We Hunt the Flame(60)

No. She wouldn’t close her eyes amid the enemy again. She had a mission. She needed to stay alive.

A chill wove across the night, and she wrapped her arms around her knees. Funny how the same desert that had given her a heatstroke such a short time ago now made her shiver.

Altair turned to her, something like earnestness on his face. “I’m sorry.” He glanced at Deen’s satchel. “About your friend.”

Ahead, the hashashin cleared a short boulder and sat with his back to her. She drew her hood over her head, letting it fall over her eyes. That was how much Sarasins valued life. Kill and apologize. Make up for a felled soul with a word.

Whatever fatigue she felt was soon overtaken by numbing grief. She slipped her finger inside the ring, rubbing her skin against the inscription. “For you, a thousand times.” She felt Altair’s gaze on her, yet she doubted he had ever known loss. She stared at the back of the hashashin’s head and guessed he hadn’t experienced it, either.

Sarasins truly were heartless.

Eventually, Altair’s breathing slowed, and she fought a losing battle to stay alert. She fought harder, unsure if she was even awake when the rustle of clothes knifed the night. She watched with hooded eyes as the hashashin turned away from the oasis.

By the glint in his eyes, Zafira could tell he was focused on Altair. A long moment later, his gaze drifted to her and she stiffened, but he didn’t seem to notice.

After what felt like years, he sighed, heavy and resigned, and faced the night again.

Zafira pondered that oddly human sound before sleep dragged her away.





CHAPTER 34


The girl spoke in her sleep.

Rimaal, a girl. The Huntress. She murmured strings of words dotted with curses that would make Altair hoot with laughter; the words “not now”; and a name, over and over and over. If Nasir were to guess, Deen was the Demenhune Altair had killed, and he doubted this Deen had been merely a friend.

She murmured for a sibling, too. Two of them. Sisters whose names made a whisper of a smile twitch at the corners of her mouth. What was it like to have a brother or a sister born from the same mother? Every relationship Nasir had experienced was either fabricated or lived a short life.

He stood over Altair, whose features were blunted by sleep, and stared at the smooth column of his neck, where the qutn fabric of his turban had shifted. It would be easy. A clean cut, painless.

It would make his father proud.

That last thought was what made Nasir nudge Altair’s bare bicep with the toe of his boot. Altair’s right eye popped open instantly and Nasir clenched his jaw—he should have known.

“For a moment, I thought you might do it,” Altair said.

“Do what?” the girl asked. She yawned as she brushed her teeth with a siwak.

Altair’s mouth curled into a grin. “Kiss me.”

Nasir kicked him, and Altair’s laughter only increased.

“We’re leaving now,” Nasir said.

She met his eyes again, and his step faltered. Aside from his father and his dead mother, there were only two people who ever looked him directly in the eye: Altair and Kulsum, but she, too, only briefly.

As if holding his gaze was as painful as spying on a monster like him.

He shut down that line of thought and holstered his bow. The sun was still making its way past the horizon, so the air was cool. He untied the keffiyah from his neck and wove it into a turban around his head.

Altair extended a share of his pita and a trio of sukkary dates to the girl, who eyed them with suspicion.

“It’s perfectly safe,” he said.

“As is my own food,” she replied, digging through her satchel for darker safawi dates.

“You know it won’t last forever, yes?” Altair said, extending the food to Nasir, who ignored it. Altair shrugged and stuffed some pita into his mouth, dusting crumbs from his close-trimmed beard.

“Until I’m dying of hunger, I’ll pretend it will.” She bit her lip, as if speaking those words inflicted pain. Her eyes fell closed, nostrils flaring.

Altair raised his eyebrows.

“If you’re done napping,” Nasir said, adjusting his gauntlet blades, “we need to reach higher ground and chart our course.”

“Yes,” she snapped, eyes flying open, twin scythes of blue fire.

He flinched; he was not proud of it.

Steel hissed as Altair drew his scimitars without a care for quiet. Both of his scimitars, Nasir noted in surprise. Healed so soon.

He led them, Altair on his heels, the girl trailing behind noisily, still addled by her exchange with Altair. Nasir gritted his teeth against the urge to snap at her to keep up, but she didn’t need a man to tell her what to do. That much he knew.

Almost in response to his thoughts, he heard her readying one of her white arrows, her footsteps lightening until he barely heard the whisper of her presence—in moments becoming the Hunter everyone in Arawiya knew of. The Huntress very few knew.

All Demenhune looked like ghosts, but the Huntress moved like one, too.

Nasir wondered what it was like to live without the endless and ever-shifting sands beneath one’s feet. Without the sun deepening one’s skin and rooting in one’s soul. Without the push and pull as the heat of the sun drenched and the cold of the moon caressed.

He glanced back to find her watching him, for once, unreadable. Her lips were pursed.