“Oh, she’s gone~!”
“She’s done for. That’s it. It’s over. We lost her.”
“She’s blushing so hard! LOOK!”
“That’s not a blush, that’s a whole damn fever!”
“Oh, Sultan, you idiot! Do you even realize what you just did?!”
“Tch—”
An older man shook his head.
“For a second, I really thought something was about to happen.”
“I mean—”
A woman standing next to him smirked at those words.
“—it kinda did. Look at her.”
All at once, as if they were a single entity, everyone turned to Safira.
She was frozen.
Like a Holy Relic caught in a seeker’s sights.
Eyes bore into her from every direction, each gaze filled with expectation, curiosity, and, in some cases, barely restrained laughter.
Her past self, on the projection, was already a shade of red that nearly rivaled the setting Shams. A rare sight. A rare, beautiful humiliation that none of them had ever witnessed before.
But the Safira of the present?
Oh, it was worse.
Because now, she was not just red.
No, shame had returned… and it wasn’t alone.
Embarrassment had joined it.
It curled around her, wrapped her up, constricted her throat, and squeezed her lungs.
The heat spread up her neck, climbed to her ears, settled deep into her cheeks like it planned to stay forever.
Safira wanted to die.
She had been fine. She had been totally fine watching this all unfold. It wasn’t like she hadn’t already known what happened back then. It was her past self. She had done that. She had lived through it. And yet—
Watching it? Seeing her own face go tomato-red? Seeing herself freeze, stutter, blink up at Malik like he had just handed her all Twelve Moons?
Hearing the crowd react like this?!
She wanted the earth to swallow her whole more than ever before.
Someone snickered.
Someone else coughed, clearly covering a laugh.
Their amusement had turned to something else—something infinitely worse.
Glee.
They weren’t just enjoying this. They were relishing it.
This was the first time they had ever even seen such a sight from a Lady.
Especially not one with a status as high as hers.
“Ohhhh, she’s mad, mad.”
“This is the best damn day of my life.”
“I bet she rewatched that scene already, just to analyze the hand placement.”
“She probably wants to go back in and get another pat.”
Safira twitched.
Her entire being screamed at her to deny, to lash out, to do something—anything—to erase the smirks, the chuckles, the knowing glances.
But she couldn’t.
Because the problem was—
They weren’t wrong.
Not completely, anyway.
And that just made it worse.
“Oh, she’s breaking!”
“No, no, no—this is different! This is WORSE! She’s not just blushing, she’s combusting!”
“This is a whole new shade! Someone name it! Someone put it in a book!”
That last one had done it.
It was the straw that broke the draft’s back.
“ENOUGH.”
Her voice wasn’t loud, but it was enough.
The laughter didn’t stop entirely, but it quieted, became more subdued.
At least until Layla looked at her friend and finally said her piece:
“He’s my husband, you know.”
The crowd erupted.
***
{Inside The Projection}
Safira stood there, blinking up at Malik like he’d just pulled the Twelve Moons out of the sky and handed them to her.
She was still blushing, a rare moment of quiet settling over her.
Malik didn’t say anything.
He just waited to see if she was going to snap out of it.
She didn’t.
Instead, she just kind of fidgeted, stealing glances at him, rubbing her arms like she didn’t know what to do with herself.
It was… bizarre.
The same woman who had been running her mouth nonstop for hours was now suddenly acting like a kid who’d been noticed by her crush.
Malik sighed, shaking his head.
“You good?”
Safira cleared her throat, nodding too quickly.
“Yeah. Fine. Totally fine. Why wouldn’t I be fine? I’m fine.”
Malik just stared at her.
“You sure?”
She nodded again, then frowned, then nodded slower, like she was trying to regulate her own movements.
Malik exhaled through his nose.
“Right. Anyway—”
“You patted my head.”
He blinked.
“Yeah?”
She swallowed.
“Why?”
He shrugged.
