We Hunt the Flame (Sands of Arawiya #1)(109)

She fell and Nasir caught her. Held her. Feared her. Wished like a fool.

And then—

In the absolute darkness, a veil lifted and Nasir, despite his pain, could finally see.





CHAPTER 74


When Zafira came to, her heart seized at once—the Lion, his dark corridor, the chains. The poker touching the prince’s skin. Panic clawed its way up her chest until the familiar basalt scent of Sharr’s sands calmed her.

She was free from the jaws of the Lion’s den.

An outcrop of stone towered before her. A stream trickled to her left, small plants dipping into its waters, and Sharr’s dry breeze was a welcome touch on her skin.

Her throat was parched, and when she sat up, every part of her ached. A strap rested on her lap; only one of her satchels had made it out of the Lion’s lair.

The prince lounged in front of her, his back to the stone. His robes hung open, tan skin shadowed by the dark layers, still held partially in place by the wrap around his waist.

He was watching her, something distant in his gaze. Something broken.

“The Lion. The ifrit. Where are the others?” she asked carefully.

“Far enough that I don’t have to carry you anymore.” There was a crack in his voice. He didn’t meet her eyes, and she had the acute sense that he was nervous. She studied the shell of his ear, the smooth curve of it marking him as human, despite his half-safin blood. “You’re heavy.”

Of all the things he could say. “Are you expecting an apology?” she asked.

His handed her his goatskin. Darkness swallowed the gray of his irises. “No.”

She drank, swiped her sleeve across her mouth, and refilled the skin. When she turned back, he was staring at the flowing water. “I buried my mother by a stream. Or her coffin, at least. I never saw her dead body.”

The sultana. He was the prince—he lived and breathed in a different world than she did. Extravagance at his every glance, people at his beck and call. Zafira had never wished for more than she had, but she wondered, now, how life was for someone like him.

He clenched his jaw and pulled back his shoulder, a tiny reaction to something that had to be very painful. How much pain did one have to endure before a burn became as bearable as a nicked thumb?

She could help him, she realized. She dug through her satchel, finding the tin of resin, running her finger over the lid as she watched him. She was nowhere near as skilled as Lana when it came to healing, but Umm had taught her enough.

He stared back without a word, the gray of his eyes fractured. If she could catch a wish-granting jinn, all three of her wishes would be spent in mending his heart, for not even Umm would know how to treat such sorrow.

“It needs to be treated,” she said before she could stop herself, and pulled the tin out of her bag. He dropped his gaze to the silver can but didn’t object.

She pulled out more from her kit—a clean cloth, liniments, a salve made of honey, a small canister of copper salts, and a vial of tannic acid. Then she washed her hands and wiped them down before crawling toward him.

A vein flickered in his jaw as he watched, and her pulse raced.

“Does it hurt?” she asked softly.

“Not right now,” he said truthfully.

He stilled when she neared. His exhale trembled when she lifted her leg to his other side, pinning him between her thighs. His hands twitched, as if he were holding himself back. Skies. She hadn’t thought this through, or she would have waited for the others to come. And now her legs were threatening to give way beneath her and his mouth was so close, all she needed was to tip his head up and—

“Do I disgust you?”

The words were so soft, she wouldn’t have heard them if she wasn’t this close. She wouldn’t have heard the strangled chaos beneath the simple question.

She pursed her lips and thought of her cloak. “I would be the last person to judge based on appearance.”

His response was half of a broken laugh. “And character?”

It took her a moment to realize the Prince of Death had cracked some semblance of a joke, but there was too much in his steel eyes for it to be funny. Too many questions and too little distance between them.

She could feel the heat of his skin this close, and she blamed the quiver in her fingers upon the fatigue in her bones as she reached for the folds of his robes. She pulled the cloth aside, casting the wound in Sharr’s wan light. Her knuckles swept his collarbone and she heard the hitch in his breath, felt the quicken of her own.

What was she doing so close? Sweet snow below, she should have asked him to lie down. Then she wouldn’t have had to climb all over him. Yasmine waggled her eyebrows in her head.

“I wasn’t going to come after you,” he said as she soaked the cloth in cool water. “The last person I tried to save lasted two days before I buried her with my own hands. Before I learned killing was easier.”

“But you did come,” she said, wanting to ask who. She pressed the cloth to his skin. He flinched, and she gripped his shoulder to hold him in place.

Something had changed when he was shackled beside her. Something had broken after the poker touched his flesh and the shadows erupted from his fingertips. He wielded the darkness as if it were his.

“I didn’t want to lose my compass.”

There was something about his voice that stopped her from snarling. He stared at her, his eyes tracing her face with a look she couldn’t decipher. She didn’t realize she was starting to fold into herself until he spoke.