“I am as you see me now, and when the need arises, I am zalaam. I am zill.”
A man who could shift into darkness. Wonderful.
He rose and extended his hand. His tattoo winked. She stared at his outstretched fingers and curled her tongue. If she refused, he might not speak so readily anymore. If she accepted, he could take advantage of her easy trust.
His hand held steady, even as she wavered.
She accepted.
He pulled her to her feet. Only, he didn’t pull her upward. He pulled her toward him, and she threw out her hand to stop from toppling them both. He looked down at her fingers splayed across his chest, and Zafira froze at the wicked twist of his lips when he gripped her wrist.
“Why am I here?” she breathed, eyes wide.
“We have known each other a very long time, azizi.” He spoke just as softly as before, and Zafira’s pulse quickened. “I thought it was time we met.”
He was too close. She was too close.
“Aren’t you pleased to have met me?” he asked. His lips brushed her ear, and she nearly came undone.
She couldn’t think straight. She knew she should pull her hand away, but the warmth of his skin through the linen of his thobe held her in place. Until another realization chilled her blood.
He had no heartbeat.
CHAPTER 65
She was gone. Gone. Nasir trekked ahead but didn’t see the flash of the Huntress’s snowy skin or the glint of her ring. Not that he needed to.
He felt her absence in the depths of his bones.
When he returned to the others, he paused at the expression on their faces: expectancy. Nasir had never been the recipient of that before, and he shook his head, destroying their hope in breaths. That’s more like it.
“She was right there,” Kifah said, using the tip of her spear to shift the sands. “There isn’t a trace.”
The shadows deepened and sand spun. A storm was coming. Benyamin’s dismay was wrought on his face. “We’re too late. We’re too late. She’s—”
“Don’t make me slap you, safi,” Altair snapped, an edge to his voice.
Kifah climbed the outcropping to search.
Laughter rose in Nasir’s throat. They were lost. They were without a compass to help them find their compass. The compass. He locked gazes with Altair’s knowing look, and he wondered how long Altair had known that it had always pointed to the Huntress. Nasir pulled the disc from his pocket, loosing a breath when the whizzing settled on a point northeast.
“I know where to find her,” he said, not bothering to explain. How could he explain what he didn’t understand?
Kifah leaped down from the rock and studied his compass. She didn’t question him. “There’s a drop up ahead, though I can’t tell how steep.”
He nodded. He could leave them as they were. If they died, that would save Nasir from having to watch the life leave their now-familiar faces.
He slid his scimitar from its sheath and inhaled, briefly meeting Altair’s eyes. Benyamin gave him a firm nod.
He had a Huntress to hunt.
CHAPTER 66
Zafira took her time lacing her boots, staring at the swoops on the elegant tiles as she tried to rein in her quick breathing. She straightened. He stood close. Very close.
“You are continuously searching for an escape, azizi.”
She didn’t deny it. “It won’t be long before they find me. Exploiters don’t let go of their assets so quickly.”
“You mean your lover,” he said softly, with a slight tilt of his head.
“My lover.” The idea was so preposterous, she nearly laughed.
“The crown prince. After all, he is the only one capable of tracking well.”
Zafira shrank back. “He is not my lover.”
There was a cruel slant to the Shadow’s mouth. “Oh, but he wishes he were. I’ve lost count of how many times he has imagined his hands trailing your thighs, his mouth against yours, his teeth at your lip—”
“Stop,” she whispered as the words whittled at her core and lit her slowly aflame. There was only one explanation for how the Shadow had preyed on Nasir’s thoughts: The prince was further into the clutches of darkness than she was.
“Such a naughty boy,” the Shadow scolded with a tsk. But his amber eyes took in her every motion; he was as much a hunter as she was.
“That isn’t love,” she said.
“Indeed. There is a grand difference between love and a lover. I would say the latter is much more pleasurable. A pity you crave the former.”
“Love is for children.” It preys on the weak, on the ones born with too much hope.
His eyebrows drew together. “Is that so? Because I’ve made a few discoveries.”
He lifted a hand and slowly began closing his splayed fingers. “To win the love of your father, you picked up a bow and carved yourself into the Huntress he wished you to become.”
His voice of velvet dug beneath her skin.
“To win the love of your people, you braved the Arz. You fed them. You parted with those beautiful skins. You confined yourself to a life of mystery. Though you owed them nothing.”
That wasn’t the reason.
It wasn’t.
No.
Could she have been so adamantly against love that she’d inadvertently become a slave to it?
“More recently, to win the love of your caliph, despite knowing your hand would not have been forced, despite knowing you could very well perish on this island, you joined this journey.”
“I have never needed to win the love of anyone. Not my father when he lived, not my people, and never my caliph.”
“Oh? Then why did you do what you did?”
The Shadow leaned against the dark wall and lifted one corner of his lips. His eyes were a touch. His smile was a whisper at her neck. She felt things she had never felt before, burning inside her.
“I would say, Huntress, that you very much believe in love. Your every action as you aged and matured came from the need to be seen. To be loved. You have always wanted it.” He leaned so close that his next words brushed her lips. “You crave it.”
