We Hunt the Flame(107)

He was cruel. He was—

“Some villain you are, toying with the shackled,” Zafira said, gritting her teeth.

The Lion laughed softly, raising a hand to trail down her cheek, searing her calm when he swept his thumb across her skin. Nasir watched, stiff beside her. “What a mouth you’ve developed, azizi. Let me teach you to tame it.”

And then the Lion of the Night pulled aside the collar of Nasir’s robes and pressed the poker to his skin.



* * *



Nasir

fell apart

at the seams.

He gritted his teeth against a cry, the sound clambering up his throat from a time that existed years ago in a palace far beyond.

Shock became pain became anguish. Pain was nothing. A reaction to an incursion, an emotion instinct begged him to act upon.

But he was the Prince of Death.

Pain, for him, was always confined to the enclosures of his heart. In memory, and what each infliction uncovered. Forty-eight times.

Today marked forty-nine.

And then he could take it no more—he wept.

He clenched his teeth and bit his tongue until copper crimson spilled from his mouth, twining with the salt dripping from his chin and welling in his eyes. Melding into the darkness spilling from him.

As he remembered and remembered and remembered. Forty-eight times.

“Stop!” she cried out. Kulsum. His mother. The Huntress. Zafira.

Her chains rattled as she begged. But it was done, wasn’t it? The poker was discarded, glowing in the firelight. Just as it had been discarded forty-eight times before.

Smoke rose from his skin, the stench of burnt flesh besieged him, reminding him. Fitting, since he had run out of room on his back.

Nasir slumped in his chains. Skeins of black bled from his form, as if he were fading into shadow himself.

The Lion only laughed. The Lion of the Night, who still lived.

Nasir fought to remain lucid. Pain is nothing. Pain is a reaction. He thought of the medallion around the sultan’s neck. The Lion, staring back at him every time his father ridiculed him. Hurt him.

That poker had touched his back again and again and again. He had screamed, at first. He had bit his tongue until it bled, next. He would have taken each press until his body was covered in black, but his mother had interfered.

Only once, a black teardrop on the skin of her arm that Nasir would never forgive himself for.

His mother. Whose grief had overtaken her. Whose love had turned around and plunged a dagger through her beating heart.

And then Nasir had killed. Bloodied horizons across innocent throats. Final exhales that sighed across his knuckles as he tore his blade from left to right. Endless feathers tipped in red. A woman when she was nursing her child. A man as he was saddling his camel. Owais when he was scribing on papyrus. The Caliph of Sarasin when he was dining with his wazir.

Death upon death upon death.

The smile he had carefully folded into his memories rose behind his closed eyes. His father, before the Lion laid claim to his mind, body, and soul, making him a monster.

Making Nasir a monster.

The Lion tsked, studying him. “No one to protect you now, is there? Worry not, it’s almost time for our family reunion.”

Nasir’s every heavy inhale shook, every exhale trembled. He could not turn his face to look at her. Zafira. To see her pity. You are weak.

His vision wavered as he stared back at the Lion with as much indifference as he could muster. He had the Lion to thank for the mask he donned. “My father has suffered enough in your hands.”

“Ghameq?” the Lion mused. “Laa, laa. I was referring to your brother.”

Nasir only gritted his teeth, tasting copper on his tongue. “I have no brother.”

“I seem to recall you do.”

He was tired of being toyed with. Tired of being the mouse between the lion’s jaws.

“Eat your lies, Lion. Ghameq had only one son.” Nasir knew this for a fact, as certain as the wisps of darkness that spun from his fingers. As certain as the burn beneath his collarbone.

He was darkness. He was adrift in the desert, lost to himself.

“Perhaps.” The Lion tilted his head, enjoying this. “But your mother had two.”

Three forms stepped from the corridor. Two ifrit, one man. Blood oozed from the man’s lip. His muscled arms glistened with sweat, and his golden hair stood out like a blaze. Hair Nasir had never seen without a turban.

A turban that had obscured the elongated points of his ears.

He lifted a feeble smile, and Nasir’s heart faltered once more.

“Peace unto you, little brother,” said Altair.





CHAPTER 73


Zafira knew the prince was a killer. A murderer. Arawiya’s greatest hashashin.

She did not know he could cry.

She wanted to tear the Lion apart with her bare hands, but all she could do was beg. Promise him the Jawarat. Curse the shackles holding her in place.

And then it was done. The lapels of Nasir’s robes hung open, revealing his copper skin and a new scar across the expanse of his soul. Zafira stared at the wound, the blistering flesh. Her eyes burned with the wrath of a thousand storms.

Nasir lifted his head and spoke as he always did. But she saw the difference. In the crack of his voice, the tremble of his mouth, and the shatter of his gray gaze.