We Hunt the Flame(78)
“I’m impressed, One of Nine,” Altair said, inspecting the hares. “Nothing can outrun these critters.”
“I’m not nothing, am I?” Kifah asked as she cleaned her spear. She barely looked out of breath for someone who had snared hares only a cheetah could outrun.
Altair skinned her catch, and Kifah roasted them to mouthwatering perfection. There was a certain thrum of excitement as Kifah cooked, and Zafira found it charming that the warrior whose restlessness was only thwarted in battle could be so happy while handling cuisine.
Kifah had even brought her own spices from Pelusia—a blend of cumin, sumac, cardamom, and other things Zafira couldn’t differentiate—which she rationed begrudgingly. The aroma carried Zafira away to Yasmine’s wedding, to Deen’s pinkie curling around hers.
It felt so far away now. A different life.
Altair had unraveled his turban and wrapped part of it around his neck against the chill. Oddly, Zafira had yet to see him without a turban at all, not even on that night when he had returned from the waters of the oasis without a shirt. He sat cross-legged beside her and gave his portion of hare a lick.
“I’m going to pretend this is a mighty leg of lamb, roasted with garlic and harissa,” he said wistfully as he tore the roasted skin with his teeth.
“What’s wrong with my spices?” Kifah asked with a scowl.
Altair looked like a startled deer. “They are most delectable. Slip of the tongue, not the fault of my brain.”
Kifah hmmed. “Which you seem to have misplaced.”
“Dearest Kifah Darwish, I find your many retorts endearing.”
Kifah appraised the general as if she were seeing him for the first time. “You remember my name.”
Zafira scrunched her nose. “I’ll have mine without the garlic.”
“You don’t like garlic?” Altair asked, eyebrows raised. “At least we know for sure you aren’t an ifrit.”
“Ifrit like garlic? What, you asked one?”
“Ifrit like everything that reeks,” Altair said matter-of-factly.
Zafira’s brows flattened. “So you acknowledge that it smells wretched, yet you crave it anyway.”
“I eat the food, not inhale it. It’s all about the flavor. Right, One of Nine?”
Kifah nodded as if this were a conversation of utmost importance, and Zafira turned away in exaggerated disgust. Benyamin leaned against a wall, one leg propped, a leatherbound book in his hand. Only a safi would find time to read on Sharr. The crackle of the fire shrouded the silence, and after a moment Altair continued with a list of what he would devour had he been in Sultan’s Keep.
“There’s this one dessert I’d kill every single one of you in a heartbeat for. It’s a pastry made of cheese and soaked in syrup and—”
“I know what kanafah is. We western village Demenhune might be poor, but we’ve had the sultan’s delicacies,” Zafira said.
“Oh, good. You looked forlorn there for a moment,” Altair said with a grin.
Zafira tossed a rock at him. “I don’t know if I’d kill for it, but I guess that’s how barbarians work.”
“You wound me, Huntress,” he mocked, a hand on his broad chest. Then he frowned and rubbed his arm where the rock had struck.
Zafira knew she shouldn’t speak to him. She knew he was cunning and would slowly glean information from her as well as she knew she was drawn to him. But when he spoke, teasing and heedless, Zafira gravitated toward him. The darkness stepped back, and his charming grins lifted a weight off her chest.
He reminded her of Yasmine.
She was beginning to forget that he was not her friend. This was not her zumra. They were allies by circumstance, nothing more.
Zafira suspected that Altair’s demeanor was what kept the prince glued to his side. Despite his growling and cool indifference, Nasir likely tolerated Altair’s taunts not because he couldn’t do a thing about it, but because he craved them.
For the thousandth time since that afternoon, she questioned her split-breath decision to save the prince from the ifrit. What had he done in return? Nodded. What had you expected, a kiss?
He sat on a fallen column a little ways away, eating slowly, lost in some dark thought. Zafira barely made out his silhouette in the flickering light, but the gleam of his gaze was clear enough as it drifted among them. She felt it snag on her, too, and something raced beneath her skin in response.
Her mind conjured the moment she’d felled him during their own fight earlier in the day. His body beneath hers without the barrier of her cloak between them. His lips close to her skin. His depthless eyes dark and knowing. The way he had seized up, the way his breathing had quickened. Something crackled in her chest.
He’s a murderer.
And she was starting to forget that he was.
CHAPTER 52
Nasir watched the others enjoying themselves. It was only a trio of hares, meager meat for five famished. Yet they ate and spoke as if they were enjoying a grand feast. As if death weren’t lurking in the too-heavy darkness.
He had gathered his peasant-size share and taken it away from the small fire, seating himself in the shadows while Benyamin’s zumra clung to every word Altair uttered. The general started with food but drifted off to other things: journeys he had taken, sights he had seen, and battles he had won. He teased them, enraptured them.