She swayed back with a sharp inhale. Every nerve ending snapped to attention when his golden eyes dropped to her mouth.
“There is nothing wrong with love, azizi. Indeed, love is a strength, as much as a curse.”
She had never craved love. If she had, she would have leaped into Deen’s arms the moment he proposed. She hunted for her people because they would starve otherwise. She boarded that ship because they would die otherwise. She did everything with the knowledge that she could very well die.
Every musing of her mind unraveled, spun off course. He began leading her toward the dark corridor. The one the voices had been trying to crawl from.
She was still armed, she realized. Her jambiya at her hip, her bow at her back, arrows, too. But when she inhaled, the richness of the qahwa lathered her senses, and her mind turned sluggish.
The Shadow was not a threat.
He had shown her so much. He had helped her sort her life into what she had always wanted: love. He had brought her into his home and treated her like a guest.
He studied her with parted lips. “I have lost count of the years as I have lost the letters of my name. You may take much from a man, but you can never take away his desires, his passion, his revenge.”
Zafira’s heart stuttered at the word “revenge.”
“As such, I am in need of a partner.”
“A partner,” she said, rolling the word as they neared the corridor. Something told her it was not a place for her.
“You search for the Jawarat,” he said carefully. “I require it as well.”
What had he called the others? Exploiters. He was one, too.
“Is that why you’re on Sharr?”
His mouth slanted, and he seemed to be considering how much he should unveil. “Some would say so.”
They paused beneath a pointed archway.
The dark wood was cut in tumultuous patterns; the beauty of its intricacy grasped her breath.
“The Jawarat,” he started once more.
Zafira almost bared her teeth. It was as if her very presence was now synonymous with the book she was coming to dread.
“I have come to learn that only you are able to find it.”
“So I’ve learned as well.”
The corners of his mouth twitched. “I’d like to propose a deal. I will assist you in your search, and when the Jawarat is uncovered, you will return it to me.”
She met his eyes, wanting to demand if he was daft. “Which part of the deal is for me, then?”
If she hadn’t been watching so closely, she wouldn’t have noticed the barely perceptible lift of his dark eyebrows. Had he not considered that she would be adamant?
“I have need of it only for a moment. It will be entirely yours after that.”
“I see,” she said, not seeing. “I have an evil sultan who wants the Jawarat. And an entire kingdom whose people need the Jawarat. Now you need the Jawarat?”
The silence stretched thin until he released a weary sigh.
“If it weren’t for me, azizi, you and your zumra would already have perished.”
Zafira froze. At last, the tone she had always expected of darkness. Of zill and zalaam. Of a man who lived on Sharr with barely concealed malevolence. Chaos and madness in the hush of the night. Power that hummed in the silence.
He smiled that smile, one she now recognized as equal parts terrible and beautiful. She did not doubt his claim. She remembered the ifrit listening to a silent order. She remembered the shadows, shielding her, welcoming her.
Who was he?
At the entrance to the corridor, the Shadow paused. Only then did Zafira realize that her bow, her arrows, her jambiya—she still had them because they were pointless. Nothing could protect her from him.
He searched her face, but he did not find what he wanted.
His lips curled into that secret smile. He leaned close and brushed his lips at her brow. She shivered, barely holding herself back.
His voice was low. “Should your lover come, azizi, I will tear the flesh from his limbs. I will cut him to pieces and feed him to the flames.”
Zafira could not breathe.
“Chain her up,” he said to the shadows, and became one himself.
CHAPTER 67
Nasir was getting closer. He could feel it.
At least, that was what he told himself to keep going. The shadows lengthened and shrank with his breathing. It was too early for night, but the starless sky was heavy with black.
And it was too late to turn back. Even if he could recall the way, the others would have moved. Only the Huntress could find them now.
Zafira.
Only Zafira could find them. He had to stop walking when he voiced her name in his head for the first time.
He continued on the erratic path his compass pointed out until he heard the unmistakable shift in the air, alerting him to another presence.
Nasir held still. His fingers melded to the leather hilt of his scimitar.
A silhouette stood against the outcrop.
He didn’t need her to come into the light for him to recognize that swaying gait. The billowing of her dress. Her skin shone in the slender shafts of light, as beautiful as the deepest of sunsets.
“Kulsum,” Nasir breathed.
She tipped her head. Nasir’s brow furrowed and his pulse trembled a warning, but he lowered his blade. Sheathed it. It felt as if a storm had run rampant in his mind, scattering the dunes of his thoughts.
“My prince,” she said in that voice of silk, the one that had freed him on countless nights.
Nasir was suddenly in a hundred places at once, none as terrifying as this simmering storm.
“The Huntress is not worth it.”
Nasir spoke slowly. “I need her if I am to find the Jawarat.”
“And when she finds it and attempts to take your life—what then?”
“She wouldn’t.” He did not doubt that.
A smile flitted across her face and something ached inside him. “She is no longer the guileless girl who set foot on this island.” Kulsum gestured to the dunes. “Sharr changes people. Like you. You have begun to love her.”
