We Hunt the Flame (Sands of Arawiya 1)

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 aroun

d 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 darkness 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.”