She drew his head down to meet hers. Pressed their foreheads together, so their breath mingled and their eyes closed, and there was nothing between them but the way she clasped his throat still, holding him fast.
“Arwa,” he whispered.
She could see ash still beneath the closed lids of her eyes. But his skin was warm.
“Shall I kiss you, Zahir?”
“You have me,” he murmured. “Do what you will.”
She pressed her mouth to his. He tilted his head as her fingers tangled in his hair, and met her.
He kissed as if he had never kissed anyone before—clumsy, curious, learning as she guided him with the curl of her hand, following the touch of her mouth as if it were language, as if she were the mentor and he the apprentice. It was true, perhaps.
But she had never kissed like this before either.
They were both dirty from their travels—from blood and from dust, burnt from the sun, exhausted by dreams and by horror. When they broke apart, he stared at her. He touched his fingertips to the shell of her ear, and she shivered, and laughed.
“That tickles,” she said, and he touched her face instead. He touched her like she was a mystery he wanted to unravel and make whole.
“Arwa,” he said softly. “I’ll be yours, if you’ll have me.”
I’ll be yours.
Her breath stuttered in her throat.
She was a widow. A noblewoman. She had no right to make vows to Zahir, or take vows from him, no matter what she wanted.
She had no amata, but she still felt those words, I’ll be yours, hovering over her skin like a brand. If she took his vow—if she let one pass her own lips—she would not be the woman she was any longer. She would be fundamentally altered.
And yet it had already happened, hadn’t it? Oh, she wore her hair widow short, but her heart had already changed inside her. She was no longer folded small, no longer humble and soft, no longer a woman terrified of her own blood. She was fierce and foolish, brave and not yet broken upon her cause. She was a scholar. She was a mystic, who had her lamp of truth before her. Zahir, before her.
I’ll be yours. What did those words mean for an Amrithi-blooded widow who could not wed again, and for an Emperor’s blessed son and uneasy heir to the Maha himself?
She did not know what the words meant. And surely neither did he. And yet they were both still holding one another—her hand in his hair, his fingers on her cheek—and for all the world she could not think of anything she wanted more.
“I’d like that,” she whispered. “I’d like that very much.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
If the world were just by nature, then after the horrors of the Grand Caravanserai, after holding one another in the dark and hoping like the fools they were, their journey would have been entirely straightforward. But the world was not just, of course.
A pilgrim woke the sleeping camp in the pale gray predawn light. He carried his lit lantern, woke the men first, then the women, and bowed his head to Zahir as if he were afraid.
“There is something out among the trees, great one,” he said. “Something that—frightened me.”
“Ah, Gods, not again,” muttered Eshara. Then, louder: “We can move on. Pass it by.”
Like many of the pilgrims, Arwa turned and fixed her gaze upon Zahir. Only hours ago, he had been bright and laughing, his mouth soft on her own. Now he stood, all pale stillness in the dark, listening to the fear ripple through the retinue around him. His expression was remote. Then he gave Arwa a sidelong glance. Soft.
She nodded in return. Drew her veil close over her hair.
“There’s no need for that,” said Zahir. His voice quelled the noise of the crowd, held it in a silence like a closed fist. “Please. Show me the way.”
Zahir asked if any of the pilgrims would follow him. “It may not be safe,” he said. “But I seek a way to weaken the curse’s strength, and I believe that power lies in your hands.” A pause. He softened his voice. “I will not make you follow. You all paid a high price, in the Grand Caravanserai.”
No one refused.
It was terrible, the power he had over them, this vise of love and hope and faithfulness. And he knew it. She could see it in the thin line of his mouth, in the tight curl of his hands against his sides. But he walked into the dark of the trees regardless, into the faint grasp of an unnatural terror that hung soft in the air.
It reminded her of the fear they’d felt when they’d found the cart of corpses, an echo that turned her knees to water and made her stomach roil. Perhaps a nightmare had passed through these trees. Perhaps a little farther into the jungle lay bodies gone cold. Still, the ghost of it remained, setting its claws insidiously into their skulls.
Zahir stopped, and turned. The light of lanterns flickered over his face.
“Pray with me,” he said. And when one man began immediately, stumbling through an old mantra dedicated to the Maha, Zahir shook his head. “Not to me,” he said. “Pray to the terror in the dark. Pray for it to leave us be.”
The pilgrims hesitated.
“Trust me,” he said gently. And how could they not, when he looked at them with soft, steady eyes and his palms outstretched, as if he trusted them, utterly and completely?
The pilgrims began to pray.
They were not all Ambhan. They were from Chand, from the east and the west, from Numriha’s mountains, from Hara’s fields of gold and green. They had different prayers. Their litanies and mantras and songs jumbled together in a great cacophony of noise. Arwa squeezed one of her hands tight, nails marking her palms with grooves, and used the other to grip Eshara’s hand.
Eshara gripped back.
Their prayers grew louder and more confident, tangling together in a great river of noise, a snarl of words that melded like magic. Arwa prayed with them, words pouring from her lips. Noise, noise, rising and rising, like a storm’s howl, like a cry against the void.
This was nothing like praying alone before the nightmare’s face of vicious bones. This felt intense and fierce and powerful. They grew louder still, and Zahir stood before them all, and met her eyes once more. And stopped.
Their prayers faded away. There was silence.
The fear remained but it was… quiet. So very quiet. Arwa thought again, of a tide against the shore, of the way a river of voices could wear a nightmare’s bones smooth, given time.
“The nightmare cannot harm us any longer,” said Zahir. Quiet, hope like light in his face. He met Arwa’s eyes. “And I thank you.”
Arwa breathed once, and again, and once more after that.
The sun was rising on the horizon.
A week passed. Arwa had begun to recognize Zahir’s followers, to know their names, even as she marveled at the strangeness of the way they looked at and listened to Zahir. They looked at him with awe—read wisdom into his every act. In turn, he was more measured, and quieter than he’d ever been in the past.
She hadn’t realized how much he usually talked—about their studies and the world around them, drinking everything in—until he stopped, and focused instead on appearing quiet and aloof and appropriately beyond reach.
Only in the early mornings, before dawn’s light woke the camp, could Zahir act more like himself. Sometimes he and Eshara would sit and talk, as she whittled the points of her arrows, or cleaned her blade. But often he would look at Arwa, and she would get up, and the two of them would walk off into the gray light, stand very close, and not think about hunger.