Naina had been around for as long as he could remember, with her startling green eyes and freckles and the dimple on her right cheek. She was of another noble family, so it was said, but Asfandyar learned the truth when he got older: that his father, the great General Afridi, had crossed paths with Wakdar Miangul at the frontlines. Wakdar had saved his life from the Luhgam Empire, and it was because of this that Wakdar found sanctuary with Asfandyar’s tribe.

So Wakdar joined the Afridi tribe, and nobody had the standing to question Asfandyar’s father. No one had questioned him when he married a Black woman, either, because it was Asfandyar’s brave father who kept his men alive at the frontlines.

They all owed him their lives.

So Asfandyar grew up with the pretty green-eyed girl as his neighbor. He and Naina grew together, but Asfandyar always knew she was different, not their blood, even though she was raised just as he was. She was half, for her father was different. He stayed indoors, and if he ever did make an appearance, his face was cloaked, hidden in shadows.

There were rumors, of course, of who the mysterious man was, but Asfandyar, only a child then, did not care. He only cared about Naina, his best friend.

They grew up chasing peacocks trying to find the most beautiful feathers and played in the stream and told each other scary jinn stories at night. An innocent time.

For a boy of seven, this was love.

Then, they grew a little older, and Asfandyar’s father passed in the war, and his mother shortly after. Asfandyar went to live with his chacha, and sadness followed him wherever he went, until the girl with the blue-green eyes brought him a peacock feather she had saved for years.

For a boy of twelve, this was love.

Then, Asfandyar began to grow from a boy into the strange creature that preceded manhood. He began to chase chickens and break their necks, began to throw little daggers into trees as target practice. He began to fight in the streets when his chacha was asleep, and it was Naina who would sneak out in the middle of the night with a wet washcloth and clean his wounds, scolding him, always worried but always curious to know if he had won. He always did.

For a boy of fifteen, this was love.

Then, Asfandyar went to war, and he watched his brothers and his people die, so easily, so callously. When he came home, he was a changed man, and Naina had become a woman. She understood the haunted look in his eyes, for she had seen the same in her father’s. She knew not to push, just to be there, solid, sure, alive.

For a boy of seventeen, this was love.