AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She looked at him warily.
“Let me be your horseman.” Let me be your everything.
He was northbound anyway. The quick lift of her eyebrows revealed her surprise.
“Aren’t you afraid of me?”
Never. “What have I ever done to wrong you?”
Lana’s lips twitched against a smile. Zafira wasn’t convinced.
“You’ll leave the others behind for me?”
Someday, she would learn he would do anything for her. Someday, he would find the words to tell her as much.
“No one will even notice I’m gone,” Nasir said. Not until it was too late, at least. “Have we a deal?”
He watched Zafira’s slow intake of air. “No.”
He shrugged a shoulder and turned to leave without a word, banking on her small sliver of hesitance as Lana panicked.
“Fine,” Zafira bit out. “Don’t vilify the Jawarat, and our pact is sealed.”
Nasir turned back to her and smiled. “Of course, sayyida.”
Of all the lies he’d told, this was easiest.
CHAPTER 76
We do not need him.
That, Zafira thought with her one remaining shred of sanity, was precisely why she needed him. Even if the very thought of sharing a horse with him flooded her with heat.
In the stables, Zafira’s filched prize doubled in weight when Lana snuck her a sly grin as they narrowly avoided Altair exiting the farthest stall. It was yet another way the brothers were utterly different—Nasir would have noticed them immediately.
“Yasmine won’t be happy you didn’t tell her,” Lana said. None of them would be, but when she thought of telling them, she heard Altair’s laughter rolling past her door, the horror on their faces at the sight of what she’d done.
“I’m well aware,” Zafira replied, “and I’ll deal with that later.”
“Well, then, what should I tell her? And the others?”
What, indeed.
“The truth.” Zafira would be far away by then. “We’ve lied to her enough already.”
The stable was stone, each stall carved into an ornate point like a doorway into a place unseen. Polished shoes hung on the wall, alongside brushes and sad
dles, everything neat and orderly, square windows illuminating each steed in brilliance. It was nothing like Sukkar’s shed in their village.
Nasir joined them with a cursory glance as if hoping Zafira had changed her mind, and though every guard noticed him, not one asked what they were doing or where they were going. They were hawklike in their vigilance, however, no doubt garnering a story to share over arak later about the crown prince taking leave with an insipid Demenhune.
He stopped short, looking past Zafira’s shoulder.
“Afya?” he murmured in disbelief.
It was the name of one of the Six Sisters of Old, but he was staring at a horse. A dark gray mare.
“This one.”
