We Hunt the Flame(115)

This time, Zafira’s smile was real. “If I get off this island, I intend to do just that.”

“You will, Huntress,” Kifah said, sinking her teeth into her food. “You will.”

“I thought you weren’t one for optimism.”

Kifah grinned. “I pick my battles.”

The whisper of a sound curled Zafira’s toes, and her mind blanked. She was in that corridor again, with those crawling, weeping shadows. The lilt of a voice crept through the dry trees. Laa. Not one voice—many. The air stilled and the shadows held their breath.

She latched her fingers around Kifah’s arm. “Do you hear that?”

“The sound of my own breathing? Yes,” Kifah said, giving her an odd look before gently pulling away.

No. Whispers.

Whispers in an ancient tongue, words crawling from the depths of someplace unseen. She slowly made sense of the words. Safaitic. A multitude of voices, begging, calling, reaching. They tugged at her hair, at her arms, her fingers.

She stood as a chill settled in her bones, worse than any the cursed Demenhune snow could cause.

The voices called to her. Nothing like the Lion and his welcoming. This was a plea for help. A cry of ruination.

“Huntress?”

A tremor in Kifah’s voice heightened Zafira’s pulse. Her blood reveled in the sound of the Pelusian’s trepidation.

“Zafira?”

Come. Free us.

Zafira took a slow step toward the voices.

“Where are you going?” Kifah hissed, rising to her feet.

Home. She was going home.

“Let her have a moment,” she heard Altair say.

“She’s not— Oi! Huntress!”

Zafira stepped into the trees, where a path unfolded before her and closed behind her, the wood of the trees crackling and moaning, swallowing Kifah’s frantic calls. The light of the fire disappeared. Zafira crept onward, cautious but unafraid. Blackened branches wove away, entwining above in meticulous, pointed arches.

Marhaba, marhaba, marhaba, the air pulsed. The debris littering the ground smoothed into the glister of marble, forbidding beneath her boots.

There was no light here. But she knew what it was like to hunt without sight. To hear and know all. She picked up words of Safaitic in the whispers, pulsating against her eardrums, thrumming against her heart.

We are the past.

We are the future.

We are history.

We are destruction.

Free us.

“I’m coming,” she whispered to them, elated when they smiled back.





CHAPTER 78


Hayati. My life. One step above love. One word whispered in his ear when he had cried his nights to sleep.

Liar, Nasir wanted to yell as the Silver Witch morphed into someone else, hair deepening to that familiar shade of gold, so dark it bordered black. Eyes softening. Ears sharpening.

Into someone who existed for years and years without end.

“Don’t.” He could barely enunciate the word past the hands closing around his throat. She shifted back into the witch. “Don’t lie to me.”

“What need do I have to lie?” she asked softly.

“I don’t know, and I do not care.” Perhaps the Lion sent her, to toy with his head. “Why are you telling me this now? You’ve had years.”

“I might die in this fight. I might never have the chance to tell you.”

“You can flee Sharr now, exactly as you did all those years ago.”

Her face shattered. It didn’t matter which face she wore—he saw his mother either way.

“It was not in my interests that I fled Sharr.”

He didn’t know what that meant. He didn’t care to know. The burn beneath his collarbone seared him afresh.

“But my time in the shadows has come to an end. You are here; you no longer require my protection.”

“I never required—”

“I told him you were born out of necessity, because my wazirs demanded an heir. He never believed me, even after I dropped the crown and donned this cloak. He sent you and Altair here, a reminder that he held the upper hand, lest I do something in which the Huntress might go against him. He knew I would interfere before you left Sultan’s Keep, and I did. I aided you, I gave you the compass with which you could aid the Huntress, but I could not show my hand.”

Nasir understood only half of what she said. He drew in a breath and knew the words he was about to utter would set him on a path that would not end well. “Prove to me that you are the sultana.” My mother.

She shook her head, and he noted the pieces of his mother that had shifted into the Silver Witch. Or the pieces of the Silver Witch that once lived within his mother.

“Show me proof, or take your leave.”

“Once my Sisters … perished, I knew the people would turn to the safin for leadership first. The last person I murdered was the safi whose name I claimed: the then-calipha—Benyamin’s aunt. I slit her throat and buried her in the grounds of the palace, becoming her in both action and appearance. They appointed me, surprised the Gilded Throne accepted, for no one but that chair knew I was a Sister. I birthed Altair in secret, keeping him hidden in case the Lion escaped Sharr. Alone, I ruled as the safin sultana for decades. Until Ghameq—”