We Hunt the Flame (Sands of Arawiya #1)(95)

Kifah turned.

Nasir pursed his mouth and darted for the ruins, pockets leaden with misfortune.

He moved without a sound, the shadows setting his heart ablaze. It didn’t take him long to find a vestibule away from the camp, secluded with a window facing the other side. He shoved a plank of wood aside and entered. His footsteps echoed, and something skittered away.

He wanted this to be quick, done before it began. But hope was for the desolate, so he cleared his mind and began his work. He gathered brushwood and scraps of wooden debris, piling them inside the shadows of the stone chamber. The cool breeze from the yawning window snatched his attempts to light the little hoard aflame. It wound its way around his neck, kissed his throat, and whispered in his ear.

Nasir swallowed, ears burning against the sensations, and tried again, exhaling only after the satisfying hiss of the fire inhaling its first breath broke the silence. The chamber was soon awash in a dance of orange and gold.

He pulled the cursed leather sleeve from his pocket. Inside were three strips of papyrus. Three, in case he lost one. In case he lost the second one, too, being the mutt that he was. Thoughts of his father stirred memories of his mother. Her dark hair, her quick laugh. Her razor smile when she bested him with her ebony scimitar in the training grounds. The words that calmed him, a balm in the dark when she worked Alderamin’s quick-healing black resin into his burns.

No one truly treasured a mother’s touch until they could no longer feel it. No one missed a mother’s love until the well was depleted.

The flames mocked him.

He gritted his teeth and choked on his breath. This was the curse of memory. Of a wound ripped open. His eyes burned, and he knew they were rimmed in red.

The world wavered, and in the desolation of Sharr, Nasir Ghameq slowly came undone. He saw the hurt in the Huntress’s eyes. Felt the anger burning in Altair’s gaze. Heard the lash of Benyamin’s words. Tasted the blood of the hundreds he had slain. Smelled the burning of his own flesh when the poker touched his skin.

Again and again and again.

He fell to his knees and grabbed fistfuls of sand. The grit bit his palms and the darkness amplified, nearly swallowing the flames whole. He had people to kill and a book to find and orders to follow. He had an endless life to continue.

He threw his head back and screamed a soundless scream to the sky. Only the stone ceiling stared back.

Like a tomb.

Dread spread through his limbs and numbed everything else. He climbed to his feet and gripped the wall with a steadying breath.

He pulled one strip from the leather sleeve and tossed it into the fire, ignoring the words inscribed in blood. The Silver Witch’s blood, because only her blood rushed with magic, both vessel and wielder. The greedy fire crackled, devouring his gift.

Jaw clenched, Nasir murmured the words and took a step back, waiting for the Sultan of Arawiya to arrive.

The monster awaiting his master.





CHAPTER 62


Zafira woke drenched in sweat. Despite herself, she looked to the ledge where Nasir was resting, but the growling prince was nowhere to be seen.

The glint of metal caught her eye—Kifah, twirling one of her black lightning blades. The fire had dwindled to embers, and the camp glowed with the waning moon that peeked between the laced leaves.

She froze when the crackle and hiss of a new fire whispered in her ear. Then she was off without a second thought.

She slipped between the bedrolls and into the maze of stone, taking in the alleys of a run-down sooq as she stole past. She felt her way past the ruins, ancient stone crumbling at her touch as she followed the crackling of the other fire. She should have made sure Altair was asleep before she left. The last thing she needed was to cross paths with an undressed general. Again.

It didn’t take long to spot the dark stone painted in the brilliance of firelight.

She recognized the unkempt hair, the still stance that barely concealed silent strength. Had she been anyone less attuned to the world and accustomed to silence, he would have noticed. Zafira did not doubt the stories of the hashashin prince.

She did not doubt her own stealth, either.

He was in a small chamber, barely as wide as a bedroll was long. She slipped beneath a pointed arch and through the length of a hall, stopping in the shadows of the crumbling threshold. He faced the fire stiff-backed, and that was how Zafira knew something was amiss. For even in battle, she knew, he was always relaxed.

The fire howled eerily. It grew, bursting and roaring toward the ceiling, unnaturally tall. Zafira swallowed.

The gigantic flames shimmered and hissed, shifting to the same shade of plum that permeated Demenhur’s skies in the earliest hours of the day. She heard Nasir draw in a quick breath.

As a man rose from the fire.

Sweet snow below. What dark magic was this? The prince wasn’t surprised in the slightest, which meant he was familiar with the occurrence. Zafira’s eyes were wide, burning from refraining to blink. Though the man seemed to exist before her, she had the sense he wasn’t really here.

Then where was he? Who was he?

He wore a turban, though his fiery form obscured the color of the cloth. He towered a full head over Nasir, and his thobe stretched across his broad shoulders. Power rippled from him.

“Well?” the man asked Nasir by way of greeting. The cool tone of his voice was almost like Nasir’s. Zafira could barely make out the prince’s features, but he seemed to have changed.