AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Altair scoffed. “And risk my hair turning gray?”
“You’re bursting with quips,” Kifah pointed out.
Altair was too stunned to think of a comeback. Nearly a century and he didn’t notice that tell?
“Do you ever think about how the Sisters failed?” she asked.
“They trusted my charming mother.”
Kifah shook her head. “We’re a zumra made of mismatched ends, one goal holding us together, unafraid to ask for help. We have the ‘as
abiyyah they didn’t.”
“‘Asabiyyah?”
“The essence of our zumra,” Kifah said with a shrug. “Unity based on shared purpose, loyalty to one another over that of kinship.” She looked at her inked arm. “I never really understood the concept until now. Until us.”
“The Sisters had that, too,” Altair argued.
“Every rule has within itself the seeds of its own downfall, and the Sisters’ was no different. They trusted their own and no one else. If there’s anyone who can save Arawiya, it’s us.”
CHAPTER 79
By the time night fell and the temperature dropped, Zafira was sore all over. She had somehow managed to hurt Nasir’s feelings, and the silence made his presence behind her even more overwhelming. The heat of his chest. The loose bind of his arms.
It had been more than a week since she’d ridden a horse, and the urge to collapse against him almost outweighed her dignity. Her back ached, and her legs ached. Her chest ached, too, from holding still to protect her mending wound as they crested the sloping hills of Demenhur’s less-populated lands. They were fields once, bearing herbs and other plants harvested for medicinal purposes. Now they were blanketed in white, awaiting the return of magic like the rest of Arawiya.
When they neared a village at the Demenhune border, Nasir slowed Afya to a walk. The streets were silent except for the whistle of the cold wind. Torches winked like amber eyes from the shadows, and the shops were the kind of dark only ghosts were drawn to, alleys beckoning like the one-legged nesnas out of a child’s nightmare.
“Why are we slowing?” Zafira asked. There was something about this village she didn’t like. Even the moon had tucked herself behind heavy clouds.
Nasir sighed, a warmth on her chilled neck that she welcomed in more ways than one.
“There is a downside to having Afya on this journey.” He slid off the mare’s back and began leading her on foot, studying the surrounding structures. “Had she been any other horse, we could have swapped her and been on our way. She must rest. We’ll continue just after midnight.”
“Surely she can go a little farther,” Zafira said, aware she whined like a child. “We left before noon.”
His gaze flicked to her and back to the road. “The later it gets, the less likely we are to find rooms.”
“I can sleep outside.”
“I thought you wanted to kill the Lion, not deliver him your corpse,” said Nasir, as apathetic as he had been on Sharr. “We need to change your bandages and find you a bed.”
She shrank back. “I can change them myself.”
“I’ve no doubt,” he murmured absently, slowing near a dilapidated inn. “I’ll see if they have any vacancies.” He dropped Afya’s reins and started down the path. There was a matching building to its left, brighter and more alluring, filling her with unease.
Here we leave him. Make for the stables.
The Jawarat’s urging shot her with fear. She called him back. “You can’t go in there looking like that.”
He looked down at his clothes with a frown. How was it they had been on a soggy trail all day and he still looked perfect?
“Like … what?”
“Yourself,” she explained, holding back a laugh at his perplexed state. “We—Demenhune don’t like Sarasins.”
His brows lifted at that. “So I should—”
