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“No, you don’t,” the other said.
Zafira wouldn’t bother asking for his name.
“Why do you always think I’m talking to you?”
“Does it look like she’s listening to you?”
“Why do men think women can’t hear them unless we’re looking at them?” Zafira snapped.
Moments later, she heard nothing at all and swiveled to see them right at her heels, deathly silent. So the earlier shuffling was a ruse. The mystery of why they needed her set her on edge.
Zafira touched Baba’s jambiya at her thigh. “Well? Out with it.”
“With what? Would you like me to sing to pass the time?” Altair asked.
“The results of your apparent mind-reading,” she deadpanned.
“Ah, it’s just that I can see you plotting our murders leagues away,” Altair said. There was an edge to his voice when he added, “A little thing to remember, Huntress: your face thinks before you do.”
“My brain, unlike yours, works before the rest of me does,” Zafira retorted. She knew her face spoke before she did. Everyone knew. But Deen knew it best of all.
Altair laughed. “It would be uncharacteristic of me to disagree.”
As they continued away from the cover of the stone structures, she was fully aware of every weighted glance the two young men shared when they thought she wouldn’t notice. She was even more aware of the way the dark-haired one watched her.
The longer Zafira alternated between sand and relentless stone, the harder it became to breathe. Her hood became a cage, and her eyes burned as sweat seeped between her eyelids. The world tipped more than once; the horizon rippled.
She ran her tongue along her chapped lips.
Water. Everywhere she looked, there was water.
A mirage, Zafira. It’s a mirage.
“Huntress?” Altair paused by her side when she grasped a trellis to hold herself upright. She gave him an impatient wave, and he carried on with a shrug, shuffling sand in his wake.
Breathe. Remove your wretched cloak. What was the point of it anymore? They knew she was a girl. She lifted her fingers to the cool clasp of her cloak and … no. She wouldn’t be bested by a cloak. She could endure a little heat.
A shadow fell to her side, and Zafira glanced sharply at the dark-haired hashashin. Something shifted in his features, just barely, when she met his eyes. A mix of surprise, and a stir of anger. There was a vulnerability in the way his dark lashes brushed his skin when he blinked.
“Take off your cloak,” he said.
Her throat closed and her head spun. Spurts of sand struck her skin.
“What do you want with me?” she whispered as her breathing grew shallow.
He murmured a reply, but all she heard was that silvery lilt before the sun winked away and she tipped into darkness.
* * *
Zafira finally understood why Arawiyans celebrated the moon. Why the sight made people weep.
It was the desert. The sweltering heat that drained them to their core until the sun sank into the horizon and the moon swept across the dark expanse of sky, gifting them her cold touch. It was a beauty they didn’t appreciate in Demenhur, because of the shy sun.
She had never been happier to see that majestic sphere of white.
Moss was cool beneath her back. A figure was bent over her, silhouetted against the moon. He brushed a damp cloth across her forehead and pursed his lips when he saw that she was awake. The dark-haired hashashin. Altair was nowhere to be seen.
Skies. She had blacked out. She had blacked out in the middle of an uncharted island with two Sarasin men. Panic tightened her chest and she scrambled back, boot heels digging into the dirt, moss sticking to her palms.
