We Hunt the Flame (Sands of Arawiya #1)(34)

His words struck her. This would be her last day in Demenhur for quite some time. Possibly forever.

A voice nagged at her, telling her this journey to Sharr was a lie of an errand that could only bring pain. But she had seen that look on the Silver Witch’s features. Zafira knew what it was like to crave redemption, to blame oneself for a moment’s weakness.

It was her fault Baba lay with blue lips beneath ice and snow.

Deen watched her, and despite the silence, she knew by the sorrow drowning his beautiful eyes that he had read everything on her face. It was her most damning feature, having her face speak before she did. A thing people never ceased to tell her. An opinion that had been repeated over and over until it had become fact. She wrapped her shawl and tossed her dwindling coin pouch at him before reaching for the door.

“Let’s go freeze our lips.”

Deen’s grin meant more to her than anything coin could buy.



* * *



Zafira folded into herself when they left the house. She noticed, because she didn’t have the obscurity of her cloak around her. Her shoulders dipped forward, pulling in her chest. She tucked her chin low, and pressed her lips thin.

She wasn’t shielding herself from the cold.

Deen paused. She felt the warmth of his fingers at her chin before he lifted her face to his level. “Zafira. The moon never fears the night. The gazelle doesn’t fear the unknown. Why must you, Huntress?”

“But this is not an unknown.”

“These are your fears, bleeding from the Hunter and into you. Don’t fear yourself.”

She tried. She tried to keep her mind on other things, like the bothersome asymmetry of the houses tucked side by side to her left and the plain of white snow broken by the wheat-like trunks of the Empty Forest to her right. It was a sparse, barren thing. A babe of a forest, compared to the cursed Arz.

Deen stopped before a bush, leafless and near-dead, sprawling in front of a house. Before she could ask, he made a satisfied aha! and turned back to her with something cupped in his palms.

A flower. White and whiskered in a fringe of ice. Silken petals held together in a loose grip.

Zafira remembered a dozen wild roses like this, salvaged by Baba. Pressed into her small palms while he hugged her tight and called her his abal. She had known, even then, that Abal was the name of one of the Six Sisters, and it had made her young self feel powerful as much as it made her feel loved.

Deen folded back her shawl and tucked the flower beneath the dark strands of her hair, and she felt the prick of its stem at her scalp before he took her hand in his. “The beauty that withstands all. Stubborn in the harshest of atmospheres.”

“Sounds like a bull,” Zafira said against the rock in her throat, and he laughed that laugh she loved more than the warmest of fires on the coldest of nights.

When they reached the sooq, Deen squeezed her hand, and she realized how quick she was to mindlessly retreat into herself. She held her chin high as they passed a girl trailing her mother, a shawl around her small shoulders, a steaming cake held reverently in her small fists. They passed a man hauling a wagon of rugs, promising discounts as he barreled on, and another with a trunk full of salves, tinctures, and medicinal herbs, listing prices that made Zafira’s eyes pop. Merchants shouted. People bartered. The jumu’a was warm beneath her shoes. Old Adib’s stall was busy, the skins of Zafira’s hunts being passed from man to woman, woman to Adib, bartering and bickering until they settled on a price.

“Good to know Adib is doing well,” Zafira noted.

Deen grunted. “He’s getting harder to deal with, that one. We might have to find a new merchant.”

He guided her to a small shop tucked behind the one for the superstitious. Unlike the others, this wooden door was a shade of lavender. Zafira touched the smooth surface just as it swung open and a girl burst out, darting through the sooq with an excited shout, her brother behind her.

Deen grinned at Zafira. “Ready?”

“I’ve never been more excited,” she drawled, but she suddenly was. There was a rose in her hair and a smile on Deen’s face. There was a pastel door before her and warmth carving a home in her chest. Something thrummed at her fingers, and she wanted to bottle this feeling and cherish it forever.

She did not expect an iced cream parlor to be warm. To be so full of people and wide smiles. Clattering spoons and jeweled metal bowls. Deen tugged her to a corner of the majlis, and she slipped out of her shoes and folded her legs beneath her, setting her arms on the low table. Everything was so … clean.

“What flavor do you want to try?” Deen asked, unable to dim the light in his eyes.

Zafira slanted her mouth. “Iced cream?”

“Plain it is.” He laughed and went to the counter, where two men taking orders greeted Deen by name as he passed them a few dinars. A third figure stood farther back, tugging gooey white cream by the handful. She wore the same outfit as the men.

She. Skies. Zafira studied the workers more closely as Deen returned and sat across from her.

“Who runs Bakdash?” Zafira asked as two girls sat down to their other side and a third went to order for them. The place was bustling, despite the cold. The place was happy, reminding her of what she did not have—peace, happiness, a life. All she did was hunt and get ready for the next hunt.

“It’s been in the same family for generations. Why the sudden interest?”