We Hunt the Flame (Sands of Arawiya 1) - Page 108
“If I were less realistic and more pessimistic, I would say we’re going to die,” Kifah drawled in the silence.
Nasir sheathed his scimitar and stalked forward.
“Best not keep death waiting, then.”
CHAPTER 55
Weariness and wariness became a common exchange, the sun weighing them down despite its gloomy glow. They trekked and tracked for five whole days without incident, taking short rests and eating dates to maintain energy.
No, not tracking. Zafira was no tracker; she was a hunter. She hunted. But hunters tracked, and trackers hunted, didn’t they? Where are you going with this? Zafira tilted her head and imagined her thoughts shifting into a box she closed tight. If only it were that easy.
An idle mind is the devil’s playground, she told herself, but the words felt like shadows against her lips.
As they shuffled through the sands, Zafira listened for sounds of life. Birds, the hiss of sand critters, a predator cry—only the silence ever shouted back. Sometimes their surroundings mimicked her thoughts, wilting and wavering before she blinked and everything righted.
The darkness was always happy to see her.
Zafira could feel its happiness whenever the sun dimmed further or they traversed an outcropping or another passage of ruins where the shadows lived. They bent and shifted in a dance of elation. Tendrils drifted beneath the folds of her tunic, curled around her arms, nipped at her ears, a lover she could not see. Did no one else feel what she did?
Benyamin glanced sideways at her. “Trouble, Huntress?”
The genuine concern in his voice nearly undid her. She blinked and refocused on the stone ahead. A set of columns had toppled, one against the other, creating a bridge for creatures to hop across.
“No,” she said softly.
Nearly everything dragged her mind to grief—Yasmine, and how Zafira would tell her of her brother’s death. Deen, dying for her. Lana, caring for their mother. Umm, and the five years Zafira had spent avoiding her. Nasir, and the way her body had begun to react whenever he was near. Why had Arawiya’s lethal hashashin succumbed to a needle and inscribe the word “love,” in any form or tense, on his skin?
“Why is there a flower in your turban, you bumbling fool?” Benyamin asked.
Zafira threw a glance at Altair, whose red-rimmed turban housed a blood lily.
Altair frowned. “What are you talking about? My fashion tastes are too exquisite for flowers.”
“Says the flower on your head,” Nasir pointed out.
Kifah, not one to miss out on a quip when it came to the Sarasin general, was unusually silent.
“Akhh,” Altair grumbled, and Zafira heard the shuffle of him pulling something from his turban. “You call this a flower?”
The vibrant flower on Altair’s head was now a dead leaf in his hand, curling into itself. Zafira darted a glance at Kifah, who winked. The miragi’s work.
“It’s the island, alerting you to your terrible taste,” Nasir said.
Kifah snickered at Altair’s wide-eyed bewilderment, and the general tossed the leaf to the sand and stomped on it for good measure.
They passed dunes, dunes, and more dunes. Sometimes Zafira would catch Altair leaning close to Kifah, making a tender smile bloom across the warrior’s lips. Other times, she would catch the general and Benyamin in conversation, eyes forlorn, voices low. Nasir watched them all, mouth pursed, ever weary.
To a darting glance, the prince was cool indifference. To someone who watched him, his focus was intent and inquisitive. The mark of someone born with a curious mind, but forced to use it elsewhere: In calculating death. His gaze slid to Zafira, and she quickly looked away, neck warming.
“Are you sure we’re going the right way?” Kifah asked as the desert darkened once more. It wasn’t a cover of clouds that obscured the sun. It was the sky itself. Caging them away from the orb of light.
“No,” Zafira said, eyeing the knife twirling in Kifah’s hand. How could she explain the song the darkness sang? The frenzy in her bloodstream that only settled when she led them in the direction it wanted? “But if you have a better idea, by all means.”
Kifah grumbled something beneath her breath.
“Couldn’t you have brought a few camels on that ship of yours?” Altair groused.
“You should have sent me a letter asking for one or ten,” said Benyamin.
Source: readsnovelonline.net