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Before long, the only creatures more powerful than he were the Sisters themselves, though the fact didn’t faze him when he turned his wrath upon the Gilded Throne. Zafira always found it odd that the Lion, with all his knowledge, had made so bold a move. Because the Sisters quickly overpowered him, trapping him on Sharr and putting an end to his reign of darkness.
Decades later, he stirred trouble on Sharr itself, and the warden called for aid. The other Sisters flocked to her, armed with every ounce of Arawiya’s magic to defeat him for good.
No one returned.
His roar was the darkness. His den was the shadows. Yet Sharr swallowed them all—the Sisters, the warden, the Lion, even the prison. But the Fall of Arawiya was a victory, wasn’t it? Even if the people lost the Sisters and magic, even if the loss gave Demenhur a reason to prove that misfortune followed a woman’s actions, Zafira knew, in her heart, that the Sisters had protected them that day.
They had defeated the Lion of the Night with their last breaths.
She pressed her heels against Sukkar’s sides. Maybe the tiny lions were merely ornaments, a display of pride for the victory over a man who defied men, only to be slain by women.
“Whoa there.” She tugged on Sukkar’s reins before a run-down construction, charred black from a fire long ago. It stood behind the sooq, shadowed by the beauty of the House of Selah in the distance.
Zafira tied Sukkar to a beam under a half-broken eave and slipped between the old rails. The creak of the door echoed, and something scurried away in the dark. There was once a time when the hunger was so great, Demenhune of the western villages feasted on the putrid flesh of rats, which killed more than hunger ever would. That was before Zafira had succumbed to the call of the Arz.
She still remembered the bare relief on her parents’ faces when she had stumbled from the Arz with three rabbits in hand and a smear of blood on her cheek. Neither Baba nor Umm had known where she had gone, but it was the first time anyone had returned from the forest of no return.
Days later, Baba had shown her how to nock an arrow and how to ensnare a deer, just as his own father had taught him in the forests of northern Demenhur. But when Baba had taken the meat into town and began feeding the villagers, it was Umm who reminded Zafira that, as a woman, she would receive no respect for the work she did. Baba had only smiled, saying Zafira held the power to change the views of the caliph’s staunch believers, to give women the equality that was their right. The equality they received in Arawiya’s other caliphates.
In the end, Zafira chose fear. She donned a man’s clothes and continued to hunt in the Arz with her father, creating a name for herself that was never quite her own. It belonged to a masked figure. A person who, at the end of the day, did not exist.
It was a life Zafira could have lived with, if it meant seeing Baba’s proud smile and the villagers’ full bellies. Until the day when she, Umm, and little Lana fell ill with the flu that had been spreading throughout Demenhur.
While Zafira lay bedridden at home, food became scarcer. Meat ran low.
Baba had thought he could hunt as his daughter did. Instead, he returned crazed and barely human.
Zafira’s breath now puffed in the darkness. She made her way carefully up the stairs reeking of mold, knowing which slats were broken and which were weak. Each of the three stairwells ended in a level of empty rooms. It had been an inn once, welcoming people of other caliphates who used to visit for trade and leisure. Or pleasure, as Yasmine would say with a suggestive gleam in her eye.
At the top level, Zafira pushed open the door to the roof and tightened her cloak against the sudden gust of air.
This was where she came to be free of the world that expected so much from the Hunter, from herself.
But tonight she was not alone.
A silhouette stood at the end, profile cast in the light of the stars. It seemed someone else couldn’t stand enclosed walls, either.
“I just came to—” she started.
“Think,” Deen finished for her. He inclined his head, and the clouds parted so the moon could see his smile. “I know. But if you’re feeling anything like I am right now, I didn’t want you to be alone.”
Zafira didn’t know what to say. She wanted to wrap her arms around him, but after the way he had looked at her this evening, that didn’t feel so good an idea. Instead, she moved to his side, pressing her shoulder to his as she fought the swell of elation in her chest, and together they looked down at Demenhur.
Tiny houses sprawled to their left, shadowed by a crescent of darkness where the Arz encroached. The sooq parted directly below them, and the House of Selah rose to their right, periwinkle in the moonlight.
The House of Selah was a humble name for something akin to a palace. Its stone walls were crumbling, and dark veins of rot stood stark against the cream, for it had been built for the desert, not to withstand an unending wet climate. Yet despite the decay, it was magnificent—twin spires in brilliant ivory rising to the snow-heavy clouds. Between them, the main building arched into the sky.
If this was a beauty, Zafira couldn’t imagine the magnificence of the palace in Thalj, where the royal minaret stood, a beacon bathing in shadows ever since magic had disappeared. She couldn’t even begin to imagine the palace in Sultan’s Keep.
“Do you know what I’ve always wanted to do?” Deen asked. He slid closer and slipped the hood from her face.
Zafira felt exposed beneath the moon. Out of instinct, she glanced around quickly, but they were alone. “What?” she asked, thinking she knew.
“Explore,” he said, expression wistful.
She raised her eyebrows in surprise. He drew lines on the ice-covered railing with one gloved finger, deep in thought. “There’s more than Arawiya, Zafira. There has to be. The world can’t be just five caliphates, a wasteland, and one deadly sea. I want to travel, discover new places. Meet new people.”
She liked that plan, and so did her heart, if the warmth she felt was any indication. If life were simpler, she would want to explore, too. She stared into the distance, where they were blocked by a growing forest. A forest that might be stopped, if she accepted the invitation.
