“Maybe she hid elsewhere.” Zafira would leave for the western villages. She was a daama da’ira, and she could find anything, anyone. “Maybe she’s still—”
Lana stopped her with a shake of her head. “Misk found her. She saved them at the cost of her life.”
Zafira caught on the word “found.” It was used in the way one spoke of a fledgling in the snow. The way one spoke of a lost purse that was discovered with all its coins spent.
“Yasmine?” she asked, something squeezing her ribs.
“Alive,” Lana said. “Safe. She’s in the Demenhune palace.”
Zafira’s relief was a heavy exhale everyone noted. The scrutiny was suddenly too much. The eyes trained on her, the sympathy clouding the room, the Jawarat’s silent regard. She shot to her feet and whirled to Aya, only to nearly crash into Nasir.
“I’m sorry.”
Confusion wrinkled her brow, more at the sorrow in his eyes than the words he spoke.
“Why?” she asked. “Did you have a hand in her death?”
He flinched.
He daama flinched. Zafira paused. If the vapors were the work of the sultan, had Nasir played a part? She halted her dark thoughts. Skies. He would have left Sultan’s Keep when she had left Demenhur. That meant he’d been preparing for his journey to Sharr, not planning the massacre of a village.
She dropped her gaze, annoyed and ashamed and hurting and everything at once.
“Come,” Aya said, knowing what she needed. “I’ll lead you to your room.”
CHAPTER 10
Nasir leaned against the smooth door of the room Aya had given him. It was ample space with rich decor, but the bed was simple and neat, lit by the moon streaming
from the open window. He hadn’t realized how long he’d spent in close quarters with the others—cramped ship cabins excluded—until Aya had closed the door behind him and the air quivered with his breathing alone.
He undressed and folded his clothes before stepping into the tub with its lazy wafts of steam. As always, scrubbing himself clean reminded him of everything he hated about himself—the scars on his back, the wrongness of his life. There was another scar now, beside his collarbone, still slick from the salve Zafira had tended to him with. He leaned into the last of the bath’s warmth, remembering her fingers on his skin. The weight of her. The heat of her gaze unraveling him.
Her anguish now. The way her face fell when she understood the depths of his monstrosity, for he had done nothing to stop his father from harvesting the vapors that claimed her mother.
The clothes that had been left for him were his most garish: a deep burgundy qamis, dark robes edged in blue and silver. There was only one way these clothes could have gotten here, and he imagined Altair digging through his wardrobe, grinning like mad when he found this tucked in a corner. Nasir tugged the qamis over his head and hung his robes on the back of a chair. He straightened the books on the shelf and aligned the bowls on the table.
Standing here, so far from Sharr, so close to his father and the air still raw with Zafira’s pain, he felt lost. He didn’t know how to function without orders. How to act without being told.
Before he knew it, he was leaving his room, crossing the carpeted hall, and stopping before another door. He knocked once, softly.
It opened almost instantly.
Her hair was unbound, soft waves caressing her face. She looked younger this way, more vulnerable, and he was at once relieved to find she didn’t look at him with blame.
I’m sorry, he wanted to say. To make her understand.
How are you, he fought to ask, but was it callous to ask what the weight in her eyes already told him?
“I was about to bathe. What’s wrong?” she asked finally. It was a guarded question. The Jawarat was in her hand.
Nothing.
Everything.
“I didn’t mean it,” he breathed in a rush, as if his heart had decided it had listened to his stubborn brain long enough.
Selfish idiot. She was mourning and he could only think of himself, but he was tired. So daama tired of the vines those words had twisted between them.