We Hunt the Flame (Sands of Arawiya 1)

Zafira scrunched her nose. “I’ll have mine without the garlic.”

“You don’t like garlic?” Altair asked, eyebrows raised. “At least we know for sure you aren’t an ifrit.”

“Ifrit like garlic? What, you asked one?”

“Ifrit like everything that reeks,” Altair said matter-of-factly.

Zafira’s brows flattened. “So you acknowledge that it smells wretched, yet you crave it anyway.”

“I eat the food, not inhale it. It’s all about the flavor. Right, One of Nine?”

Kifah nodded as if this were a conversation of utmost importance, and Zafira turned away in exaggerated disgust. Benyamin leaned against a wall, one leg propped, a leatherbound book in his hand. Only a safi would find time to read on Sharr. The crackle of the fire shrouded the silence, and after a moment Altair continued with a list of what he would devour had he been in Sultan’s Keep.

“There’s this one dessert I’d kill every single one of you in a heartbeat for. It’s a pastry made of cheese and soaked in syrup and—”

“I know what kanafah is. We western village Demenhune might be poor, but we’ve had the sultan’s delicacies,” Zafira said.

“Oh, good. You looked forlorn there for a moment,” Altair said with a grin.

Zafira tossed a rock at him. “I don’t know if I’d kill for it, but I guess that’s how barbarians work.”

“You wound me, Huntress,” he mocked, a hand on his broad chest. Then he frowned and rubbed his arm where the rock had struck.

Zafira knew she shouldn’t speak to him. She knew he was cunning and would slowly glean information from her as well as she knew she was drawn to him. But when he spoke, teasing and heedless, Zafira gravitated toward him. The darkness stepped back, and his charming grins lifted a weight off her chest.

He reminded her of Yasmine.

She was beginning to forget that he was not her friend. This was not her zumra. They were allies by circumstance, nothing more.

Zafira suspected that Altair’s demeanor was what kept the prince glued to his side. Despite his growling and cool indifference, Nasir likely tolerated Altair’s taunts not because he couldn’t do a thing about it, but because he craved them.

For the thousandth time since that afternoon, she questioned her split-breath decision to save the prince from the ifrit. What had he done in return? Nodded. What had you expected, a kiss?

He sat on a fallen column a little ways away, ea

ting slowly, lost in some dark thought. Zafira barely made out his silhouette in the flickering light, but the gleam of his gaze was clear enough as it drifted among them. She felt it snag on her, too, and something raced beneath her skin in response.

Her mind conjured the moment she’d felled him during their own fight earlier in the day. His body beneath hers without the barrier of her cloak between them. His lips close to her skin. His depthless eyes dark and knowing. The way he had seized up, the way his breathing had quickened. Something crackled in her chest.

He’s a murderer.

And she was starting to forget that he was.

CHAPTER 52

Nasir watched the others enjoying themselves. It was only a trio of hares, meager meat for five famished. Yet they ate and spoke as if they were enjoying a grand feast. As if death weren’t lurking in the too-heavy darkness.

He had gathered his peasant-size share and taken it away from the small fire, seating himself in the shadows while Benyamin’s zumra clung to every word Altair uttered. The general started with food but drifted off to other things: journeys he had taken, sights he had seen, and battles he had won. He teased them, enraptured them.

Nasir watched as the Huntress laughed at Altair’s words, the harsh lines of her face softening. He watched as the general’s eyes dropped to her lips and followed the curve of her smile. How did Altair feel, knowing he was the first to coax a genuine smile across her cold-hard features after the death of her companion?

She had molded too much of herself into cool marble, and he did not want her to shatter.

She withdrew into her own thoughts and her gaze drifted up, meandering across the slabs of stone until she found him. He remembered the softness of her body, the way she met his eyes as no one but Altair did, dismantling him as no one did. Fearlessly. Effortlessly. As if, perhaps, beneath every death and monstrous act he had committed, he was only flesh and bone—a human, nothing more.

He hadn’t been seen as a human in years.

He looked away, despite the fire between them. Why did she seek him out? Did she regret her decision to save him?