We Hunt the Flame(113)

When silence fell, he looked up again. Benyamin stared into the trees in contrition. Kifah massaged a balm onto her arm, foot tapping a beat against the stone. Zafira had folded into herself, knees to her chest, and all he could think of was her touch as she tended to his burn.

This was the zumra. The zumra he belonged to.

He was no longer here to kill the Huntress and take back that old tome. He was here to help her and the others. It was no longer about the book and magic—they needed to vanquish those amber eyes for good.

Free magic. Free Arawiya. Free his father.

A pained hiss broke him out of his thoughts. He turned to see Altair had rolled up the fabric of his pant leg, blood streaking his shin from a wound inflicted by the Lion’s ifrit. The general was struggling for his bag, opening his goatskin with bloody fingers.

His elongated ears stood foreign against his dark hair.

Nasir drew in a breath and cautiously made his way closer. He clenched his jaw and crouched beside Altair, the black of his coat settling behind him.

A monster couldn’t be free of his master if he never tried.

Altair choked and coughed at the same time. “I’m shocked, princeling.”

Nasir was, too.

“I was about to ask the Huntress for help. She seems to know her stuff.” Altair waggled his eyebrows, anger forgotten. Nasir glared and wordlessly took the goatskin from his bloody hands to refill by the stream.

Altair gritted his teeth as Nasir cleaned the wound and carefully wound the bandage around his leg, reciting three words to himself over and over again: He’s my brother.

Altair tilted his head as he regarded him, and it was the most insulting thing the man had ever done: dismantling the apathetic mask Nasir had taken years to perfect.

“You’re my brother,” Nasir said suddenly, and as Benyamin shifted his focus to them, he realized he was beyond phrasing his questions as assertions. “All this time and you didn’t think to say anything?”

“Half brother,” Altair said with a groan. “So half the time, I did think of saying something. The other half”—he seemed to ponder his next words—“I very much wanted to kill you. You are the reason our mother is gone.”

The words were a knife to Nasir’s stomach. A noose of letters around his throat. His pulse fluttered when a wisp of black unfurled from his fingers, and he bit his tongue, reining it in. Every day he breathed was a reminder of his mother’s death, but hearing the words from Altair was different. Worse.

He recalled Altair’s hands around his neck after Deen had died. “You had your chance to kill me.”

“I made an oath, or I would have killed you years ago,” Altair murmured, and Nasir did not doubt it.

“An oath,” Nasir repeated. He tightened the bandage, and Altair hissed again.

“Allegiance is my undoing, it seems. If Ghameq could keep an oath to her, I figured I could, too. He was a good man. Treated me like his own and never went back on his promise. Not once was I harmed. Until he sent me here with his son, who had orders to kill me. That, princeling, was the moment I knew Ghameq no longer lived inside the body of Arawiya’s sultan.”

Until the Lion. But Ghameq did live. Nasir had seen hints of the man he once was, even if fewer and fewer as the days progressed. When he had mentioned the sultana that day. When the palace cook made her favorite mahshi with an extra squeeze of lemon over the stuffed squash, just as she liked it. “What of your own fathe—”

“You’re my brother,” Altair said calmly, flexing his leg, “not my secret diary.”

Kifah looked between them, spear in hand. “I’m going to find us something to eat.”

Altair nodded at Nasir’s wound when she left. His voice was kinder than Nasir had ever heard. “Does it hurt?”

“Any more than the rest of them? No,” Nasir said, looking away. His gaze strayed to Zafira, lost in thought, ring clutched in her fist. “Do I need your secret diary to learn why you killed the Demenhune?”

Altair clenched his jaw and looked away.

“You didn’t mean to kill him, did you?” Nasir cast him a pitying look. Altair remained silent, and Nasir scoffed softly. “You weren’t even trying to kill Zafira.”

Altair’s lips twitched at the sound of Nasir saying her name before they dipped into a frown, his eyes downcast. “There was a second ifrit that day, during our little skirmish. The one you killed to save me? It had been trailing us since we set foot on Sharr. The second one was trailing the Demenhune. It was … near her then, when I shot that arrow.”

Nasir never thought a ruthless general could be so pained over a single death.

“Then Deen leaped,” Altair continued, “and it was too late. He was a friend. His brother-in-law was, too.”

“So you decided that was the right moment to attack the ifrit?” Benyamin asked, finally asserting himself.

Altair slanted his mouth. “I was hoping to save them both. Kill two birds with one stone—get rid of the ifrit and, in the process, create enough chaos so that both of the Demenhune could escape, saving you, little brother, from another deathmark on your soul.” His tone softened. “Instead, I killed one and broke the other.”

A sob followed his words, and Nasir looked up sharply.

Zafira. He would have slain a thousand men to remove the raw anguish weeping in her eyes.