He was nearly there. There was no other reason for him to seize Sarasin. For him to gas Demenhur. Nasir just couldn’t understand what this evil wanted.
“I’m not wrong, am I? You’ve seen it. Glimpses of the man he once was,” Benyamin said.
Nasir saw it that day beside the gossamer curtains of his father’s bed. His curiosity opened his mouth. “What is it? What grows in him?”
“The moon wanes, but the night waxes, steeped in a desperate black from which most of us will never emerge. I would tell you of what stirs in the shadows, but we need your strength.”
Nasir met the safi’s eyes, but Benyamin wasn’t finished.
“For if he were to learn of it, not even the Prince of Death could summon the courage to go on.”
CHAPTER 63
Zafira woke early. Or merely decided to rise early. She had barely slept, tossing and turning, plagued by the image of a haunted Nasir and the Sultan of Arawiya.
How long would it be before the prince succumbed to his father’s demands and ran her through with his glinting scimitar? Zafira had thought he was changing, that he was becoming an … ally. Or something more. But it was clear she was a means to an end.
She tugged on her chain, loosening its cutting hold on her neck, and sat up.
The crown prince stood before her. Scimitar in hand.
She looked to his blade and then slowly latched her gaze on his with a lift of her chin.
He breathed a soft laugh. “I knew it was you.”
She didn’t like when this Nasir arrived. The one who let his mask slip, who could venture to laugh, to look at her with something other than that stoic coolness. It made her uneasy. Uncertain.
It lit her aflame.
“Get it over with,” she challenged before she could stop herself. But every part of her hoped there was another reason for him to be standing there.
He blinked. Looked to his scimitar. “I wasn’t—I wasn’t going to kill you,” he said, then grimaced, scar undulating, as if he had swallowed something bitter when he said the word “kill.”
“I was completing another drill.” He twirled his scimitar, considering it before he frowned. “It helps me think.”
Mimicking the act of killing helped him think. Zafira almost laughed.
The sleeves of his coat had been tugged up his forearms, lean muscles flexing with his movements. She glimpsed his tattoo, and when he saw that she did, he sheathed the scimitar and tugged his sleeves back down.
“It’s only a matter of when you’ll do as you promised,” she said, her voice tremoring in anger. She wanted to add like the coward that you are, but he’d had enough insults from his father to last a lifetime.
She pitied him. The silence he kept. The power at his fingertips, useless because of his tether to the sultan. She did not think he had ever gone against his father.
“The longer you delay, the harder it will be,” she said softly, surprising herself with how much she meant the words. He took a small step closer, and she wanted him to take another. And another. And another.
“In what way?” he breathed. As if, maybe, he was trying to make sense of this just as she was.
“I don’t know.”
Someone yawned, and she heard the rustle of clothes as someone else stretched. She heard the timbre of the sultan’s voice again.
“You’re not afraid of him,” she realized aloud.
He stiffened.
“You’re afraid of…” She paused, brow creased. “What did he mean when he said ‘her tongue won’t be all she loses’?”
He closed his eyes. Lines wrinkled his forehead, and she noticed that his beard had been trimmed. When did men have the time for such things?
“I am afraid,” he said simply, avoiding her question, and when he opened his eyes, the Prince of Death had come, slashed with a scar, his irises dead ashes in a grim wind. “I am the coward you wanted to call me.”
* * *
They set off early to avoid the sun Benyamin did not think would arrive. The night he had warned of was settling in, the gloom deepening despite the morning hour.
Nasir blinked away the fatigue that had taken shelter behind his eyes. He thought to the night before, when two pairs of feet dashed across the stone. The lighter pair, he knew now, was the Huntress. The heavier pair could only have belonged to one man, and Nasir hoped Altair was pleased with all the belittling he’d heard.
The Huntress led them without a word, brushing the loose strands of her dark hair back with a sweep of her fingers. When she had risen that morning, her eyes twin scythes of blue lifting to his without fear or mask, Nasir had felt oddly, inexplicably saddened.
He was always sad, he knew. But there was a difference between a perpetual state of unhappiness and a sudden gust of it, leaving him cold and helpless. Floundering with no sight of an end.
His exhale was slow.
Altair had been right. Sometime between pledging to kill the Demenhune Hunter and now, Nasir had come to feel something for her. He had grown attached. Feelings had transpired without permission, conspired without his brain, working with what was left of his heart.
It really was only a matter of when. He couldn’t go against his father, the notorious sultan of the entire kingdom.
But you are the Prince of Death.
Shut up, darkness, Nasir hissed in his head. The darkness chuckled, and Nasir paused, thinking through the idiocy of that before the Huntress collapsed.
She fell
to her
knees.
