We Hunt the Flame (Sands of Arawiya 1)

ge where she and Deen had distributed meat. Where they and Zafira had grown up. Where the men had scorched the homes of the western villages and unleashed a vapor upon the vulnerable.

Children Yasmine had tutored, whose smiles she had coaxed and celebrated, now lay in small coffins, the ground too cold and hard to allow them proper burials.

Their deaths were bloodless, but the pallor of their skin spoke of hours of suffering. The few who survived told of the colorless poison.

There was no escaping something that killed through the cardinal act of inhaling.

Now Yasmine stared from the window of the caliph’s palace in Thalj, far, far away from the forsaken village she once called home. She had no home. And if the Sarasins continued under the sultan’s orders, no one in Demenhur would, no one in Arawiya would. What was the purpose of such slaughter?

“She will come,” Misk said. He rubbed warmth into Yasmine’s arms and pressed a kiss to her head.

Zafira. The sister of her heart. There was no way to send news to Sharr, and no way of retrieving news, either. She did not know if Zafira still lived, but she did know that her brother did not.

She would have learned more, if Misk had let her wander farther into the Arz when she had been in that senseless, helpless state. She would have died, too, but she had remained there long enough for the dark forest to show her something too vivid to be false.

The vision had gripped her: Deen dying by the hand of a golden-haired man who had attempted to kill Zafira.

Yasmine vowed to kill him. To bring to him the same level of suffering he had brought to her.

She didn’t know how she would, for between her and Sharr was her husband, the Arz, the Baransea, and possibly a thousand and one other things she didn’t know of. She was no Huntress, but she was Yasmine Ra’ad, and she would find a way. She didn’t even know if the golden-haired man still lived, nor did she know his name. One donkey at a time.

Misk was still rubbing her shoulders, silently awaiting her response.

“For what?” Yasmine asked him.

What Zafira faced on Sharr was surely better than this. Yasmine didn’t want her to return. First they had suffered from the cold, then the loss of their parents. Then Deen. Now this.

“Suffering is our fate.”

Misk made a sound in his throat. “Have faith, Yasmine.”

“It’s hard.”

“That’s why I said have faith, not have a sweet.”

Yasmine gave him a look.

He laughed. “What? All of your terrible jokes are catching up with me.” He wrapped his arms around her, his chin on her shoulder, his voice warm in her ear. “Zafira will return with others in tow. Including a man I trust with my life and that of my mother’s. Deen knew of him, too.”

“And he will end our troubles with his oh-so-great powers?”

Misk let her mocking slide. “Not alone. But he will be part of it.”

The maids had brought her kanafah and mint tea, but the tray sat untouched, the tea long since cooled. Yasmine couldn’t stomach the sight of food or comfort. Everywhere she looked, she saw the bruised skin and still chests of the children. Small coffins and screaming mothers.

She was tired. So very tired, but she gifted her husband a small smile. “Does your mysterious savior have a name?”

Misk kissed her cheek. “Altair al-Badawi.”

* * *

He never did like the darkness. It was too heavy on the eyes, left too much to the imagination. It was where he had been shoved, confined, while his mother doted on his brother. While Arawiya celebrated the birth of a prince.

He preferred light. The dizzying kind that hung above the feasts he had once frequented with Benyamin.

Another sob slipped from his parched tongue.

Benyamin, who had risked his life for decades by acting as the one heading Altair’s treasonous gossamer web. His brother by choice, his friend by fate. Who lived with the guilt of his people’s negligence, with the guilt of his own kindness, embarking on this journey and not once expecting to die.