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“There are few men as witless as you. I saw the Demenhune Hunter with my own eyes. Did you think to protect her by not bringing her here?”
Nasir went very, very cold when Ghameq’s gaze fell on Lana. His father would not know the girl, but the Lion would—in the same way he had known Zafira before Sharr. Danger sparked the air. The roaring grew louder.
“Your orders were to kill her. Your orders were to kill them all, yet you disobeyed. You uncovered someone’s misplaced mettle and dared to show your face here.”
As if Nasir had no right to stand in this throne room. As if he had no right to sit upon the Gilded Throne forged by the Sisters of Old, whose blood burned in his own veins. As if he had not been asked to come here.
Breathe, Nasir told himself. He was not petty. Insults were letters festooned into words that could not inflict pain. A lie and a losing battle.
“You brought me here to mock me,” Nasir seethed, barely restraining the emotion that threatened to bleed into his words.
The sultan scoffed. “Did you expect gratification, mutt?”
Something
inside him
snapped.
Darkness erupted from his fingers like ravens taking flight. Distantly, he heard Lana’s surprised cry. The hashashins came alert, and Nasir fought to control the mass. Pressure built in his chest as Aya attempted to placate him. He could fight ten hashashins—he couldn’t keep Lana safe, too.
It’s not him. It’s not your father.
The voice lilted through his ears, wrapped around his limbs. Calming him. Reasoning with him, even when she was somewhere far, far from here. His heart wept. The shadows froze like a fog.
You are not the sum of his disparagement.
It was the Lion, Zafira’s words reminded him. The Lion was baiting him, as he had done and continued to do—every bit the animal of his namesake toying with his prey.
Nasir calmed the chorus in his blood and found it: the vessel that bled black. He cinched it closed, and the shadows disappeared, and satisfaction gave way to pride. Pride lifted his gaze to his father’s in time to see a flicker of surprise cross his face.
“Get out, mu—”
“Yes, Father,” Nasir replied.
It was a powerful feeling, cutting his father off, but he knew better than most that it was easier not to feel than to rely on the highs of emotion. Behind him, the throne room doors groaned open in wordless dismissal. In moments, the hashashins were back in their neat rows. The medallion swayed, enticing. The lingering shadows had vanished, burned by the light. It looked as if nothing had changed. As if they hadn’t been on the brink of an irreversible chaos.
Ghameq smiled, and in it, Nasir saw the Lion.
Nasir smiled back, imagining the medallion in his hands.
CHAPTER 28
A wave struck Alderamin’s shore as the bridge fell, the Strait of Hakim engulfing marid and rotting white wood alike.
Zafira clutched her bow in one shivering hand, arrows in the other. The blue-green water churned crimson, her horse’s body gone. She had barely kept herself alive and intact.
Kifah heaved beside her, drenched to the bone, and—
Zafira sat up. “Where’s Seif?”
“Where’s the heart?” Kifah echoed the word pounding in Zafira’s skull.
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The water receded, whispering its apology.
“‘Where’s the heart?’ she inquires. Not a word for the safi who saved her despite her impending mortality.”