He felt the impact like a blow to his stomach. He pushed past Kifah and Altair and dropped down beside her. She trembled. Her head tilted to the skies.
She stilled when he neared.
“Is it the darkness?” he murmured before the others were within earshot.
Benyamin approached her next. “Are you well, Huntress?”
“What is—” Kifah began, before the Huntress silenced them all.
“Look around us,” she said. Her voice was haunted. Raw.
Nasir’s eyes roved the brushwood, the crumbling limestone, the dunes of sand. The same patch of saltbush blooming with the same white flowers he had seen yesterday.
“Kharra,” Kifah murmured, dropping her spear.
“Do you think the Silver Witch considered what would happen when her compass failed?” The Huntress’s voice was a knife. She rose, fury igniting her features. Fury directed at him. “You should have killed me.” She was close enough to touch. To smooth, with his lips, the harsh lines of anger marring her skin.
The last thought seized him.
When had he ever wished to kiss anyone? Even Kulsum had been the one to kiss him first, to … use him. Tribulation weighed him down. It matched the look in the Huntress’s eyes.
“What use am I now, Prince? All you have is a broken compass.”
Use. The word cut deep.
Altair broke the silence first.
“You aren’t broken.” He rested a gentle hand on her shoulder.
But she wasn’t looking at the general. She looked to Nasir, waiting to hear what he would say. He was skilled in many things, but not words. He couldn’t speak as those shards of ice begged him to.
“This is your fault,” Nasir said suddenly, eyes flicking to Benyamin. The safi jerked at the accusation. “If you hadn’t told her what she was, this would not have happened.”
Kifah seethed. “Of every self-centered thing you could say—”
“Laa, I think the prince is right,” Altair interrupted. “You aren’t broken, Zafira.”
Nasir flinched at the sound of her name from Altair’s mouth. He could scarcely refer to her by name in his head because he felt … he felt he did not deserve to.
“You’ve always followed the direction of your heart,” Altair continued. “It was a subconscious effort you trusted without a doubt. But now that you know what you are, you’ve begun to use your head. That has led you astray.”
“So now we’re stranded?”
Kifah asked. Her words were followed by another layer of black, bleeding into the sky.
Benyamin clenched his jaw as he studied the unfolding shadows. “The night stirs,” he murmured.
Nasir did not know what to say to that.
* * *
There was something bittersweet about a day long awaited. She heard them speaking. But they were like voices singing a song, one she no longer heard.
She had reached the destination she always feared she would. And now that she was here, she felt it had been inevitable from the very beginning: She had always been on a steady journey toward finding herself lost.
It had only worsened the night before, when the Sultan of Arawiya had reminded Nasir of what he was sent to do. When Benyamin had reminded her she was a means to an end in the witch’s game.
Unlike the darkness, which had only ever looked out for her. It was her constant. It cared.
Now it whispered a welcome once more. Perhaps being lost gave her a sense of freedom. Untethered her from her obligations.
For Zafira bint Iskandar embraced the darkness.
And the darkness embraced her back.
ACT III
THE LIES WE EAT
CHAPTER 64
Zafira was elsewhere, and it wasn’t the Sharr she had come to know and dread.
The subdued light made her think of dark rooms and the rustle of clothes. Hushed whispers and stolen smiles. This place certainly was no desert. Or ruin. Or outside.
The ceiling arched high. Walls of dark wood and stone were cut in the most intricate trellises, so fine that they looked to have taken years to complete. A glow came from behind them, throwing a kaleidoscope of shadow and light across the copper ground. It was a place of extravagance.
A majlis sprawled to her right in rich hues, cushions a deep shade of purple. A darker corridor yawned to her left. Something stretched in its shadows, low whispers crawling from its depths. She averted her eyes with a shudder.
There were no windows allowing her to glimpse the outside and guess at where she was. There were, instead, swaths of art with bold strokes of color, everything abstract. She could sometimes make out words of Safaitic, but wasn’t the point of abstract to make one see what they wanted?
“Peace unto you, Huntress.”
The voice was smooth and rich. Velvet and dark. Hearing it was like returning to someone long lost. She had no fear in her heart, no worry in her chest. She felt … at ease. Zafira turned toward the owner of the voice.
The man stood in the shadows of the archway. He lifted his lips into a smile of welcome, cool eyes of dark amber assessing her as she assessed him. There was a scar across his temple, disappearing beneath his dark turban. He was young, but not dreadfully so, perhaps a little older than Nasir. His thobe, a mauve so deep it was nearly black, was fitted to his lean frame, silver buttons winking.
He was beautiful. A terrible sort of beautiful.
Zafira smiled back.
“Where am I?” she asked, glad her voice held no quiver.
“Home,” he said in a way that insisted she should have known.
“And who are you?”
“The Shadow.”
