We Hunt the Flame(53)

She remembered those nights after Baba had died, those nights after Deen’s parents had died, when they had held each other, chasing away fears with simply the other’s presence. The years and years of him being everywhere, no matter where she looked.

He struggled, hacking a cough as he dragged something out of his pocket. It blinded in the sun. A gold chain and, at its end, a ring. He held it out in a loose and trembling fist.

“You would never wear one”—he gasped—“on your finger.”

The chain trickled like molten gold from his palm, and she picked it up, sand sticking to her damp fingers. The gold band swayed, perfect and unblemished. Nothing like Zafira.

“One moment, you wanted to explore past Arawiya, you wanted marriage, you wanted me. Then you turned around and joined this journey. You threw everything aside for—for this.”

Deen’s eyes slowly swept across her face. Zafira thought she would explode. If only you knew.

“Why, Deen?” she begged. “Why did you come to this island?”

“For you, a thousand times,” he choked, but she knew the rest of those words. Words he had said countless times before. His eyes flickered. A thousand leagues and a thousand sands. For you, a thousand times I would defy the sun.

He was always asking for the impossible. Always asking for what she wouldn’t give. She brushed her lips against his cheek, and he exhaled. This time, she wasn’t hungry for more. She longed for what she had already lost.

And hadn’t he told her that, when they embarked on this journey?

“Find the Jawarat, Zafira. Trust…”

He reached for her, and she let his fingers trail the side of her face. He dropped his hand and curled his pinkie around hers, his grip already faltering.

“Today was that day,” he whispered. He breathed one last time before that small finger fell away from hers. Before that beautiful heart that harmed none and loved too much—stopped.

“Farewell,” she whispered, waiting, waiting, waiting for the tears to spill. But they stayed where they were, suffocating her heart.

She thought of Yasmine’s tin of cocoa, sitting in her cupboard, the empty vial of honey. Had she known in the vague way the bond of blood worked?

It was Zafira’s fault for boarding the ship yesterday, knowing he would do anything, anything, for her.

Anger, raw and foolish, quaked through her fingers.

They’ll tell stories about us, he had said.

There once was a boy with a future.

Until all he had left was his past.



* * *



He looked calm, as if in sleep. But the longer Zafira stared, the more she felt it: loneliness.

It encompassed every limb of her body, weighing her down to the sand beneath her legs. She was far from home, in a place no one could find her. The one man who loved her was dead.

Yaa, Deen. If Yasmine was the sister of her heart, more than a best friend, then Deen was her best friend. Deen was her everything, second to Yasmine.

How was such unfairness to the best of souls possible?

He was a body now. Flesh molded into beautiful features that would no longer alight at her voice and smile at her words. Zafira sobbed at last.

Something cracked.

She lifted her head. She didn’t care who was out there now. Whoever it was must have wanted her dead, not Deen. Surely the archer had another arrow to spare? She croaked a laugh: The witch had lied. Someone else had been sent.

There was also that second presence—the rustle she had heard behind her as Deen had jumped in front of the arrow.

The cracking grew more incessant now, a howl accompanying it. She shivered and rose to her knees.

Shadows twisted out of the ground, winding around Deen’s limbs and torso. His indigo turban melded with the pooling black, bronze curls darkening. The sands stirred like water beneath a breeze. Black wisps unfurled and draped over him.

Sharr was taking his body.

Zafira leaped to her feet but hesitated. He would have some semblance of a burial this way, or so her addled brain told her. The arrow glinted in the shifting light as the shadows dragged him deeper still, farther into the sand.

The arrow. Zafira crept closer and tried to pull the arrow free from the confines of Deen’s chest. It snapped hollowly, and her heart cried out, but the upper half of the ebony shaft with the dark silver fletching tapered to points was what she needed.

She took his jambiya and satchel but couldn’t bring herself to take away his beloved tabar.

Zafira stood back as Sharr swallowed the man who had loved her, until not a trace of him was left. Hollowness tugged at her again, weighted her arms and burned in her eyes. She felt nothing and everything at once.

She slipped the chain around her neck, the ring falling at her chest. There were words inside it: “for you, a thousand times.” She bit her cheek. She would find the lost Jawarat. But first, she would avenge Deen’s death. She held the broken arrow up to the kiss of the sun, and stilled as the world dimmed.

Shadows began to rise, adrift in the wind, at one with the sands. A low groan carried through the thickening air, and panic crept into her bloodstream when she realized what was happening.

Sharr had been fed.





CHAPTER 28


Nasir’s arrow had gone straight through the skull of the ifrit. He knew it was an ifrit only because its human form had shifted into something dark before Altair fell with a sickening rasp.