We Hunt the Flame (Sands of Arawiya 1)

“You’ve been all over—Zaram, Pelusia, even the barren Wastes to get to Alderamin. You’ve seen sand,” she said, a note of envy bittering her tongue. She imagined a world covered in it, baking beneath the sun. Creeping between her toes and scurrying between her teeth. “What’s it like?”

“Beautiful. Endless. Freedom wavering beneath the relentless sun,” he said softly. “The heat is a pest, but then again, isn’t the cold?” He sighed. “I’m content, I am. But there’s this … this need for something more.”

It was the first time Deen wanted what she did: more. But something else was bothering him. She could see it in the heaviness tugging his lips into a frown. “What is it?”

He dropped his knowing hazel eyes to her, and she felt herself stepping closer. In this space, so close to the moon, anything felt possible. The wind whipped her hair. Deen lifted a careful hand and tucked the ebony strands behind her ear. He inhaled slowly, a shuddering draw that made her keenly aware of their solitude.

“Will you marry me?” The words swooshed past his lips in a rush, as if his heart wanted to savor them but his brain was too frazzled to allow it.

Sh

e opened her mouth. Closed it. She had known this was coming. She had known. But today of all days? Now of all moments?

His eyes fell from hers. How many times had she watched his lips widen into effortless smiles? How many times had he run after her, snarling and pretending to be the Arz monsters their parents had warned them of as children? How many times had he held her against his chest, sharing his warmth when she shivered in the cold?

He was the one who used what little money he had to buy rich safin chocolate and make the best drink Zafira had ever tasted. He was the one to hold her when Baba had died and her heart had hardened.

She stared into the night until her eyes began to burn.

“Deen, I—” Her tongue felt heavy. I’m not like Yasmine. It wasn’t that she didn’t want marriage. She just wanted more. Didn’t he just say he wanted that, too? “I’m not ready to marry yet.”

Doubt flashed in his beautiful eyes, and Zafira’s stomach twisted.

He asked, “And when you are ready?”

“I will marry you,” she said without a moment’s hesitation. Her heart told her brain she was lying, but she ignored it. It wasn’t a lie. It wasn’t. She couldn’t think about marriage when the sister of her heart had left her and maybe-assassins had been sent for who knew what. When the Arz had conjured a woman in silver who claimed she was cursed. When an invitation to daama Sharr burned on silver parchment.

Deen exhaled and nodded, but the tension only tightened with the stubborn set of his jaw. “I’m not an idiot, Zafira, asking you to marry me just because my sister’s married herself off. But I thought…” He paused, and her heart began to pound. “I thought I would be better than a death sentence. I thought marriage would give you another option. Another sense of purpose. Isn’t that what you search for in the Arz?”

“What are you talking about?” she whispered. She didn’t search for anything in the Arz. She hunted. She didn’t know what she wanted any more than she knew what she was waiting for.

But today, the invitation—it had made something rear its head.

“Were you going to tell me?” he asked instead. He sounded tired. Resigned. “About the letter, Zafira. The invitation you have in your pocket right now.”

She bit her tongue. Lana. Deen was the one who had come when Zafira was in her room.

“I know you,” he said. “I saw you at the wedding with that look in your eyes, and I thought it was because of Yasmine. But it wasn’t, was it? It’s the same look you have when you stare at the Arz, and I should have realized.”

She drew her eyebrows together. “What look?”

“Elation. Adoration, even,” he whispered, and clenched his jaw.

Zafira’s pulse fluttered. Hadn’t she used the same word to describe the way the silver-cloaked woman stared at the Arz?

“I don’t know where it came from, but I know it’s an invitation to chaos.”

“Deen, it’s magic. We could have magic again. How can you not want that?” she asked. Sharing the invitation with him opened a spigot inside her, and she wanted to throw back her head and shout. Every story her father had spun could be real. Oh, what she would give to feel the rush that the old ones had known. To have magic thrum at her fingertips. “You’re less excited than I thought you would be.”

“Did you miss the part about Sharr? And before that, you’ll need to travel across the Arz.”

“I go there every day.”

“You don’t cross it, Zafira. No one has. Magic might lie at the end of this journey, but that doesn’t mean you will attain it. There is no reason to get anyone’s hopes up. Least of all yours.” He rubbed a hand across his face, and Zafira knew he was upset.

“But think about it,” she insisted. “Magic means no more cursed snow. It means the Arz won’t swallow us whole, because it won’t exist anymore. You can do everything you’ve always wanted to do.”

“At what cost?”