We Hunt the Flame(57)
He had met Demenhune before, but none like her. Everything about her was harsh, from her cheekbones and the cut of her lips to the point of her nose and the starkness of the dark hair crowned in a hurried plait around her head. A profile of angles, a study of ice. Even her gaze was hard to hold, pale blue shards, cold and unfeeling, fringed with lashes that feathered her pale cheeks.
She slid her gaze to Altair and then back to him, raising her slender eyebrows. “Go on.”
Even her voice was ice. He lowered the bow, and her eyebrows flew even higher.
“Don’t stop now,” she said. “You were aiming for me earlier, weren’t you? Take your shot, jaban. I won’t flinch.”
Nasir’s grip tightened at the word “coward.”
“He changed his mind,” Altair announced, striding up to her. Nasir pursed his lips as Altair plastered on the smile that usually melted the women he acquainted. “Altair al-Badawi.”
Silence. She slid her gaze to Altair again. It was a careful slide, a cold, deliberate shift. Anger pulsed her jaw, sorrow weighted her features.
“Does that work?” she asked flatly. The wind howled, throwing stray strands of hair across her face.
“Hmm?”
“Stepping too close and pulling that harebrained smile. Does it work?”
Nasir bit down a snort.
But Altair recovered as quickly as always. “Sometimes. But you’re one of a kind, aren’t you, Huntress?”
She stiffened at the word and stepped back toward the blackened corpse of the ifrit. Nasir wasn’t sure an arrow to the chest would kill an ifrit, but he wasn’t about to warn her that the creature might still be alive.
Her. The Hunter was a girl.
“Do you want us to bump noses and be the best of friends now? After you killed”—she choked off, unsure how to label the relationship between her and the man who had stared after her with wanting she clearly hadn’t reciprocated—“my best friend?”
Lies. She was a terrible liar.
Altair crossed his arms. “I’m afraid there are better places to make friends than on Sharr. We’re here to propose an alliance … Since my companion and I are heading toward the same thing you are.”
“The lost Jawarat,” she said.
He nodded.
At her disparaging look, Altair’s mouth crooked with the telltale sign of him fighting a grin.
“You come here, try to kill me, murder my friend instead, and now you want to be my … ally? You Sarasins are more barbaric than they make you out to be.”
“Perhaps.” Altair tipped his head and his playful demeanor vanished. “The way I see it, we could kill you and be on our way. But the three of us together might stand a better chance.” He nodded at the fallen ifrit, now obscured by the shifting sands. “We did save your life.”
The girl had the most open features—Nasir could see her thinking the proposal through.
She lifted her eyes to him, those shards of ice discerning the real threat. Nasir’s nocked arrow had led her to assume he had killed the Demenhune.
“And when we find the Jawarat?” she asked.
Not if, when. There was nothing more respectable and dangerous than a woman of confidence.
This time, it was Nasir who spoke. “We decide then.”
CHAPTER 33
Fury burned in Zafira’s veins, harsher than the blazing sands. The Silver Witch had sent Deen and daama Sarasins.
Why the allyship? If they could hunt her down in this abyss of stone and sand, they could find the Jawarat themselves. They had no reason for her. Being the Demenhune Hunter held no merit in Sharr. She was no more than a girl from a caliphate where everyone had snow in their brains and smiles on their faces. The taller one didn’t even give her a true surname; al-Badawi meant “nomad.” A common name men used when they wanted to obscure their origins.
She was bait, or a shield.
But it was die now or die later, as with her decision to accept the wretched invitation. If the Sarasins hadn’t saved her from the ifrit wearing Deen’s face, she would already be dead.
Prolonging her death gave her time to think of a way out of this mess. Better yet: a way to avenge Deen.
So she nodded, and the dark-haired one nodded back. It was by no means an oath. Just a fragile deal held together by the inclines of their heads. She chortled, ignoring the funny looks they gave her.
“Now that we’re all allied and well, how about you tell us your name?” Altair began, as if he hadn’t just threatened to kill her. “I never thought the infamous Hunter would be so pretty.”
Zafira rolled her eyes. “Do you always talk so much?”
He scowled, a perfect half circle of downturned lips. “I would think you’d prefer my small talk to the deathly silence of this one.”
The dark-haired one studied her, the gray of his eyes now an unflinching steel. That ghastly scar on his face gleamed. He might not speak, but his head was full of words. People like him, Zafira knew, were dangerous.
Altair began leading them, wielding a curved scimitar like an extension of his hand. He held one in the other, too, but the bandage wrapped near his shoulder made clear why he wasn’t using it. The muscles in his large arms flexed against the cords strapped around them, and Zafira averted her eyes. How much did he have to eat to hone muscles like that?