We Hunt the Flame(85)

I once loved.

She had heard those words elsewhere, but they seemed forever ago now. He was a mess of scars like the sky was a mess of stars. From the one stretched down his face, to the craters on his back, to the ink on his arm. For that was what scars were, weren’t they? A remembrance of moments dark.

There was more to the prince than she’d first thought.

“Bonding moment khalas?” someone asked.

Altair. Yes, their bonding moment certainly was over. There was a weight in the general’s eyes now, likely a product of learning that the Silver Witch was one of the daama Sisters.

She took the replenished goatskin from his hands, wiping the stray droplets with the edge of her tunic. Altair and Nasir were so different, it was a marvel they hailed from the same caliphate. Nasir was the dark to Altair’s light. The night to his day.

“We were just getting to the good stuff,” she said dryly.

Altair laughed. “Sounds like Nasir. Trust him to leave when things are getting good.”

“You say it fondly.”

He made a choking sound, and a laugh bubbled to her lips. She still puzzled over their relationship. They were well acquainted, that was certain, but how Altair could be a ruthless general was beyond her.

Her smile slipped and her thoughts stumbled to a halt. A ruthless general. A coldhearted murderer. How could she have forgotten?

Altair turned to her, blue eyes bright with whatever he wanted to say. They were the same hue as the stream, a thought she stabbed quiet. But he took in her expression, the stiff set of her shoulders. The distrust she should never have neglected.

He looked away without a word, and the curve of his shoulders collapsed.

When they reached the others, Benyamin smiled, but whatever peace she had felt before had disappeared, and all she could do was stare back.

Kifah pursed her lips before deciding against whatever she was about to say. “We should head up the stream. Avoid the sun,” she remarked instead.

“The sun has been a coward ever since the ifrit attack,” Nasir said, glancing to the dull skies.

Altair was still quiet, and the conversation felt forlorn without his commentary.

“There’s no point following a trail that won’t lead us where we need to go,” Zafira said, and Benyamin hmmed in agreement. “We’re supposed to head that way.”

They followed her outstretched hand to a point in the horizon where the skies deepened to angry black and the sands swelled in waves of copper.

“If I were less realistic and more pessimistic, I would say we’re going to die,” Kifah drawled in the silence.

Nasir sheathed his scimitar and stalked forward.

“Best not keep death waiting, then.”





CHAPTER 55


Weariness and wariness became a common exchange, the sun weighing them down despite its gloomy glow. They trekked and tracked for five whole days without incident, taking short rests and eating dates to maintain energy.

No, not tracking. Zafira was no tracker; she was a hunter. She hunted. But hunters tracked, and trackers hunted, didn’t they? Where are you going with this? Zafira tilted her head and imagined her thoughts shifting into a box she closed tight. If only it were that easy.

An idle mind is the devil’s playground, she told herself, but the words felt like shadows against her lips.

As they shuffled through the sands, Zafira listened for sounds of life. Birds, the hiss of sand critters, a predator cry—only the silence ever shouted back. Sometimes their surroundings mimicked her thoughts, wilting and wavering before she blinked and everything righted.

The darkness was always happy to see her.

Zafira could feel its happiness whenever the sun dimmed further or they traversed an outcropping or another passage of ruins where the shadows lived. They bent and shifted in a dance of elation. Tendrils drifted beneath the folds of her tunic, curled around her arms, nipped at her ears, a lover she could not see. Did no one else feel what she did?

Benyamin glanced sideways at her. “Trouble, Huntress?”

The genuine concern in his voice nearly undid her. She blinked and refocused on the stone ahead. A set of columns had toppled, one against the other, creating a bridge for creatures to hop across.

“No,” she said softly.

Nearly everything dragged her mind to grief—Yasmine, and how Zafira would tell her of her brother’s death. Deen, dying for her. Lana, caring for their mother. Umm, and the five years Zafira had spent avoiding her. Nasir, and the way her body had begun to react whenever he was near. Why had Arawiya’s lethal hashashin succumbed to a needle and inscribe the word “love,” in any form or tense, on his skin?

“Why is there a flower in your turban, you bumbling fool?” Benyamin asked.

Zafira threw a glance at Altair, whose red-rimmed turban housed a blood lily.

Altair frowned. “What are you talking about? My fashion tastes are too exquisite for flowers.”

“Says the flower on your head,” Nasir pointed out.

Kifah, not one to miss out on a quip when it came to the Sarasin general, was unusually silent.

“Akhh,” Altair grumbled, and Zafira heard the shuffle of him pulling something from his turban. “You call this a flower?”

The vibrant flower on Altair’s head was now a dead leaf in his hand, curling into itself. Zafira darted a glance at Kifah, who winked. The miragi’s work.