We Hunt the Flame(55)

Altair had finished dressing his wound and had paled from the loss of blood. For a beat, Nasir thought he should have helped tend to his injury. But the beat—like the panic that had gripped him when Altair was shot, like all else—passed, and he felt nothing again.

The general tossed the remainder of the bloody cloth aside. “Decided you still need me?”

Nasir wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of a reaction to his spying. To Kulsum. What’s there to spy about me anyway? “Still deciding.”

Altair stood. He held his right arm rigidly, shirt stained red. “Don’t worry about me, Sultani. I heal faster than your unimaginative mind can fathom.”

“Right. Because you’re some sort of legendary creature.”

“You’d be surprised.”

“Nothing about you can surprise me.”

“He’s dead, isn’t he? The Demenhune,” Altair said. His tone was softened by something like regret.

Nasir’s brow furrowed. “You knew him.”

Altair answered with a half shrug. Yet another fragment of his mysterious knowledge that seemed to transcend caliphates. “He was”—he paused and shortened his answer—“involved in a rescue mission once. A good man.”

“A rescue mission. You.” Nasir scoffed. And with a Demenhune? The rescue of what? Nasir bit his cheek against the questions.

“I don’t kiss and tell, princeling.”

Nasir mock-yawned.

“Well,” Altair said with forced cheer. “It’s just the two of us again, and my, what a couple we make.”

Nasir gifted him a look that could wither crops. “Keep up your endless yipping and only one of us will be left.”

Altair grinned. “Ah, but I was already dead the moment I set foot on Sharr. Might as well have some fun along the way, laa?”

Neither mentioned the fact that Nasir had saved Altair’s life. Or that an ifrit had made an attempt on it.

Nasir didn’t know what had spurred him to shift his aim at the very last moment. To save the man whose words were spent belittling him. Who, against all odds, was his only ally in Sharr.

Nasir was tired of talking. Feeling. Thinking.

“The Hunter will be alert now, and we’ve wasted enough time with your indisposition.”

The sun had dimmed and shadows had risen from the sands. Sharr, coming to life. No matter, Nasir’s task still stood.

It was time for the Hunter to become the hunted.





CHAPTER 29


Zafira was being followed, but all she could think of was Sharr. Guzzling Deen’s blood and hungering for more, darkening the sands, scaring the sun.

She clambered up stone steps, circled past broken columns, and wended her way through tattered stalls made of eroding wood. She would have taken a moment to contemplate the abandoned sooq of Sharr if she wasn’t being daama pursued.

The wind howled, and she could barely see beyond the next five steps. Her cloak wrangled her, a beast in league with the heat. But she didn’t want her pursuer to know who she was, and so she stubbornly swiped at the sweat with the back of her hand, cursing the desert.

If you want something to do, go melt Demenhur.

The shadows stirred, laughing.

She stumbled once, twice—her boot caught on a step she couldn’t see, and she rolled down an incline of rough stone. She let out a string of curses only Yasmine would use, the words echoing in the ruins until the limestone spat her onto more sand, a handbreadth away from a scorpion spearing a lizard, tearing the breath from her lungs. She scrambled away with a hiss.

And then: a rustle. From ahead. Not behind, where her pursuers should have been.

She stood slowly with battered bones, clenching her trembling fingers. She was the daama Hunter—it wasn’t like her to be so shaken. Spotting a crevice between two trellised arches, she ducked into the hollow and waited, carefully sliding her jambiya free.

She had killed animals, yes, but never a living, breathing human. Still, if she had to, if the other was a threat, then she was ready. Her father had taught her well.

The sand stirred and she held her breath as a man stepped from the haze of dust, looking back as she had seen him do so many times before, curls shimmering bronze. She thought of his pinkie twined with hers, of his ring at her bosom.

Deen.

She was going mad. She was the daughter of a madwoman, the daughter of a madman. Madness lived in her blood. That was the only explanation for this.

But he looked solid, real, alive. She had seen him die, she had stared at his still form as Sharr had taken him away.

No. Sharr hadn’t taken him away. Sharr had fixed him and given him back to her.

She stood without a second thought, not bothering with silence. He turned at the sound of her boots.

“Deen,” she said.

Maybe it was a trick of the light that made him look strangely still. Maybe it was because she had spent so long staring at his unmoving chest that it seemed so even now. For who ever looked to make sure another was breathing?

He lifted his hand, long fingers uncurling uncertainly. Something about the gesture made her pause, but he noted her hesitation, the way he noticed everything about her, and smiled.

Deen smiled, the kind of smile that could war with the sun, and all was righted.





CHAPTER 30