We Hunt the Flame (Sands of Arawiya #1)(14)

And he did not know where it came from.

The sultan toyed with the antique circle at his chest. Nasir had touched it once, that medallion. Darkness had seized his mind, whispers and half-crazed screams echoing in his ears when his fingers passed over the inscriptions in the ancient tongue. It was a darkness wrought with pain, a darkness that could never end.

It was a darkness that despaired in itself.

The medallion was special, and the fact that it was with the sultan at all times made it even more so. And if Ghameq saw the same darkness, he welcomed it.

The fire roared to life, and the sultan stood. Sweat trickled down Nasir’s back when he reached for the poker, his palm slick against the metal. He was very well capable of using it himself, but he passed it to his father.

The poker. Burning flesh. A scream. He squeezed his eyes shut and released a quivering breath. It was a weakness he wished he didn’t have to display, and with it came a lick of shame at his neck.

“You are still weak,” the sultan murmured as he stoked the fire.

Nasir quelled the ire that quaked at the tips of his fingers. “I’m worn out, Sultani.” And there will come a time when I won’t be.

“Hmm,” the sultan said absently, as if he had heard Nasir’s unspoken words. “One day, you will see the flaw in your ways, in your curse of compassion, and understand what I’ve wanted for you from the beginning.”

But his father hadn’t wanted this from the beginning. There was a time when he, too, had valued compassion. Nasir thought he remembered the curve of a smile and a palace flooded with light. He held that flickering memory close, but with each passing day, it only withered further. Was this what Owais had been trying to understand?

The boy crouched and reached a careful hand for a grape in the bowl by the sultan’s sandals, and Nasir waited until he swallowed his stolen prize before handing Ghameq the leather folder.

He stepped back. The farther from this abomination of magic he could be, the better.

Ghameq flipped open the sleeve and tossed a strip of papyrus into the fire, its surface covered in words the near-black of blood.

Dum sihr. Blood magic, punishable by death and forbidden by the Sisters, for it allowed a person to practice magic of their choosing with the price of blood. Without it, the masses were restricted to the one affinity they were born with. But Ghameq was the sultan. He could do as he wished. What Nasir didn’t understand was how he could use magic if it no longer existed.

He knew the Silver Witch was somehow involved—that woman who frequented the palace as if she were a sultana herself. She was the one who provided Ghameq with the strips of papyrus wrought with blood. Blood that somehow played the part of both wielder and vessel itself.

The flames crackled and burst open, fading to the color of Pelusian eggplants. The room exploded in hue and heat as a silhouette rose from the flames, giving shape to a pale face with dark eyes and the stringy beard of a man who was alive and whole in Demenhur: Haytham, wazir to the Caliph of Demenhur.

Rimaal. The Demenhune never failed to spook him; they looked like ghosts—pale, ethereal, and strangely beautiful. Like Altair, they were full of light, but too much light, as if snow flowed through their delicate veins.

“Where is he?” Haytham, unwilling traitor to his caliph, rasped. He darted quick glances behind him, to a room unseen.

“Here,” Nasir said.

“Baba!” the boy whimpered when Nasir guided him closer.

Haytham’s strangled cry sent a sob through the boy, and Nasir tightened his grip around his shoulders.

“Give him to me, I beg you,” said the wazir. Pathetic.

“Begging changes nothing,” Nasir said, and the sultan stepped forward.

Men cowered before Haytham. His strength as wazir was the only reason the Caliph of Demenhur still stood. Yet even with an entire caliphate between them, Haytham’s fear was instant. Nasir noted it in the stilling of his form and the tightening of his jaw.

Haytham dropped to his knees. “Sultani.”

“Get up,” Ghameq said in staid condescension. “Has the Silver Witch approached Ayman?”

Nasir stiffened. Those were not two people to appear in the same sentence, let alone the same room. Ayman was a good caliph, if there was one. He wouldn’t tolerate a meeting with the likes of the silver-cloaked witch. Even so, she was familiar enough. Ghameq could have asked her himself.

He doesn’t trust her.

Haytham stared at his son. His loyalty to his caliph ranked higher than loyalty to his sultan, but his love for his son exceeded all else. He closed his eyes and the answer was yes, or there would be no hesitation. The sultan turned to the boy, and Nasir wanted to shove him into the shadows, away from that malevolent gaze.

“She has,” Haytham said. “They met in the House of Selah by the western villages. We do not know to whom her letter was delivered, but we hope it was the Hunter. I know nothing else, Sultani.”

At the mention of the Hunter, the sultan’s eyes lit up. If there was anything more unnerving than the Demenhune, it was the Hunter. Nasir didn’t know if everyone in Arawiya knew of him, but Nasir knew enough.

No one else could do what the Hunter could. Nasir had tried it himself. On an assassination errand, he had detoured to the Arz. The moment he set both feet into the forest, an impossible darkness had swarmed and the way out had disappeared. It had taken him hours to get back, and he had been breathless for days, heart stuttering at every little sound.