Hafsah Faizal

People lived because she killed.

Love is for children, said the girl.

Death is for fools, said the shadow.

Darkness is my destiny, said the boy.

Allegiance is my undoing, said the eagle.

Suffering is our fate, said the beauty.

And they were all horribly wrong.

People lived because she killed. And if that meant braving the Arz where even the sun was afraid to glimpse, then so be it.

People died because he lived. And if that was the only way to carry forward in this life, then so be it.

But that was long before Nasir’s time. He didn’t live. He existed. And no one understood the difference between the two until they ceased to live.

His mother used to say that a person without hope was a body without a soul.

Yasmine shook her head. “I do. It doesn’t matter what you are. You are your strength. Why must you prove the lie that they are better than us by deluding yourself and hiding beneath a man’s clothes? Think of all the women you can help by being you.”

Silence, and then Yasmine’s voice in a harsh whisper.

“What are you waiting for, Zafira?”

Yasmine shook her head. “There are things a person knows. I know he’s out there, that someone. Probably as grumpy as you. He’ll look into those icy eyes of yours and make you blush and wish you could begin all over again. I just know it.”

“Will marriage change that, you think?” Deen asked.

She canted her head. “What?”

“Her. Her silliness. Her knack for mischief. That unbreakable stubbornness.”

Zafira chose her words carefully. “He loves her as she is. Why would she need to be any different?”

“I don’t know,” he said, tightening his grip around her finger. “I just think that once you’re bound to another, you change. That for the happiness of the one you love, and for your own, you change without knowing it.”

“And when we find the Jawarat?” she asked.

Not if, when. There was nothing more respectable and dangerous than a woman of confidence.