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“Baba?”
Zafira stilled. That one word teemed with an eternity of pain, and for a long, confused stretch of time, no one moved. He made a sound between a whimper and a sob.
Now, bint Iskandar.
The Lion stumbled forward. A breathless sort of pity rooted her in place. N
asir looked to Altair. Kifah narrowed her eyes. Who was it he saw? Surely an ifrit would not toy with the leader who fought for their right to live.
The heart, the Jawarat insisted, and she ducked past Nasir and Altair until she saw what the Lion was seeing.
A safi with blue eyes as bright as Altair’s stepped close. It was the man Zafira had seen in the Jawarat’s vision, only not bloody, his body unbruised. His father. He was alive.
Impossible.
And if Zafira was seeing the same face he was, this was no ifrit. It was an illusion—laa, an apparition.
A cruel twist of fate.
There was only one person the Lion had wronged so deeply, so terribly that she could fathom doing the same to him. Only one person with the power to create an illusion so real, no one could tell the difference. The Silver Witch.
The safi continued walking slowly toward him, and Zafira understood that it was more than an apparition; it was a distraction, and she was standing around like a fool.
Zafira ran, tucking the Jawarat against her chest and using both hands to shove the Lion to the dusty hard stone. He fell with an oof beneath her.
He was cold. Startled. Afraid. His eyes were crazed, barely seeing.
Pity broke Zafira’s inhale.
No. Focus.
Her hands shook as she grabbed the lapels of his robes and wrenched them apart, exposing his chest. Now the Lion struggled. He fought against her, shadows pooling in his palms and fading into nothing when she brought the black dagger to his skin.
Panic paralyzed him.
Paralyzed her.
Tell me what to do, she begged the Jawarat.
Altair shouted, “Do it!”
The Lion’s gaze cleared.
She trembled in alarm, but the Jawarat steadied her hand.
And plunged the stolen black dagger through his chest.
The Lion sputtered. Zafira cried out.
Trust us, was all the book said, and the Lion froze, as if he heard the Jawarat’s command as loudly as she did. Down her palm was a line of blood, in her skull was a song. Her fingers tightened around the hilt.
And the dagger ripped downward, carving across him.
“This doesn’t belong to you,” she said, and took the beating heart out of his chest.
CHAPTER 95
Nasir saw Zafira slump over the Lion, and the darkness faded with the suddenness of a blade. Fear cut the air from his lungs. And then she rose with a heart in her fist, blood dripping down the length of her arm. The Lion tried to stand, but collapsed, panting as he struggled without magic, without a healer.
