“I have no interest in taking it from you, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Zafir said, crossing the room to pour himself a glass of water from the pitcher I’d just drunk from. “I’m assuming a friend or family member has the other?”
“Yes,” I told him. “But my sister and I don’t discuss anything that would be of interest to you.”
He drained his glass. “I don’t doubt it. I remember what my sister blathered on about anytime I was forced to listen.”
I fidgeted with the fabric on my skirts. “When you weredoing my makeup, you said youhada sister,” I said. “What happened to her?”
“She died about ten years ago.” Zafir’s tone was softer and less dismissive than it normally was.
Some of the ice around my heart melted, but just a little bit. Rahil had tried to tug on my heartstrings too.
“I’m very sorry,” I told him quietly.
Zafir shot me a calculating look, as if trying to decide if I was sincere or not. His shoulders relaxed a little. Apparently deciding to trust that I was genuine, he said, “Thank you. I miss her, as obnoxious as she was from time to time.”
Silence hung in the air, less frosty than before.
“What was her name?”
“Jasmine.”
“May I ask what happened to her?”
“She fought in the recent war against Termarth. She died the day before the war ended.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“They said it was an infection that killed her, actually,” Zafir continued placidly. “She sustained an injury during battle, but the healer stationed to her platoon had been killed. I was there as an apprentice healer, but I didn’t have the expertise at the time to save her. I wasn’t allowed to move her, so her infection festered until she finally died.”
“That’s horrible.”
“Yes, it was. I cared for my sister a great deal, and watching her pass away so painfully was something I’d never wish on anyone. After her death, I vowed that I would find a way to overpower any illness.” He gestured at the bottles lining his shelf, and I thought of how Rahil had claimed that Samira wanted something similar. “Now I’m a reclusive workaholic who thinks of nothing else.”
He locked his jaw, looking hard at one of the bottles. “You would’ve liked Jasmine. She always loved antagonizing me.”
“It sounds like we would have gotten along splendidly, then.” I couldn’t help my voice getting softer to match his tone. “If my sister had died young, I never would’ve married Rahil. Nadia tried to steal from Rahil, and he said she would go to prison unless she married him.”
Zafir looked up at me. “But then he married you instead?”
“I volunteered to take her place. Nadia’s only seventeen, and Rahil is more than double her age. He agreed to shorten her prison sentence from many years to a single month if I married him.” I smiled wistfully. “Nadia’s birthday is coming up soon and I won’t be there to celebrate with her.”
“So he coerced you into marriage.” Zafir let out a soft noise of disgust.
I laughed. “Hey, at least he didn’t arrest me to try to exploit me for knowledge about a genie. I think your ability to scoff at him is minimal.”
The ghost of a smile flitted across his face as he headed back to the bedroom. “That’s fair. Are you coming back to bed?”
I followed him. “Am I going back to the floor, you mean? Yes, I planned on it.”
“I was rude not to offer you the bed. I’m sorry.”
Zafir was apologizing? I blinked several times. He was apologizing to me, and it sounded sincere. The world must be ending.
I shrugged, trying to stay nonchalant about it. “It’s only fair. I was rude to you all day. I’m not going to take your bed.”
“There’s a cot in the closet; I’ll get it out for you.” Zafirwent to the closet, opened it, and pulled out a folded-up cot that he stretched out on the floor for me.
“You made me sleep on the floor when there was a cot readily available? Now I don’t feel as bad for being rude to you.”