He closed his eyes but made no attempt to deny her words.
She continued, softer now. “Have you forgotten me?”
“No, Kulsum,” he said. “I did not forget. I never forget.”
He stepped closer, wanting to touch her. Hold her.
One last time.
“Even if I wanted to,” he murmured, “I could never forget that you did not love me.”
He stared at her beauty, into the dark chasms of her eyes. His last words were a rasp, because it was his fault.
“And that you have no tongue.”
He leaped, toppling her to the ground, tearing a sound from her mouth. The ifrit that she was emerged, and he dipped his gauntlet blade into the creature’s flesh. Safin steel, to ensure it would never rise again.
He had known it wasn’t her the moment she spoke in a voice he would never again hear, but he had still wasted valuable time. Longing had made him selfishly draw out the conversation. Longing to understand, to finally close that open wound.
It was the first time an ifrit had shown him a face, but there was no time to ponder that. As he stood with a shaky exhale, something slick wrapped around his ankle and pulled him toward the steep drop, his shouts drowned out by the shadows.
CHAPTER 68
Zafira came to in darkness.
Her back was to a cool wall. Circlets of metal encased her wrists and chafed her bones. Her arms were stretched and pinned on either side of her. The same had been done to her legs: pinned too far apart for comfort. When she tried to roll her shoulders, she heard the protest of chains.
Pain reigned over her emotions. The angle of her arms pulled at her chest, her throat, her skin. The stretch of her legs wrenched at the insides of her thighs.
The familiar jab of her bow was gone, and the weight of her jambiya at her waist was a cruel joke when her hands had been rendered useless.
A stale breeze feathered her skin before the scritch of a match broke the silence. Zafira locked her gaze on the tiny flame as it moved, the tang of sulfur tainting the air.
A wary light allowed Zafira to drink in the rectangular room in which she hung. She was in the center of a longer side. Opposite her was a chair grand enough to be a throne, with gleaming black wood and adornments in tarnished silver. It was empty.
A rush of air, laa—her heart stuttered—darkness whispered past and gathered before her in a swirl of ink, transforming into a man before the throne. A king, crowned in shadows.
He sat, amber eyes appraising.
“Had a change of heart?” Zafira rasped. “Ya laa, I forgot you don’t have one.” The only creatures she knew of without heartbeats were ifrit. But ifrit needed to be commanded. They were not so sharp. So ancient.
“So bitter,” the Shadow mused in a slow drawl.
She raised one eyebrow, proud of herself for not shrinking back from his assessing gaze. “I’m not in a position I’d consider sweet.”
Amusement shifted his features. “Fair enough. Are you thirsty, azizi?”
A girl materialized to his right. She was the picture of Arawiyan beauty—dark skin, dark eyes, the soft curve of crimson lips. She wore robes of blue, an orange scarf around her slender neck. She gripped a misty pitcher of water in one hand and an empty glass in the other. Zafira failed to mask her surprise.
“Relax. She is ifrit,” he soothed. “I couldn’t stand them shifting their faces every few minutes, so I had them”—he looked to the girl—“alter their ways.”
“What do you want with me?” Zafira croaked, drawing his attention away from the girl. Ifrit. Whatever she was.
“I told you what I wanted,” he said, tilting his head.
“So you decided to
chain me before I could accept your deal?” She hoped the others wouldn’t come for her. She hoped Nasir wouldn’t come.
“Oh, you already refused. Now you are in no position to negotiate.”
He took the glass from the girl. “You were like this glass once—icy, empty, a vessel of eagerness waiting to be brimmed.” He gestured for the girl to fill the glass. “Once I learned of what you are, I called to you from the Arz. Whispered to your father. I honed you into the bladed compass you became. I created something from nothing.
“But I am a patient man, and darkness is eternal. If you cannot do what I ask, after all I have done for you, azizi,” he paused and ran his tongue along his lips, “it is of no loss for me.”
He dropped the glass.
Zafira flinched as it shattered, scattering shards and bolts of water across the copper ground.
Like the shards of her heart, dispersed into the shadows.
* * *
Later, much later, the Shadow returned. Zafira felt his fingers grasp her chin, gentle and cool, before she opened her eyes. Every part of her became aware of the five points of his fingers, and her traitorous pulse raced when he swept his thumb across the side of her jaw.
The strain from her arms and legs was blurring her mind. She would do anything for a moment’s relief. She wanted the others to find her. No. She didn’t want to watch them be skinned alive.
But they couldn’t find her. Without her, they were blind folk in a cage of wolves.
“Let me go,” she murmured.
“You’ve had the entire night to think. Will you bring me the Jawarat?” His voice was as gentle as his touch, and she wondered how someone so beautiful could be so cruel.
She almost said yes. “I will kill you.”
His soft laugh was lazy. “Death is for fools, azizi. Darkness is indestructible, eternal, unconfined to human limitations. Your weapons cannot harm me.”
To define is to limit.
“You’ve been planning this for years,” she said as she realized it. “Ever since I returned from the Arz for the very first time.”
We Hunt the Flame (Sands of Arawiya) Page 31