We Hunt the Flame (Sands of Arawiya 1)

The world spun black and chaos ran rampant. Through it all, Zafira saw the exact moment Benyamin’s body went still, one with the earth. Pressure built in her throat. This wasn’t Deen or Baba. This was someone else she had come to know the little things about. The things that made Benyamin the safi he was: his penchant for naps, his extraneous words, his silly pride. The value he placed in trust and truth.

You didn’t need to know someone’s darkest secrets to wish for their life. In this moment, we are two souls, marooned.

But what happened when one soul marooned the other? When death decided to stand between them?

The last time she’d spoken to him, it was to tear him apart. Hateful, bitter words she wished she could draw back. Words she could never, ever atone for.

She would never again see his umber eyes or his feline smile. Hear the drone of his endless voice, the rue when he spoke of his son.

“Zafira!” Altair yelled over the din of the shrieking ifrit. “The Jawarat!”

Soldiers of shadow took up every empty pocket of space, nearly invisible because of Nasir’s billowing darkness. They howled, staves of fire flaring and swooshing. There were too many of them. There was no way the zumra could fight their way through this.

She found the book. Wrapped her hands around the soft leather, pulse settling with the reassuring heartbeat of the Jawarat. We are the past, it whispered. It was everything they needed to return magic, but not magic itself.

She felt the steady beat again, thrumming beneath her boots. The Sisters gifted us their good hearts. It was a line every child of Arawiya knew.

Sweet snow below. It wasn’t the heartbeat of the Jawarat she felt. It was that of the—

She lifted her gaze up. To the five trees surrounding them, protecting the Jawarat in one final stand.

—the Sisters.

Their actual, beating hearts were vessels of insurmountable power. Magic. And those vessels were buried beneath each tree, housed in a rib cage of roots. The trees were the Sisters.

She needed to retrieve the hearts, untether them from Sharr, and, in so doing, lift Sharr’s curse. The Silver Witch’s strength would return. With the guidance of the Jawarat, they would return the hearts to the royal minarets.

Restore magic to the caliphates.

But freeing the hearts meant freeing the Lion, too.

“The hearts,” she whispered, unable to hold the words inside anymore. They rose in her chest, clawed at her mouth, made her speak. “The hearts are in the trees. Magic is in the trees.”

The zumra heard her.

There was a sudden burst of movement as they struggled to fend off the ifrit while moving toward the trees. But the Lion had heard, too. He swept toward her. He didn’t need the hearts just yet—the Jawarat was more important to him. To him, knowledge trumped all.

Destroy him. He has served his purpose. The Jawarat’s words echoed in her heart. They were not the words of the Sisters. They were a result of the years the book spent festering in darkness.

Zafira backed away, ducking from an ifrit’s stave. Another swooshed behind her, but Kifah hurled one of her lightning blades, felling the ifrit in its tracks. Altair appeared with raised scimitars, but the Lion deflected with ease, hurling him into the path of the rushing ifrit.

“Huntress!” Kifah yelled.

Zafira saw Kifah running to where Benyamin’s body lay, saw her bending over the fallen safi, their friend, but she couldn’t react. Her vision dipped darker and the book trembled in her hands. She was not atop the stone, her only protection. Distantly, she heard Kifah shout and Altair answer with orders, the general in the battlefield.

The Lion snarled, skeins of darkness trailing him. Zafira ducked away, trying to see in the chaos that pelted from all sides. Trying to listen over the demands of the Jawarat. She heard Benyamin’s voice, telling her to remain calm. To think. To trust. We are stronger as one. But he was dead now.

Screams pierced her eardrums, followed by the howl of wind before a body crashed into hers and the Jawarat was ripped from her grasp.

This time, she felt its loss like a seam tearing in her heart. She felt its call, its panic as it called for the one it was bound to.

The whisper of the Lion’s lips caressed her ear, and she knew she had failed.

CHAPTER 88

Nasir wrenched his gaze from tree to tree. They were massive, their boughs old and weary, veined in white like the Silver Witch’s hair. He counted five.

This was what had become of the Sisters.