The silence between them persisted as they set up their tent. Loulie al-Nazari did not speak to them again for the rest of the night, though Mazen spotted her wandering the outpost stalls. She spent every waking moment with her bodyguard, who loomed behind her like a shadow. Every time Mazen thought about approaching her, the bodyguard—Mazen had overheard her call him Qadir—would frown at him from a distance. Mazen found his deadpan stare even more disconcerting than Aisha’s permanent scowl.
By the time midnight rolled around, Mazen had barely spoken to any of the travelers around the outpost, save for a few who recognized his face beneath his hood. It was a strange thing, to be recognized as his brother. An even stranger thing when people smiled at him with stars in their eyes and referred to him by titles that did not belong to him.
King of the Forty Thieves, they called him. Hero. But strangest was the third title, which he’d never heard before: the Stardust Thief. It was worse than the other titles because it was proof that everyone knew what Omar truly was: A man who stole jinn lives. A killer dressed in silver blood.
He was still thinking about the title when he fell asleep in his tent that night. It passed into his nightmares, a whisper on his lips when Omar approached with his black knife. Spare me, Stardust Thief. Spare me. But Omar, terrible, smirking Omar, had no mercy. He brought the knife down and—
Mazen awoke with his heart in his throat. At first, he couldn’t breathe, could only sit there in shock as he took in the unfamiliar cloth walls surrounding him. He was in a tent, he realized. Not his bedroom. Not the palace. He ran his hands shakily through his hair—only to realize his curls were gone, replaced with coarse, cropped strands.
“Something wrong, Prince?” Mazen looked up and saw Aisha stretched out on the bedroll across from him. She had propped herself up on an elbow and was frowning at him.
Gods, the fall of a feather could wake her.
“It’s nothing,” he mumbled. “Just a nightmare.”
Aisha raised a brow. “Need me to sing you a lullaby?”
Mazen blinked. This was the first time she had responded to something he’d said. Exhausted, he shook his head and stood. Aisha continued to watch him.
She was very pretty, Mazen thought, even if she was more than a little terrifying. She had alluring eyes that were a brown so dark they were nearly black. Her hair, which had been braided earlier, now fell in a silky curtain around her shoulders. Her face was all angles: sharp cheekbones and nose, slanted eyebrows, and a pointed chin. If the legends were true and humans had been made from the earth, then Aisha bint Louas had been sculpted from the toughest, harshest stone.
“I’m going to get some fresh air.”
He was on his way out when the thief said, “The nightmares are normal. I had them too when I first fought jinn. They’ll go away.” She eased herself back down onto her bedroll and turned away from him with a sigh. “Eventually.”
Mazen’s heart lifted at the reassurance, brusque as it was. “I’m relieved to hear it.”
Aisha didn’t respond, but he was unoffended. Now that the silence between them had broken, it no longer seemed so heavy. A smile touched his lips as he pushed open the tent flap. “Tesbaheen ala khair,” he murmured.
“Wa inta min ahlah,” came the grumbled response as he exited.
Earlier, the area outside had been lively, filled with visitors sharing food and gossip. Now it was quiet, the campfires had been put out, and the only light came from the distant torches surrounding the perimeter of the encampment. At first, the darkness was suffocating. It hissed and whispered, drawing Mazen back into his nightmares.
But then he saw the sky. There was no smoke, no trees, no buildings—just that infinite expanse of midnight blue, punctuated by scintillating stars.
He thought of Hakim, who, years ago, had taught him to see constellations. As a boy, Hakim had learned to navigate by them. Mazen had thought he’d be able to do the same once he left the city, but if the stars were a compass, they were one he did not yet know how to read.
The wind gently pulled at his clothing as he wandered to the oasis at the campsite’s center. As he circled the water, he observed that the breeze did not permeate Omar’s skin the way it did his. In Omar’s body, he felt warmer, lighter. And though he was still learning the equilibrium of his brother’s body, he realized he nonetheless felt more confident in his skin. More capable. The best part of their switch, however, was that the injury from the shadow jinn had ceased to exist, which made it possible for him to forget he’d fallen prey to her.
Until the nightmares return. Dread coiled in his chest. When next he was able to coax Aisha into speaking with him, he would have to ask her how long it had taken for her nightmares to subside.
He sighed as he returned to the clearing where their tent was. A campfire he was sure had not been there before crackled at the center. He stared at it. Surely someone would have thought to put it out by now?
“Lost, Prince?”
Mazen jumped at the sound of the voice. By the fire, where he was sure there had been nothing before, he suddenly saw a shadow of a man. A dark-skinned phantom with burning embers for eyes. Mazen nearly fainted at the sight of him. Not a jinn. He took a deep breath to calm his heart. Not a jinn.
He stepped forward and the vision dissipated. Shadows gave way to light, and Mazen saw a familiar man sitting by the firelight. Qadir, the Midnight Merchant’s bodyguard.
Mazen swallowed his nerves and chuckled. “Me, lost? What an amusing thought.”
“Hmm.” The bodyguard looked away, turning his attention to something balanced on his knee. A compass. Even in the dark, Mazen could see the arrow swaying back and forth. He wondered if it was the compass the merchant had referred to during their ride. It certainly looked the same, though it didn’t look particularly dependable now.
Mazen raised a brow. “A broken compass?”
Qadir didn’t even spare him a glance. “Not broken, just precise.”
“Precise?”
The bodyguard offered no response. Mazen waited for a while, but he could not fashion the quiet into a weapon like his brother could. In the end, he walked away. He was curious, but he was also tired. He hoped that this time, he’d be able to sleep.
20
AISHA
After weeks in Madinne, Aisha was glad to be back in the desert.
She was not, however, glad to be here with the present company. She was accustomed to working alone or, on rare occasions, with Omar or another thief. Camping with near strangers was exasperating.
She grumbled to herself as she leaned over their campfire. Things could be worse, she supposed. At least the bodyguard and the merchant weren’t inept. On the contrary, Qadir was good with a bow, and Loulie knew how to skin and cook the game he brought back. For the last three days since they’d left Madinne, they had helped set up camp and chart the way to Dhyme. All in all, Aisha could admit that they had been decent traveling companions.
And then there was Prince Mazen. Though he was familiar enough with Omar’s mannerisms to be a decent actor, he was dead weight. All she had managed to teach him so far was how to make a fire. Every other task she handled by herself. It would not have been so terrible, she thought, if she hadn’t been pretending to serve a man who was not her king.
Aisha plucked a branch from the edges of the fire and absently began to draw shapes in the sand. It was not until Loulie al-Nazari joined her and glanced at the lines that Aisha realized she was scratching flowers into the dirt. She brushed them away with feigned nonchalance.
The merchant pulled her knees to her chest. “Hobby of yours?” she asked.
“None of your business,” Aisha said.
“Not one for talk, are you?”
“Speak for yourself. Do not pretend you have not been avoiding us.”