Wariness lifted its head. “That isn’t a name.”
“When you’ve lived a length of isolation as long as I have, the purpose of a name eludes you until the name itself disappears.”
How long must one live before one ceased to remember their own name? Zafira thought of the Silver Witch. Both ancient and young at once. Immortal.
He stepped into the golden light, and Zafira’s breath faltered at the sight of a bronze tattoo, curling around his left eye. ‘Ilm. She traced the letters with her gaze, piecing together the old Safaitic in her head. Knowledge.
Benyamin had—
The Shadow smiled again, and Zafira was struck with a catastrophe of emotions at once, forgetting what she had been thinking. The zumra was nowhere to be seen. She was in a dark place, alone with a man. Not with a boy who would fear repercussions, but a man whose smile was a wicked, knowing curl of his lips.
Perhaps she shouldn’t have listened to Yasmine’s tales, which made her overthink. The tales Yasmine swore would make her blush but instead only heated her blood, for Demenhune didn’t blush.
The Shadow extended his arm toward the majlis, long fingers unfurling. “Sit.”
She was painfully aware of him as she placed one foot before the other. Painfully aware of her uncleanliness in the face of this extravagance. At the edge of the rug, she slipped out of her boots and set her foot on the plush fabric. She sat on the cushion, tucking her feet beneath her thighs.
He sat across from her. There was an ornate dallah on the round cushion between them, steam rising from its crescent-shaped spout. Small, handleless cups were stacked beside it, and a bowl of pomegranate seeds glittered enticingly. The Shadow began to pour, darkness trickling into the cups. The mellowed scent of rich coffee, mixed with cardamom, cloves, saffron, and other spices, permeated the air.
If Zafira had thought being seated would calm her racing pulse, she was wrong.
“Where are we, truly?” she asked.
He nudged a cup toward her with the back of his hand. The steam that rose from the cup looked black.
“The strongest qahwa you will ever sip,” he insisted in that dark voice.
Zafira lifted her eyebrows, barely, and a corner of his lips quirked upward.
“You are in my home.”
She had yet to understand where the boundaries were with this strange man who had arrived from nowhere. But she was well acquainted with darkness. How different could a shadow be?
“On Sharr.” He smiled. “But your friends—laa, exploiters—cannot find you.”
“They aren’t my exploiters.” Her brow furrowed. Nor are they friends.
He tipped his head. “Are they not? Each one of them is the very definition of an exploiter: one who uses another to gain a selfish end.”
That was how it had seemed. But somewhere between the first time she set eyes on Nasir and the moment she had gotten lost, leading the zumra astray, Zafira’s feelings had altered, and she still hadn’t sorted the disarray of her emotions.
She steered the conversation back to the Shadow’s invisible house. “A tracker could find this place. It isn’t exactly discreet.”
He almost laughed. He set his cup on the ottoman and leaned back, lacing his fingers around his upright leg. One crepe-thin end of his black turban peeked out of the layered folds. It curved around his right ear. Such a tiny, mundane thing to capture her attention. She almost didn’t notice the elongated points of his ears, marking him as immortal.
“Do you not trust me to care for you, azizi?” he asked in that voice of velvet.
She pressed her lips together at the nickname “my darling.”
“You are not a captive. You may leave whensoever you desire.”
“How can you speak of trust when I don’t even know you?”
The Shadow’s amber eyes turned liquid with hurt. He took another sip of his qahwa, and Zafira watched the shift of his throat and saw his tongue sweep his lips. Yasmine’s stories returned to her head.
“Ana Zalaam. Ana Zill.”
I am Darkness. I am Shadow.
She shivered. “I don’t understand.”
“You should not.” The words were punctuated with barely concealed intensity.
Again, she was struck with that strange feeling of familiarity. As if she had known this strange, beautiful man all her life.
He spoke. “I was your succor in the Arz. Your soother on Sharr. The one who kept you company, always and always.”
Zafira’s pulse fluttered.
“The darkness,” she said slowly, trying to comprehend. Piecing together the years of shadow and black and welcoming night. The voices. The shadows shifting in elation, kissing her, caressing her. The answer when she greeted the benighted trees, here on Sharr and at home in the Arz. “It was you.”
How did the dar
kness that encompassed all become a man? Why was he on Sharr?
“You believe me to be wicked, azizi,” he mused. “Darkness is the absence of light, the mere reason light exists. Without darkness, light would have no confines. Laa, it would be a curse.” He straightened the cups and pressed a single pomegranate seed to his tongue. His fingers were long, aristocratic, but when she blinked, they looked almost clawed. “Everything that exists does so to repress its opposite.”
She clamped her lips against a slew of thoughts. The Shadow studied her, seeing her conflict.
“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.
We Hunt the Flame Page 30