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You are very much its concerned queen.
It felt decades ago that the Silver Witch had proclaimed those words. Zafira was queen of nothing now, an orphan in every manner.
“You can cry,” Lana said gently. “It helps.”
Zafira sputtered a laugh, and then Lana’s face broke. She threw her arms around Zafira, forgetting all about the wound she had carefully bandaged.
“Yaa, Okhti. You were just … there. You wouldn’t move, you barely breathed.”
“And yet you were as brave as I knew you’d be,” Zafira said softly, shivering at her haunted tone. “If not for you, I would have been lost.”
“But you’re here now. You’re here. And Ammah Aya was useful for something, at least. Have you eaten? We have no thyme,” Lana blabbered as tears streamed down her cheeks and her breath clouded the air. “But Umm had dried pomegranate on hand. Can you believe it? Demenhur hasn’t grown pomegranates in decades. They were so red. As red as your blood. And I—I—”
Lana’s sobs were soft. She had always cried in silence. It was sadder somehow, as if her tears did not want to fall. To leave her. “I thought I’d lost you both. Don’t do that again,” she whispered. “I like the sound of your heart.”
Zafira liked it, too, she realized, as the cold seeped through the knees of her pants. There was nothing like death to make one value life. “Never. You will always, always have me.”
Her sister was still here and very much alive. Zafira herself still had breath in her lungs, and so long as the Lion sat on the throne, she would have purpose. So long as the Demenhune caliph railed against women, she would have purpose.
“Get dressed,” Zafira said suddenly.
“Why?” Lana pulled back to look at her. “Oh no. I know that look. We’re not going anywhere until you’ve recovered. Ah, you’re bleeding again.”
“I’ll rest on the way.” They needed to regroup with the others. “We need to get to the palace.”
CHAPTER 65
Though much of the road between the western villages and Thalj was rough, the journey to the capital took less than three days thanks to Calipha Ghada’s carriage, with its sleek wheels and pulleys and other moving parts that quickened their pace in a way horses never could. But Zafira missed much of the scenery because her wound reopened, and Lana’s drowsing tinctures had her weaving in and out of lucidity. It meant she missed much of Yasmine’s scowling, too, but she wasn’t quite as sorry about that.
The next thing she knew, she was propped against the carriage’s cushioned wall as Lana fussed over her bandages, something fine and sharp impaling her skin. Her body was scalding, but the cold wasn’t helping matters.
“I didn’t get to see anything,” Zafira groused groggily, awake enough to see that her words provoked a smile out of Yasmine, which she quickly masked away.
“I expected you to cry out,” Lana said tiredly, setting a bloody needle aside.
Zafira’s vision swam again. From a needle? “Do I look like a man?”
“You’re bleeding. Khara, this is why I wanted you to stay back and rest.”
“No cursing,” Zafira scolded, and then she blacked out.
* * *
A fire crackled in the hearth of the large room, white walls carved with lacework flourishes and adorned with silver, gray threading the deep blue furnishings. Arches shaped the windows, unlit sconces between them. It was nowhere near as grand as the Sultan’s Palace, but its beauty was less sinister, less cruel.
“You had a fever.”
Zafira looked at Yasmine, and Yasmine looked back.
“Even murderers get sick.”
“Serves them right,” Yasmine replied, but the words were weighted with disquiet, strangled and wrong. “Kifah. Is she … your friend?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
“But not the sister of my heart,” Zafira said after a beat.
