CHAPTER 75
Zafira smoothed the resin over his wound. It was nowhere near as potent as the black resin of Alderamin, but it would heal in its own time, without turning the skin black.
He must have sensed she was finished, because he grew still. “Huntress.”
“Back to titles, Prince?” Her whisper shook.
His voice was soft. “What are titles if not names, Zafira?”
Sweet snow, the sound of her name from his mouth. Something wicked darkened his irises, and it was so unlike the growling, grumpy, sad prince Zafira had come to know that her heart very nearly stopped.
He made a sound and lifted his palms to her thighs, and she couldn’t stop her gasp. She felt the heat of his hands so acutely that she nearly swayed. She drew her lower lip into her mouth, and something flickered in his hooded eyes as they swept her face.
“Fair gazelle,” he whispered. His touch seared her, and she relished the delicious chafe of her legs against his as she slid closer.
The imposing outcrop held its breath, the hush hush of the stream the only sound. She looked at him, oh so close. Near enough to touch. To run her finger down his scar, across the bow of his lips.
He swallowed. Looked away. His body thrummed beneath hers. His throat undulated, and she wondered how it would feel to press her lips to that pulse at his neck. Her heart pounded as fiercely as if she were running for her life. As if part of her wanted to get as far away as possible, while the other wanted him closer, closer.
Skies.
He clenched his jaw with a look of anguish and murmured something that sounded like that wretched splotch before lowering his head to her right collarbone, the one marred by her birthmark. His temple brushed the crook of her shoulder. The hiss of his breath branded her neck.
She felt the feather of his lips on her skin.
His breath rasped. Hers echoed.
She was the reason the stoic prince could hardly breathe. She was the reason his gray eyes glowed liquid black. Her chest crackled with embers when he lifted his tilted head and she leaned closer, sliding her palms beneath his parted robe and—
Someone cleared their throat.
Nasir pulled back with a growl, tearing his hands from her legs, and disappointment pinched Zafira’s skin. Deen, Deen, Deen, pulsed a reminder, but the rest of her was scorched by the fire in her belly.
The others had returned.
“Thank you, dear Huntress, for ensuring my prince was well cared for,” Altair wheezed.
He leaned against the outcrop and mopped sweat from his brow. There was a bloody gash on his forehead and a limp to his step as he tossed Zafira’s bow and quiver to her. His elongated ears stood out like a blossom in snow, and Zafira was struck with just how little she knew of him.
She moved away and tucked the salves, tins, and kit back into her satchel, trying to stop the quiver in her hands. Her neck was aflame as she rose to
her feet, Nasir doing the same before closing his robes.
“Perhaps a little too well cared for?” Kifah asked, holding her right arm gingerly. She gripped her spear in the other, fierce as always.
Benyamin had merely lost his perfection: turban a mess, clothes rumpled, face smudged in soot—which for vain safin, Zafira supposed, was akin to losing an eye.
“We seem to have arrived at a most inopportune time,” Benyamin mused, and the sound of his voice made something in her snap.
She pushed past Nasir and grabbed the safi’s thobe, shoving him against the outcrop with a force that jarred her own teeth. She felt a flicker of remorse at his bewilderment, but she squashed it down at the sight of his tattoo. Almost identical to the Lion’s in style, except for the word itself.
“Trust, trust, trust,” she snarled. “So much spiel about trust, and you couldn’t tell us the daama Lion of the Night was alive? That he, of all creatures, was part of your circle of friends?”
“Is that you talking, Huntress? Or the darkness?” he murmured, feline eyes assessing.
“I ran away from the darkness. Did you not see?”
“No one can escape zill and zalaam,” he said softly. “Least of all the ones he loves.”