We Hunt the Flame(48)

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

I’m sorry, too, he said in the silence, but Deen Ra’ad never had anything to apologize for. He was too pure. Too perfect. Too good for this world basking in darkness.

“I sometimes forget you’re no longer that girl I helped from the trees all those years ago. That girl who dirtied herself in the mud and made sure I was just as filthy,” Deen said softly.

She sputtered a laugh, and he wove her braid into a crown.

“You’re a woman now. The Huntress who will change Arawiya.”

Silence lifted his words, echoed them within the dark confines of the ship’s belly. How could she summon words knowing she couldn’t spin them in half the beauty he could? But he saw her thoughts. He would always see every notion as it clicked into place and he exhaled the smallest of smiles.

The ship lurched to a halt.

We’re here. Here. Here. Here.

She pulled her gaze away from his beautiful face and drew on her cloak. Her fingers trembled when she reached for the waning lantern and stood, Huntress once more.





CHAPTER 22


Nasir had never seen the dandan, only heard of its tales. Before, when he used to listen raptly to the lies that were stories.

The creature before them was most certainly a dandan. It was serpentine, something out of myth, trembling as it rose from the sea. Because of the Arz, it was likely that the creature had rested for decades. In unsatiated hunger.

It was twice as wide as Nasir’s height, the bulk of its body obscured beneath the waves rocking the ship. Thick scales overlapped, glistening a deep iridescent blue-green beneath the glow of the sun.

Altair whistled. “Shame such a beauty is tied with such a ridiculous name.”

The creature’s head swayed, two depthless black eyes shifting to and fro. A strange hissing escaped its mouth, gills contracting on either side of its narrowed face.

“I don’t think it can see,” Nasir murmured. At his voice, the creature’s head tipped to the side in an almost innocent gesture.

Altair backed away, footsteps slow and measured, before he drew his bow and leveled for the creature’s eyes, or gills, Nasir couldn’t tell.

He threw a glance at the oblivious crew still going about their work. They blinked and flashed with the light, solid yet ethereal. The dandan didn’t notice them any more than they noticed it.

Nasir drew a steady breath and nocked an arrow of his own. “We should—”

The creature released a high-pitched screech, loud enough to ripple sand at the depths of the sea. As soon as the screech ended, with deafening silence and a gust of salted wind, it began again.

The dandan reared back and shot toward them, jaws parted to reveal razor-sharp teeth and a gaping black hole of a mouth. A green tongue lashed within.

Nasir and Altair let loose their arrows.

Both of them were deflected.

Nasir cursed and ducked against the side of the ship.

The dandan’s head pierced the mainsail, tearing down the mast as it crashed onto the deck. Altair shouted out. Water slickened the wood and soaked Nasir’s clothes as the ship tipped to the side with a terrifying creak.

The dandan whipped its head, hissing and screaming, even bigger than it looked from afar. It passed through the phantom crew as it slid toward Nasir. Kharra. He leaped to his feet and darted aside, but the dandan was faster.

Much faster.

He was thrown against the wall of the ship. His bow fell from his hands and skidded across the deck. He struggled for breath, pinned between the creature and the rails, scales like bones digging into his stomach.

A gill parted near him, and the dandan’s steaming breath nearly suffocated him. He jerked away when another slit parted and a depthless black hole stared back. If an eye and gill are this close, then its mouth—

The creature screamed again. Sound exploded and Nasir shouted in surprise, clamping his hands on his ears while gritting his teeth. Red and black streaked across his vision. The sudden silence that followed the dandan’s cry was just as deafening.

The monster lifted its head, swaying the entire time, and twisted to look at him.

It can’t see, Nasir reminded himself as his ears continued to ring. He swayed and held steady. But when the creature revealed its teeth, Nasir wasn’t so sure of the stories he had heard.

Until someone shouted.

“Oi! Dandan! What was your mother thinking, giving you such a silly name?”

Altair, the fool.

The dandan stilled. It contracted its gills and narrowed its black eyes.

“Dandan, oi! Dandaaan,” Altair sang. “Look at you, so green and blue. What a name! What a shame! I pity your mother, and your brother. Oi, dandaaan!”

The creature tossed its head, body undulating, and Altair carried on with more ridiculous singing.

Nasir opened his mouth to stop Altair from shaming his family to oblivion, but the dandan’s eyes rolled to the back of its head. It convulsed, green scales falling like loose shingles on a rich man’s roof. It croaked a halfhearted cry and slumped, slipping back into the sea with a heavy splash that sent the ship rocking.

Altair grinned at him from the other end of the chaos.

“That, princeling, is how you defeat a dandan.”

Nasir looked over the edge, expecting the creature to return with more of its kind.

“It’s dead?” he asked, incredulous.