We Hunt the Flame (Sands of Arawiya #1)(59)

“With what? Would you like me to sing to pass the time?” Altair asked.

“The results of your apparent mind-reading,” she deadpanned.

“Ah, it’s just that I can see you plotting our murders leagues away,” Altair said. There was an edge to his voice when he added, “A little thing to remember, Huntress: your face thinks before you do.”

“My brain, unlike yours, works before the rest of me does,” Zafira retorted. She knew her face spoke before she did. Everyone knew. But Deen knew it best of all.

Altair laughed. “It would be uncharacteristic of me to disagree.”

As they continued away from the cover of the stone structures, she was fully aware of every weighted glance the two young men shared when they thought she wouldn’t notice. She was even more aware of the way the dark-haired one watched her.

The longer Zafira alternated between sand and relentless stone, the harder it became to breathe. Her hood became a cage, and her eyes burned as sweat seeped between her eyelids. The world tipped more than once; the horizon rippled.

She ran her tongue along her chapped lips.

Water. Everywhere she looked, there was water.

A mirage, Zafira. It’s a mirage.

“Huntress?” Altair paused by her side when she grasped a trellis to hold herself upright. She gave him an impatient wave, and he carried on with a shrug, shuffling sand in his wake.

Breathe. Remove your wretched cloak. What was the point of it anymore? They knew she was a girl. She lifted her fingers to the cool clasp of her cloak and … no. She wouldn’t be bested by a cloak. She could endure a little heat.

A shadow fell to her side, and Zafira glanced sharply at the dark-haired hashashin. Something shifted in his features, just barely, when she met his eyes. A mix of surprise, and a stir of anger. There was a vulnerability in the way his dark lashes brushed his skin when he blinked.

“Take off your cloak,” he said.

Her throat closed and her head spun. Spurts of sand struck her skin.

“What do you want with me?” she whispered as her breathing grew shallow.

He murmured a reply, but all she heard was that silvery lilt before the sun winked away and she tipped into darkness.



* * *



Zafira finally understood why Arawiyans celebrated the moon. Why the sight made people weep.

It was the desert. The sweltering heat that drained them to their core until the sun sank into the horizon and the moon swept across the dark expanse of sky, gifting them her cold touch. It was a beauty they didn’t appreciate in Demenhur, because of the shy sun.

She had never been happier to see that majestic sphere of white.

Moss was cool beneath her back. A figure was bent over her, silhouetted against the moon. He brushed a damp cloth across her forehead and pursed his lips when he saw that she was awake. The dark-haired hashashin. Altair was nowhere to be seen.

Skies. She had blacked out. She had blacked out in the middle of an uncharted island with two Sarasin men. Panic tightened her chest and she scrambled back, boot heels digging into the dirt, moss sticking to her palms.

A pool of water glittered darkly beneath the moon, surrounded by lush plants. Beyond the small oasis, sand dunes stretched for as far as she could see. Her cloak was folded to the side. Her satchels were there, too, untouched.

The moon cast the hashashin in shadow, sharpening the hollows of his face. “You passed out because of the heat, and you would have cracked your skull if I hadn’t caught you. Altair carried you here. I removed your cloak.” He turned his head and lifted a hand to his neck. “Nothing else.”

His voice looped with the darkness, near silent. As if the very idea of speaking disgraced him.

“Who are you?” she asked him. She folded her arms across herself, ignoring the cloth in his extended hand.

He dropped it to his side. “Depends on the slant of light.”

Desolation laced his words.

“What do you want with me?” she asked again in a whisper. Why did you try to kill me? Why did you care for me?

His lips parted.

“Ah, the sayyida blesses us with her presence, as pale as the moon herself!” Altair called as he emerged from the shadows, bathed in blue light. Zafira nearly sputtered at the sight of his bare chest. Golden, sculpted—skies. He grinned, the shameless man. “About time, too. We need to get moving.”

“We’re staying here for the night. She needs rest,” the hashashin said.

Now Zafira glanced at him in surprise. Judging by the sound Altair made, it was clear the hashashin rarely paid heed to anyone’s needs but his own.

“I’ll keep watch,” he continued.

Altair toweled his body. “But of course, sul—”

The hashashin cut him off with a growl, and Zafira lifted her eyebrows. Altair let out an exaggerated sigh and responded with a two-fingered salute.

For Sarasins, at times they seemed oddly … normal. As Zafira struggled to avert her gaze, Altair wrapped a fresh bandage around his wound. He threw on his clothes before unfurling his bedroll, an intricately woven carpet of blue and green fringed in beige. Then he lay back, crossing his arms behind his head with a wince. Kharra. Zafira hadn’t brought a bedroll of her own.

Altair grinned wickedly, noticing the same. “We can share.”

“Ah, no, shukrun,” she said quickly, tempering the flare within her as she slipped back into her cloak. Deen would have offered his bedroll and slept on the sand if he had to. She grabbed Deen’s satchel and set it against an eroding stone. Deen. Deen. Deen. All that was left of him were the things he had touched. A tin of cocoa and a vial of honey, both as empty as the world without him. She closed her eyes.