“Finally,” Zahir said. “A little peace.”
“It’s almost as if you don’t enjoy being worshipped.”
He gave her a displeased look. She smiled in return, and brushed her shoulder against his, the barest touch of cloth against cloth.
He was tense, for a long moment, his body knotted with feeling. Then she heard him exhale once more, and felt his shoulder come to rest against her own.
“What a time we’ve had,” she said softly. “Can you believe we’re still alive?”
“No,” he said. “I truly can’t.” A pause. “When you entered the realm of ash, when you chose to face the nightmare alone—for a moment I thought you were lost. I do not know what I would have done, if you had been.”
I cannot live in a world without you in it.
She shivered a little, remembering his words. The fierce rasp of his voice.
“You would have died too, I expect,” she said. “And the rest of the Grand Caravanserai with you.”
“You saved us,” he agreed, faint smile on his lips as he looked at her. “The pilgrims should be calling you their savior.”
“I’d rather they didn’t,” said Arwa. “You don’t look like you’re enjoying it very much.”
His smile faded, abruptly.
“There is something—unpleasant—about lying to people, I find,” Zahir said. “But I suppose facing their worship is a small price to pay for our survival. And soon enough it will not be a lie.”
There was a thread of something dark in his voice, in the tilt of his head, as he looked carefully away from her and looked at the water once more. She thought of his fear of being the Maha’s heir in truth, a creature fed by prayers and adoration. She thought of what waited for them both in Irinah.
Her stomach felt suddenly leaden.
“Speaking of worship,” Arwa said, with false lightness, “the nightmare told me something of its secrets, in the realm of ash.”
She told him of its vulnerability to prayer: how worship could weaken its power, soften its influence. How it had saved the widows in the House of Tears. As she’d hoped, his eyes brightened. He turned toward her, jostling their shoulders, the water splashing against the bank.
“Arwa. Do you know what this means?”
“I do,” she said. “We have a tool to use against the nightmare.”
“A shield,” he said. “Limited, and no cure in truth, but a shield against the dark and death regardless.”
“We have the Rite of the Cage too,” she reminded him.
“We do,” he said. “We do.” And he smiled at her, nothing worn or faded about the look this time; he was brilliant and soft-eyed and oh, her breath caught in her throat at the sight of it. “And it’s all your doing.”
His face was more familiar to her in near darkness than light. She’d grown to know who he was—pedantic, idealistic, clever, alone—when he lived in constant darkness, in the tomb enclosure on the palace grounds. She’d thought he wasn’t quite real then. Too pretty, too strange, too cut off from the world.
She didn’t think he was unreal now. His hair was growing longer. His jaw was stubbled, his mouth chapped. His nose was faintly burnt. He was so familiar to her and yet still so strange.
She wanted to unravel him.
She wanted to place her fingertips against his burnt nose. She wanted to smooth his hair.
She wanted to put him back together.
Fool, she thought.I am a fool. I throw myself into my fears as if I have control—
“Zahir,” she said. Heart a cold patter in her chest. Breath blooming in fog before her lips. “I… I told the nightmare that you were mine.”
Breathless silence. Then, “Why?”
