We Hunt the Flame (Sands of Arawiya 1)

Zafira tried to think, but the moment she latched onto one thought, something else appeared in its place, images and ideas she had never conceived before. Slowly, she imagined the faces of her people, reunited with magic, and Zafira knew she was on the right path. She would loan the Jawarat to the Lion and then return to Demenhur, as victorious as her mother had asked her to be. No, that isn’t right.

“You let her go?” someone growled a distance away. Light flickered behind her. “The Lion will toy with her mind.”

The others were catching up.

“I’m here,” she told the trees, gritting her teeth as she tried to pry two trunks apart. “Let. Me. In.” She darted along the border of trunks, hands searching the gaps between them for an opening.

Sharp slivers of bark snared her palm, tearing open a gash. She hissed and wiped the blood on her tunic, trembling against a wave of anguish. “Please open.”

“Where did she go, you fool?” someone snarled.

Altair. They were nearer now.

“Stay calm,” soothed Benyamin’s voice.

A sudden hiss silenced her emotions. Another hiss—her blood dripped to the cursed leaves. A tendril of white steam lifted, eerie in the darkness. It curled in the shape of a rose. White and wild.

Peace unto you, bint Iskandar. Pure of heart. Dark of intent.

Bint Iskandar. Daughter of Iskandar.

The guarding trees parted, unlocked by her blood. Dull light illuminated a circular jumu’a of black stone. The trees crackled and shifted, curving upward to form a dome of twisting branches, vines, and jewel-like foliage. It wasn’t a row of trees—there were five of them, their wide trunks lined with age, branches entwining to form an enclosure.

Protecting something.

Cradling her wounded hand against her chest, Zafira walked across a bed of leaves and stepped upon the stone. She felt a steady pulse beneath her boots. A breeze skittered across her skin, almost as if it were … sealing the jumu’a around her.

There it was. The lost Jawarat.

CHAPTER 85

Nasir sensed the ifrit too late.

Had he not been busy berating himself for the thousandth time, he would have sensed them long ago, but he hadn’t until one’s stave came swinging straight for his head. He ducked, scanning the stone pillars as he drew his scimitar.

Nasir should not have let her go. You only ever regret, mutt.

“We’re being attacked,” Benyamin announced.

“Barely a handful. We can take care of them,” Kifah said, spear twirling.

“Akhh, what else is new?” Altair asked flatly. The hiss of his twin scimitars punctuated his words.

“That, perhaps?” Benyamin asked, pointing in the distance.

“Bleeding Guljul,” said Kifah.

Not ten paces away, Zafira stood on a jumu’a of peculiar dark stone, a writhing black mass before her. Massive trees suddenly surrounded them, ancient limbs curling beyond a ceiling they could no longer see. It defied logic, existing within this endless hall of marble.

“Nasir? Tell me I’m dreaming,” Altair called.

“You don’t have the brains to dream, Altair,” Nasir replied, dodging a stave of fire as he swung his scimitar at the oncoming ifrit.

“Charming as always, brother dearest.”

Benyamin and Altair stood back to back, felling ifrit with the slash of sword and the shatter of glass. Kifah pivoted her spear beside Nasir. He felt a lick of heat by his ear, followed by a shriek when she pinned an ifrit to his right, while he cut another down to her left. They exchanged a nod amid the chaos, Kifah responding with a two-fingered salute across her brow.

“Oi, the kaftar,” Altair reminded them.