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The sultan studied him.
“I should not have to tell you to avoid the use of dum sihr. It has cost our family too much.”
Nasir shook his head quickly. Too quickly. This was his father. Trust was meant to be second nature.
“The Sisters forbade such acts. If we do this, what difference is there between us and the creature we seek to defeat?” Ghameq asked.
Blood magic was forbidden. The use of it did distort the line between them and the Lion. But there were plenty of differences between them and their foe, and the use of dum sihr didn’t negate that.
Still, morality was decidedly not a topic Nasir wanted to discuss with his father.
“Even if we planned to, dum sihr requires si’lah blood. Which we do not have,” Nasir said.
Ghameq grunted his agreement. The sound echoed relentlessly in the silence.
“Perhaps,” Nasir dared again, changing the subject, “we can call off the feast. For now. Until magic is restored and the Lion is no longer a threat. Do you … remember sending out the invitations?”
Where did that line end and begin? There were questions about events where his father would blink emptily and others from long before that he could recount word for word almost immediately. It left Nasir unable to decipher just how much Ghameq remembered from when he was under the Lion’s control over the years, for his memories were clearly unaffected by time.
“Two nights prior,” Ghameq said after a thought. “It is too late to stop them, unfortunately. Besides, we have more reason to celebrate now, do we not, Ibni?”
“Yes,” he ceded softly, fighting dismay. At least the dignitaries would no longer be walking into a trap.
“What of the Huntress?” Ghameq asked, looking down at the sheaves in his hand. “She has not come.”
He knows. A curl of darkness slipped from Nasir’s fingers. For whatever reason, trust was impossible to summon. But nor could he lie.
“I’ve angered her,” he admitted.
A half-truth was enough. Three words that held a multitude would suffice. For truth held emotion, and lies held deception. It was how one knew which to believe.
I miss her, was what he wanted to say. He was alone without her, a soul-deep desolation. Drifting in a world where no one really saw him.
Ghameq laughed, proof that not even the man who fathered him could see him, understand him, know with merely a glance. Perhaps Nasir had been too young the last time he’d heard that laugh, too smitten, too innocent and unburdened by death, but it sounded different now. Harsher. Sharper. Less happy and more calculating.
But people changed, didn’t they?
* * *
“You seem troubled, Prince.”
Aya dropped the hatch and joined him on the rooftop. She had come from the infirmary, and blood stained her roughspun abaya, the pale brown ashen compared to her normal attire. He watched a falcon sweep behind a date palm and saw the gathering in the distance, where a man clad in black cried of the Arz’s disappearance with foreboding.
The hours were waning. He hadn’t realized bringing his father up to speed would require so much time, though it was likely because words were slow to find. There was much the sultan already knew, for he had been alert throughout the Lion’s control, and so Nasir filled him in on the events of Sharr and everything since, skirting the whereabouts of Zafira and Kifah, and the High Circle traversing Arawiya to restore the hearts.
“Where’s Lana?” Nasir asked.
“Still helping at the infirmary. I left to come see you, but she is safer there than here.”
Nasir snorted a breath, wondering how dangerous Aya thought the palace was if she left a young girl amid angry strangers who rioted on the streets.
When the riots broke out again today, a score of the Sultan’s Guard had run from the palace, and Nasir had frozen, half expecting an order from his father. Go. End this.
They had merely exchanged a glance.
If only the people knew rioting did nothing to the sultan. He had barely blinked. He had barely considered Nasir’s proposal to appoint that merchant in Sarasin, Muzaffar.
He pressed his eyes closed for a beat. Aya’s dubiety was bleeding into him, making him suspect his father’s every gesture. Making him wonder if the Lion was still there, mocking Nasir at a level more cruel than ever.
