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She didn’t deny it. “It won’t be long before they find me. Exploiters don’t let go of their assets so quickly.”
“You mean your lover,” he said softly, with a slight tilt of his head.
“My lover.” The idea was so preposterous, she nearly laughed.
“The crown prince. After all, he is the only one capable of tracking well.”
Zafira shrank back. “He is not my lover.”
There was a cruel slant to the Shadow’s mouth. “Oh, but he wishes he were. I’ve lost count of how many times he has imagined his hands trailing your thighs, his mouth against yours, his teeth at your lip—”
“Stop,” she whispered as the words whittled at her core and lit her slowly aflame. There was only one explanation for how the Shadow had preyed on Nasir’s thoughts: The prince was further into the clutches of darkness than she was.
“Such a naughty boy,” the Shadow scolded with a tsk. But his amber eyes took in her every motion; he was as much a hunter as she was.
“That isn’t love,” she said.
“Indeed. There is a grand difference between love and a lover. I would say the latter is much more pleasurable. A pity you crave the former.”
“Love is for children.” It preys on the weak, on the ones born with too much hope.
His eyebrows drew together. “Is that so? Because I’ve made a few discoveries.”
He lifted a hand and slowly began closing his splayed fingers. “To win the love of your father, you picked up a bow and carved yourself into the Huntress he wished you to become.”
His voice of velvet dug beneath her skin.
“To win the love of your people, you braved the Arz. You fed them. You parted with those beautiful skins. You confined yourself to a life of mystery. Though you owed them nothing.”
That wasn’t the reason.
It wasn’t.
No.
Could she have been so adamantly against love that she’d inadvertently become a slave to it?
“More recently, to win the love of your caliph, despite knowing your hand would not have been forced, despite knowing you could very well perish on this island, you joined this journey.”
“I have never needed to win the love of anyone. Not my father when he lived, not my people, and never my caliph.”
“Oh? Then why did you do what you did?”
The Shadow leaned against the dark wall and lifted one corner of his lips. His eyes were a touch. His smile was a whisper at her neck. She felt things she had never felt before, burning inside her.
“I would say, Huntress, that you very much believe in love. Your every action as you aged and matured came from the need to be seen. To be loved. You have always wanted it.” He leaned so close that his next words brushed her lips. “You crave it.”
She swayed back with a sharp inhale. Every nerve ending snapped to attention when his golden eyes dropped to her mouth.
“There is nothing wrong with love, azizi. Indeed, love is a strength, as much as a curse.”
She had never craved love. If she had, she would have leaped into Deen’s arms the moment he proposed. She hunted for her people because they would starve otherwise. She boarded that ship because they would die otherwise. She did everything with the knowledge that she could very well die.
Every musing of her mind unraveled, spun off course. He began leading her toward the dark corridor. The one the voices had been trying to crawl from.
She was still armed, she realized. Her jambiya at her hip, her bow at her back, arrows, too. But when she inhaled, the richness of the qahwa lathered her senses, and her mind turned sluggish.
The Shadow was not a threat.
