“Enough.” Aisha’s voice was sharp, cold. “I tire of these jinn stories.”
The prince blinked, looking thoroughly perplexed. He turned that look on Qadir, who shook his head. “My past is my past. I buried it long ago, and I intend to keep it that way.” He glanced up and caught Loulie’s eyes. Forgive me.
There was nothing to forgive him for. This was not Qadir’s fault. And yet—she could not stop reliving the moment Imad had apprehended them in the ruins. You. It was you we were looking for, he’d said. Not the compass, not a relic. The thieves had unknowingly been searching for an ifrit—a creature that had stumbled into her tribe’s burning campsite that night, looking for his compass, and who had found it in the hands of a tortured girl. It had been the thieves who killed her family. Qadir had saved her from them. And yet if Qadir had not been wandering by their campsite in the first place, if the thieves had not tracked him to that area…
They would still be alive.
The realization opened a gaping hole in her heart. It didn’t matter that it was irrational. Her memories were a stronger force, pushing away everything until there was nothing but a deep anguish, one that ought to have been extinguished with Imad. But the flame had not gone out; it smoldered somewhere inside her, screaming, What if, what if?
“Loulie,” Qadir said softly.
“I’ve heard enough for the night.” She felt hollow. Drained. “We’ll speak more tomorrow.” Her words had the finality of an executioner’s ax. The quiet persisted into their halfhearted meal. Later, the prince and Aisha took their conversation outside, leaving her alone with Qadir.
Neither of them spoke. Not until Loulie was ready to sleep and Qadir reached out and touched her shoulder as she was limping away. “I apologize,” he said. “It was selfish of me to only ever want to be Qadir in your eyes.” Gently, he squeezed her shoulder. “Thank you for fighting so hard to reclaim my dagger in the ruins.”
He exhaled softly, then slid his hand off her shoulder. “I managed to save this as well.” He tapped something at his hip: a familiar scuffed-up scabbard. Loulie’s heart jumped into her throat at the sight of it. Imad had not mentioned the blade when his ghouls investigated the hole.
As he always did, Qadir read the question in her expression. “I hid the blade in the desert before I infiltrated the ruins.” He shook his head. “You have taken care of my dagger all these years; it is only natural I would protect a gift from you in the same way.”
Loulie had no words. Even if she had, she would not have been able to speak, tight as her throat was. So she said nothing when Qadir offered her a feeble smile and said, “Tomorrow, when I have regained more of my power, let me heal your injuries?”
All she managed was a nod before she turned away, eyes burning with unshed tears.
When she did finally sleep, her rest was plagued by nightmares.
50
MAZEN
Mazen rose with the sun. After hours of trying and failing to fall asleep in the freezing cave without any blankets, he moved to the mouth of the cave to watch the sunrise. The sky was beautiful, clear of clouds and painted in hues of blue and gold. He imagined those colors stretched across the desert sky like a tapestry, pictured his father, hands clasped behind his back, a soft smile on his face, watching this same sunrise from his palace balcony.
The sultan had always been most amiable before sunrise; Mazen liked to think it was because he had yet to don the mask he presented in court. Sometimes, when his father had been in a particularly good mood, he’d told Mazen stories. Stories about Amir, the first sultan, and his brother, Ghazi, the first qaid.
Mazen slumped against the cave wall. He missed that version of his father.
“Sabah al-khair.” He startled as Aisha stepped into the sunlight, looking amazingly well rested for someone who had been dead and resurrected the day before. “Since you’re up early, do you want to go hunting with me?”
Mazen cringed. Yesterday he had watched ghouls maul a hare to death. It had not been “hunting” so much as a distraction. He hadn’t realized until later that Aisha had wanted to draw him away from Qadir, whom she’d sensed coming. Maybe she had wanted to give the jinn and the merchant time to work out whatever rift had grown between them.
Mazen darted a glance over his shoulder. Loulie and Qadir lay on opposite sides of the cave, backs turned to each other. It seemed Aisha’s plan had failed.
“Come.” Aisha grabbed his wrist and pulled him outside.
Mazen groaned as he rubbed at his eyes. “I thought I had a choice?”
“No. I just thought I’d give you the option before I forced you into it.”
And so they “hunted” once more, taking two ghouls with them and venturing into the desert to look for prey. Mazen wrapped his arms around himself in a useless effort to fight the chill. It was warmer outside beneath the light of the rising sun, but only marginally so. He was envious of Aisha, who didn’t seem to feel the cold at all in her tattered cloak.
The two of them followed the ghouls until a familiar, unnatural silence fell upon the desert. Mazen halted in place. This same thing had happened last night when the ghouls spotted an animal. At first, he had been convinced he and Aisha were their target, that whatever strange magic Aisha had gained from the ifrit had finally turned against her. But then the ghouls had brought back a hare, and Mazen had nearly sobbed with relief.
He and Aisha watched the ghouls climb a distant rock formation until they disappeared. They stood together in tense silence, waiting. Yesterday, Mazen had feared a possessed Aisha would bring him out into the desert and murder him. But thus far the Queen of Dunes had responded to him with exasperation, not violence. Mazen hoped it stayed that way.
Unbidden, he found his eyes wandering to the scars on Aisha’s arms, nothing but a flash of gray beneath her cloak. She caught his gaze and raised a finger. “My face is up here, Prince.”
Mazen flushed. “Sorry, I was just looking at—”
“My scars, I know. You are always too curious for your own good.”
She crossed her arms and shifted her gaze to the Sandsea. Mazen took one look at the ocean of ever-shifting sand and turned away, perturbed by its calmness. So much had happened in those sinking ruins—events he knew would be branded into his memory for the rest of his life.
He could not forget, so he did the next best thing: he attempted to distract himself by asking a question. “How does it work? This deal between you and the Queen of Dunes?”
Aisha’s eyes snapped back to him. “That’s Resurrectionist—” She cut herself off to glare at her feet, jaw clenched. Gradually, the tension eased from her body. “We’re still working it out. The deal was that I offer her my body in exchange for my life.”
“So she occasionally controls your movements?”
“No. But her thoughts—those are more difficult to untangle from my own.”
There was another beat of silence. Mazen did not bring up the sharp smiles he had seen slip onto her face, or the uncharacteristic gestures he had noticed yesterday. Instead he said, “And what have you gained from this deal? Besides, ah, your life?”
“Other than an inner voice that never shuts up? The ability to command a bunch of undead brutes, apparently.” Every word was sharp, bitter.
Mazen wasn’t sure whether to offer an apology or a consolation. He mused quietly on his response until Aisha looked up, and—perhaps it was a trick of the light, but her expression seemed to soften. “I chose this fate for myself, Prince; I do not need your pity.”
His heart sank. Sympathy is not pity, he wanted to say.