Zafira saw the moment the Lion lunged and sank his teeth into the Silver Witch’s flesh. One last attempt for si’lah blood. For power. Terror gripped the very air when Anadil screamed.
Then both brothers moved at once.
They did not think, they did not hesitate. It was innate, their actions. Unrestricted by sentience.
Shadows swarmed from Nasir’s palms, light roared from Altair’s.
Magic collided in a crash of thunder and a cresting hum. Both beams struck the Lion, black and white merging into a coruscating, iridescent pillar of magic that rose from the palace courtyard and disappeared into the clouds, dappled in every color Zafira could imagine.
“Bleeding Guljul,” Kifah exhaled.
They were draining him, siphoning every last dreg of his power into Arawiya. Ifrit shrieked, scattering into the shadows. Zafira struggled to breathe, something raw and broken upending her insides. It tugged her as close to the iridescent skeins of magic as she could go before Kifah shouted for her to step back, step away.
The Silver Witch clutched Zafira’s hand. Her face was wet with tears.
“Finish what they started.” She had drawn Zafira here. “His mind belongs in the Jawarat.”
Before she could ask how, Zafira staggered backward. Memories plowed through her, a violent and powerful barrage of emotion. The Lion as a child, in adolescence. As an adult. Lonely, always lonely. The Jawarat trembled in her hands as his memories joined the Sisters’, flooding Zafira with yet another life she had not lived but would always hold because of her bond.
The hum faded to silence.
Nasir and Altair lowered their hands, and the haze steadily cleared.
Where the Lion had lain, a tree now stood, dark branches curling into the sky like fingers seeking something out of reach. At its base, a body lay slumped, amber eyes closed to the world.
Mind, body, and soul, the Jawarat said softly. It was how the Sisters had wanted to defeat him, years and years ago.
“Why?” the Lion whispered. Only, his voice came from elsewhere. No—from the Jawarat, from her heart, where a part of him would live forever.
She closed her eyes against the anguish in his plea. Hadn’t she stood before the Arz that had stolen her father, and asked that very same question?
Against the black tree, the manifestation of his soul, the Silver Witch placed her hand. Lovingly, almost. Part of her truly did love him, the way the Lion might have loved her.
Zafira watched as Anadil closed her eyes and opened them to a new world.
“We are born with the promise of death,” Zafira said softly as a single rose, wild and white, blossomed on one of the branches. It was a gift. “You had merely outlived yours.”