“Seemed appropriate.”
Silence.
Safira opened her mouth, closed it, then just let out a soft, breathy:
“Oh.”
Malik didn’t even bother responding to that.
Instead, he closed his eyes, focusing on the surrounding Aether.
The whole night would be a waste if he couldn’t find what he was looking for.
He was NOT about to go back empty-handed. He needed to find those tracks.
Everything faded—the wind, the distant chatter from the outpost, even the fact that Safira was still standing there like her brain had combusted.
Then he felt it. A distant disturbance in the sand. Subtle, but there.
His eyes snapped open.
Without a word, he dashed ahead, gesturing for her to follow.
Safira, finally snapping out of whatever weird trance she had been in, hurried after him.
They moved quickly, reaching the so desperately coveted trail in seconds.
They were remnants but were exactly what he needed.
Malik went even faster, not wanting to lose them.
The desert wasn’t kind to trails—it swallowed them up the moment the wind decided to turn, but there were still clues.
The way the sand settled differently, the faint, almost invisible disturbances left behind where something heavy had passed.
Malik’s senses, enhanced beyond belief after becoming a Jinn, picked up on them where others wouldn’t.
The trail was fading fast, but he was faster.
They followed it in silence, rushing through the dunes, past a dried-up riverbed, through rocky passages where the wind howled between the stones like a dying beast.
Then, finally, the boring desert began to change.
Palm trees began to populate his surroundings.
Tall, swaying gently in the night breeze, their heavy fruit hanging in thick bunches.
Beneath them, patches of green stretched out—irrigation channels carved into the sand, leading water to rows of crops that thrived despite the harsh environment.
The air smelled different here. Richer. Earthy. Alive.
A natural consequence of the abundance of crops in this land.
These crops weren’t like those in the lands west of here. They were desert-borne, stubborn things that had adapted to survive where most wouldn’t.
Golden saffron flowers, their delicate petals shimmering under the Moons.
Rows upon rows upon rows of hardy barley, short and tough.
Malik didn’t know how such a… plant? He didn’t know the term, but yeah, even he, with his barely there knowledge about the world, didn’t understand how these things could grow on sand. Didn’t they need soil? Water wasn’t enough, right? Or was he being stupid?
In any case, that wasn’t all that surprised him.
There were olive trees, too.
Their trunks were twisted, showing their ancient age, but they too were ripe with… fruit? Was olive a fruit? Well, in any case, he could also see a weird crop jutting out of the sand all over the shop.
Each of this ‘weird’ crop had vines coiled around its own wooden frame, bearing small, deep-purple fruits that looked like some mix between a grape and a fig.
Water wheels groaned softly in the distance, pulled by sluggish, tired draft animals, drawing water up from deep underground.
And beyond it all, small mudbrick houses were scattered, lanterns flickering in the windows, casting warm pools of light onto the sand.
This was it.
This was his target.
Malik exhaled, slow and deep.
Now, they knew how to cripple the Pit.
He knew what relaying this information would do.
Once he handed this over, the dominoes would start falling.
There’d be no stopping it. No taking it back. No pretending he hadn’t been the one to set it all in motion.
He knew the people who would suffer for it. He could already see them in his mind, those poor bastards who had no idea that, by the time the Shams rose again, their lives would be in ruins.
That their world would crumble because of what he had just uncovered.
And yet.
He had accepted that.
He had accepted the blood.
Accepted that he wasn’t walking some righteous path. That he wasn’t some untouchable, noble hero. That he was just as much a butcher as the ones he fought. The difference? His reason had justice… or so he believed.
Sure, it was hypocritical. No point in lying about it. He could mourn them all he wanted, shed quiet tears in the dead of night for the lives he was about to destroy—but he would still do it. He would still pull the damn lever.
Because this was war.
And war didn’t give a damn about guilt.
No half-measures.
No second-guessing.
No mercy.
He couldn’t afford it.