The man Aisha had captured threw her off in the same moment, nearly knocking the blade from her hand. Aisha staggered. She just barely managed to duck an incoming strike from her assailant as she rushed the other man. The prince’s shadow had fallen from his shoulders, and Aisha saw him crushed against the wall, hands uselessly outstretched to shield himself from his attacker, who was raising his blade.
Aisha stabbed him in the lungs before he could bring it down.
Prince Mazen made a choked sound of distress as the dying man collapsed in front of him.
The still-living man came at them with a roar. Aisha reached for her sword, but it was stuck fast in her victim’s shoulder. Thankfully, the prince was faster. He grabbed the corpse’s sword off the ground and swept it through the air. The motion was clumsy, panicked, but it still landed. The sword lodged itself into the villain’s shoulder.
The man screamed. Prince Mazen screamed.
Aisha experienced a moment of startling clarity. She slid behind the prince as the killer pulled the sword out of his shoulder with a grunt. Mazen stumbled back, gripping the now-bloody blade with shaking hands.
Aisha was ready for him.
No sooner had he fallen into her than she wrapped her arms around him from behind and grasped his hands over the sword hilt. The prince stiffened. Aisha marveled at the softness of his hands in her calloused ones. She could feel his frenzied, fragile heartbeat beneath her fingers.
She pushed the observations away and focused on guiding his blade. Their opponent was still staggering from the first wound, so when she and Mazen plunged the sword into his chest, he did not retaliate.
He groaned, bled. And slowly, he died.
Mazen’s hands were shaking so badly Aisha could barely keep hold of them. The moment she peeled herself away, he keeled over like a puppet with cut strings.
“Prince?” She stepped forward.
He abruptly straightened. He looked unbalanced, like a passenger on a ship trying to acclimate themselves to the turbulent sway of the ocean. “I’m okay.”
Aisha frowned. “You’ve killed ghouls before, haven’t you?”
The prince breathed in deeply. “Yes,” he said through clenched teeth.
She looked at him for a long moment before she handed back the sword. “Then come on. Let’s find this treasure chamber.” She reached down to pluck the sword off the fresh corpse, then strode on ahead. The prince followed.
They passed through more ruined corridors, saw more dusty wall paintings. Aisha was unaccustomed to filling silences, but she tried to comfort the clearly unhinged prince by musing aloud her opinion that the ruins had once belonged to jinn. She hoped the speculation would distract him, maybe even coax him into telling one of the stories he was so obsessed with, but Prince Mazen didn’t respond. He was staring at his hands. At the red smeared on them.
“Prince?”
Mazen didn’t respond. His eyes were foggy, unfocused.
Aisha thought again of his frantic heartbeat. His uncalloused hands. The man before her was not a warrior. He was a pacifist. And in protecting him, she had potentially broken him.
She set a hand on his shoulder. The prince startled and looked up.
“You lied to me.” She frowned. “You’re not okay.”
“No,” the prince said. “No, I’m not. I just—” He took a deep, shaking breath. “I just killed a man.”
Looking at his crumpled, teary expression, it occurred to Aisha she had stopped mourning her victims long ago. A small, muted pang ran through her chest. “If it makes you feel any better, I was the one who swung the sword.”
Mazen laughed softly, dejectedly. “Right. Because I’m an incompetent coward.”
Coward. There was that word again, the one she had hurled at him in the tavern. Evidently, it had done more damage than she had anticipated. She had not realized it was possible for the son of a politician to be so sensitive.
But then, long ago, she had lived her life without armor too.
“We all start as cowards.”
Mazen’s expression fell. Aisha set a hand on his cheek before he could turn away, guiding his gaze back to hers. “We’re all afraid, Prince. The only difference between a hero and a coward is that one forgets their fear and fights, while the other succumbs to it and flees.” Something released in her at the words, though she couldn’t say what it was. “Your fear of death does not make you weak. Only human.”
The prince, for once, was completely quiet. He stared at her with wide eyes.
Aisha released his shoulder with a sigh. He was the one on the verge of tears, so why did she suddenly feel so vulnerable? “I should not have made that word into a weapon,” she mumbled. “I was wrong about you. If you were truly a coward, you’d have left me and fled.”
The prince swallowed. His eyes were glassy.
“You can cry all you like after this is over. But right now, I need you.”
The prince managed a weak nod. Aisha turned and continued down the corridor. She was relieved to be able to turn away from this conversation, except—there was still one thing she needed to say. A word that had been on the tip of her tongue since he rescued her.
“Prince?”
“Yes?”
“Shukran.” It was only a single word, but it eased her heart.
She angled her head slightly, enough to catch the prince’s returning smile. “Afwan.”
It was barely a conversation at all, and yet it somehow felt like the first time they’d spoken. Not as a thief and a prince, but as Aisha and Mazen.
Perhaps that was why their conversation flowed easier afterward and why, when they returned to their wandering and the prince asked her about Imad’s grudge against Omar, she answered him truthfully. She confirmed that Imad had been one of the sultan’s forty thieves and that, after Shafia had died and the title of king was bequeathed to Omar, Imad had worked for the prince. But their camaraderie had been brief.
“Omar’s first and last order for the sultan’s thieves was to capture a priceless relic.” She hesitated, knowing Mazen would not appreciate this next truth. “They tracked it down to a Bedouin campsite and cut through the entire tribe to get to it.”
The prince stared at her in horror. “But why?”
“The jinn-king relics are a secret. Omar did not want rumors to spread.” Aisha flinched. It sounded like a flimsy excuse even to her own ears. “Their efforts were for nothing, in the end. They died at the hands of a mysterious jinn, and only Imad survived to tell the tale. He returned to Madinne and blamed Omar for his comrades’ deaths. Then, because he’s a haughty fool, he challenged your brother to a duel and lost.”
Mazen frowned. “So his hands…”
“An injury from the duel.” She paused at a bend in the corridor. When she ascertained that what lay on the other side was just another empty hall, she beckoned Mazen to follow. “The sultan punished Imad for his insult by banishing him,” she continued. “And Omar had no choice but to start again.”
This part of the story she knew well, for it was when she had entered the narrative. “He chose forty of us by his own hand, and we have served him since.” She paused, her gaze falling on a series of intricate diamond patterns that unspooled across the wall’s cracked surface like golden thread. “I was there when Omar and Imad fought,” she said. “Your brother and I ran into each other on Madinne’s streets; he recruited me before Imad returned.”
“How did you two meet?”
“I tried to pick his pockets.” When he simply stared at her, she shrugged and said, “He saw potential in me. Anyway, that’s why I witnessed Imad’s defeat. That is why he hates me.”
“I think he hates everyone,” Mazen murmured.
Aisha remembered Imad storming toward Omar in the courtyard nine years ago. She remembered the way he had glared at her. You’ve replaced us with a woman? A girl? You have tied your own noose!
Aisha shook the memory from her head with a scowl. “Yes, he is a miserable creature.”
There was a momentary silence. And then: “So Imad has a jinn king’s relic now?”