He knew she spoke of the caliph. “You’re not expecting to die, are you? The only way you can prove him right is by dying. And you have a penchant for punching death in the face.”
She cracked a small smile. “You don’t have to tend to me.”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he said.
That drew a laugh from some part of her. “You are so very banal, Deen.”
He shrugged. “The way I see it, phrases become banal because they’re overused by everyone else. So I’ll say them again and again until you tire of them.”
The smile that curved his lips sorrowed his eyes.
She fiddled with the clasp of her cloak, the one little buckle that had separated Zafira from the Hunter for years.
She looked at Deen, at his sloppily wrapped turban, and felt the ridiculous urge to straighten it. He stilled, noticing the change in her thoughts. How was it that he noticed so much about her?
His eyes held hers as he reached for the cloak clenched in her white-knuckled fingers. “I’ll rid you of it.”
She shook her head, feeling stupidly, ridiculously weak. “I’m going to wear it.”
Whatever she had felt upon removing it had disappeared. She was still Zafira. Still just a girl with a bow and a hoard of venison to her name.
He was silent a moment, until he stood. “Very well.”
She started plaiting her hair and stopped when warm hands closed over hers.
“Let me?” he asked softly. “I’ll even crown it for you.”
She nodded. Deen’s fingers were deft, for this wasn’t the first time he had plaited her hair, but it felt different now, entwined with some form of melancholy. She tipped between lucidity and sleep the longer he wove.
Until she felt it.
Soft, barely there. The brush of lips against the back of her neck.
Zafira stiffened and felt him stiffen, too. She turned and met his eyes.
“No matter how many times, it’s always the same,” he murmured. “Akin to striking flint beneath the cold skies, striking and striking, until that gratifying spark comes to life. If only you knew.”
She didn’t know what he spoke of, yet she couldn’t find the words to ask him, not when he was looking at her with so much.
“If only you knew what it was like to feel the weight of your gaze,” he said, half to himself.
Oh. She pursed her mouth. Her neck burned from the touch of his lips, and she was abuzz with warmth like the first sun above the cold horizon.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
I’m sorry, too, he said in the silence, but Deen Ra’ad never had anything to apologize for. He was too pure. Too perfect. Too good for this world basking in darkness.
“I sometimes forget you’re no longer that girl I helped from the trees all those years ago. That girl who dirtied herself in the mud and made sure I was just as filthy,” Deen said softly.
She sputtered a laugh, and he wove her braid into a crown.
“You’re a woman now. The Huntress who will change Arawiya.”
Silence lifted his words, echoed them within the dark confines of the ship’s belly. How could she summon words knowing she couldn’t spin them in half the beauty he could? But he saw her thoughts. He would always see every notion as it clicked into place and he exhaled the smallest of smiles.
The ship lurched to a halt.
We’re here. Here. Here. Here.