We Hunt the Flame (Sands of Arawiya 1)

He lowered the blade, setting himself in a new angle. Her eyes flared at the sight of his bare chest, slight ridges along his stomach casting shadows on his skin. Lean muscles coiled and flexed in time with his breathing. A pair of dark sirwal billowed, low on his hips.

When he turned to the water, her breath caught and her stomach heaved.

Leeches covered his back. Fat lumps of black in neat rows, almost as if arranged. They started at his shoulder blades and continued down, stopping at the waistband of his trousers. He disappeared into the stream, which had to be larger than a stream if he could vanish within. Perhaps it was a river. How would she know? Zafira lived in Demenhur. They had only snow, snow, and more snow.

She thumped her head against the nearest tree. She could almost feel Yasmine’s presence beside her, theories dripping from her friend’s lips like rose water at a wedding. A prince with leeches on his back, for what? Bad blood? Poison? Illness? He seemed healthy enough.

For the fun of it?

A muted splash interrupted her thoughts. Nasir emerged from the water, dark hair plastered to his skull, sirwal clinging to his legs and … She pinched her lips together and made a sound as her pulse quickened. Her neck warmed. But the leeches, Yasmine said in her head. You’re looking at him because of the leeches. Zafira added a touch of slyness to her friend’s voice for good measure.

She raised her gaze as he ran a towel across his body, movements slow. He rubbed it along his back without a care and turned, his back to the moonlight.

Shadows glinted and deepened.

Sweet snow below. They weren’t leeches or lumps. They were scars. Charred and blackened.

Zafira hissed a breath through her teeth.

Nasir stilled.

She did not move. She did not breathe.

He tilted his head.

She cursed, turned, fled. Skies. What was she doing, spying on the Prince of Death? She wasn’t sure if he would catch her, but she couldn’t leave the shelter of the oasis. She cursed the hindrance of her cloak when it snagged on the fringe of a palm, and she tugged it free before barreling forward. At the edge, she stopped and tucked herself into the trees, trying to catch her breath while she listened.

Silence, except for the pounding of her heart. Not a single sound of pursuit.

Until air compressed behind her.

A hand on her shoulder, and she was thrown against the tree. Long fingers pressed against her chest. Her hood fell back and she bit her tongue against a cry of surprise.

“You,” Nasir exhaled, his voice a tangled chord of chaos. Surprise flickered across his face. Water glistened in his hair, dripping onto a white linen qamis snug across his shoulders, sleeves rolled to the middle of his forearms. Every nerve ending crackled and simmered low in her belly. He looked younger, dressed the way he was, without his hashashin’s garb. Almost innocent.

It wasn’t just the clothes that had changed the prince but also the look on his face. The walls that had fallen, showing fear, surprise, that gaping unhappiness, and so many emotions Zafira couldn’t make sense of in the dark. His eyes swept across her face, snagging on her mouth, and her neck warmed again.

“Yes, me,” Zafira breathed.

That was all it took. Her voice, two words, and the walls returned, his mask firmly lifted back into place.

She looked down at his hand against her chest, foreign in its bareness without that dark glove enclosing it. He had long, elegant fingers. What would he have become, if it hadn’t been for the dark calling in his blood? Her gaze snared on the inside of his arm. Ink. His breath hitched and he snatched his hand away. Zafira licked her dry lips, ignoring a flare of disappointment.

“Hunting, Huntress?”

There was that voice. The soft one, still and apathetic as it looped with the darkness. She knew it was deliberate. She knew he felt things but hid them.

“Or spying?”

Her heart wouldn’t slow. Murderer. Murderer. Murderer. It seemed to pound. His pitted scars flashed in her mind. What senseless torture was that? The word “murderer” faltered and fractured in two, giving room to doubt and … something else.

Change.

Her insides burned. A sweet sort of weakness trembled in her legs.

“I was heading to take a bath, but it looks like you beat me to it.” If he was looking for proof that she had seen him, she wasn’t going to make matters difficult.

His expression flattened at her self-satisfied grin, and he made a low noise in his throat.