ledge and vaulted into the black hole of the second story. Fear prickled his insides.
A palatial rug sank beneath his boots, the air intoxicating with alluring oud, saffron, and sandalwood. A bedroom. Though he saw nothing, the combination made him think of the rustle of clothes and hushed murmurs. It heated his neck.
The Huntress—Zafira—screamed again.
He followed the sound of her whimpers through the room. Whatever was compelling her to make such a sound was no easy overpowerment, for she was not weak.
He eased the door open and entered a balcony overlooking a foyer void of life. A majlis sprawled in shades of crimson and violet. Two qahwa
cups sat on its center ottoman, one littered with rinds, the other full and long since cooled.
The staircase leading from the balcony ended at the majlis, which was in direct view of a darkened corridor where the screams and whimpers crawled from. That way’s moot. With a quick inhale, Nasir leaped off the balcony railing and landed in a crouch beside the corridor entrance, the impact a bolt of force against his jaw.
He paused before the shadowed entrance. His exhale quivered.
A cry spurred him forward, boxing him in, a slip of nightmares. His fear was instant. Hushed whispers bombarded his senses, and he gritted his teeth against their pleas. They were the very whispers he’d heard when he once touched the medallion around Ghameq’s neck. The ones that called to him from the crevices of Sharr.
Rimaal. Were they connected?
He was going to meet the master of Sharr. The one Benyamin claimed controlled his father.
Nasir extended his gauntlet blade with a soft click. Perspiration dampened the back of his neck, his scalp, the facets of his resolve.
Silly boy, you fear the dark.
What do you fear? Kulsum had once asked him, days after his mother’s death. He had no answer then. He didn’t even fear his father, who had taken everything but the life Nasir never valued: his own.
He feared the dark, for he could not see. For here, the ever-alert hashashin was blind to his surroundings, and fear stifled his other senses in turn.
Her sobs and the wan light at the end of the hall drew him onward, until he stood at the entrance of a room shrouded by whispers and shadows.
He saw her first. Zafira.
Her long body was chained to the gray wall. She stared at an ifrit at her feet and yanked at her chains, pleading to stop. Qif, qif, qif.
His eyes locked on her face. Torn and helpless. He knew the weight of anguish that could drown a city in sand. He knew that look, that feeling. To watch a loved one suffer. To know one could have done so much but can now do nothing at all.
It was the feeling that made him stop feeling.
Every rational thought vanished. Rage rippled through him, pulsed at his fingers. Rage that she was suffering as he had. Rage that she was in pain.
