We Hunt the Flame (Sands of Arawiya 1)

When she had been in Nasir’s rooms while he was at the Daama Faris with Altair.

Rimaal.

Kharra.

It couldn’t be. Disbelief wrapped dark hands around his lungs.

“Kulsum,” Nasir rasped. “She’s your spy?”

Altair watched him. “Did you think she came to you of her own accord? Did you really think someone stolen from her family and enslaved to the likes of you could fall in love with a monster?” He scoffed and tore a strip of fabric using his teeth.

Nasir felt something within him tearing the same way, jagged edges and limp remains.

He knew he was a monster. Acknowledged it, even. But Kulsum …

“You’re even dumber than your father says you are.”

Nasir stared back dully. He liked to think he had taken care of the weakness that was emotion, after all that he had been through and all that he had shunned. But Kulsum. Kulsum was different. Kulsum was the one who had pulled him out of that endless despair.

Kulsum had loved him. She had come to him, even after that wretched night when his father had gifted him that silver box.

Or had that, too, been Altair’s doing?

Nasir knew that finding a person he could love, who could love him, was near impossible. He knew, yet he had been too blinded by mere affection to see clearly. Fabricated affection.

He fisted his hands and tugged at his already-lowered sleeves. Those years lay in the past for a reason. The words on his right arm had been inked for a reason. What mattered was now: He loved none, and none loved him. Love was a fantasy.

Life, this terrible existence, would go on.

“Get up,” Nasir said.

Altair had finished dressing his wound and had paled from the loss of blood. For a beat, Nasir thought he should have helped tend to his injury. But the beat—like the panic that had gripped him when Altair was shot, like all else—passed, and he felt nothing again.

The general tossed the remainder of the bloody cloth aside. “Decided you still need me?”

Nasir wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of a reaction to his spying. To Kulsum. What’s there to spy about me anyway? “Still deciding.”

Altair stood. He held his right arm rigidly, shirt stained red. “Don’t worry about me, Sultani. I heal faster than your unimaginative mind can fathom.”

“Right. Because you’re some sort of legendary creature.”

“You’d be surprised.”

“Nothing about you can surprise me.”

“He’s dead, isn’t he? The Demenhune,” Altair said. His tone was softened by something like regret.

Nasir’s brow furrowed. “You knew him.”

Altair answered with a half shrug. Yet another fragment of his mysterious knowledge that seemed to transcend caliphates. “He was”—he paused and shortened his answer—“involved in a rescue mission once. A good man.”

“A rescue mission. You.” Nasir scoffed. And with a Demenhune? The rescue of what? Nasir bit his cheek against the questions.

“I don’t kiss and tell, princeling.”

Nasir mock-yawned.

“Well,” Altair said with forced cheer. “It’s just the two of us again, and my, what a couple we make.”