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She hated the sympathy in his eyes, the way he spoke to her as if she were a child.
“That’s it. Breathe, slowly. That’s not who you think it is. Do you remember? Are you listening?”
Yasmine. Yasmine. Yasmine.
“It’s not him,” he continued gently.
Him? No, this was a her. This was sweet Yasmine. Foul-mouthed Yasmine. Married Yasmine.
“Breathe, Huntress. Easy now. It’s not real.”
Only then did she notice there wasn’t just one Yasmine. There were many. And as Zafira’s gaze darted from one to another, eerie against the fat trees, she saw the faces shift.
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“Ifrit,” she whispered. Sweet relief buckled her knees, and she gripped the nearest trunk as the world spun back into focus.
Benyamin held her up with a hand around her shoulders. “I need you alert.”
“Tamim?” Kifah’s voice cracked. Was she seeing a lover? A brother? A friend?
The ifrit continued to shift, slowly surrounding them. Lana, Deen, Umm, Haytham, Baba. At the one that looked like Baba, Benyamin stiffened.
“Do you see him, too?” she asked, willing the tremble from her fingers. She could no longer see the end of the oasis. The sun seemed to have disappeared altogether.
“I see someone, but not the same person you are seeing,” Benyamin choked.
It was an obscene thing, reaching into a soul to pull out the face of a loved one. One ifrit could portray a hundred faces at once—it was all in the eye of the beholder. Unless the victim was strong enough to see past the tricks. Then one would see nothing at all.
“We’re surrounded.” Nasir’s soft murmur came from a little ways behind her.
Zafira knew what it was like to be engulfed by the darkness, but that didn’t stop trepidation from creeping into her heart. The tick, tick, tick going a little faster, a fever she couldn’t contain. An excitement.
She could survive the darkness; she always did.
But could the others?
They need you, a voice in her head said. They didn’t care for her. And there was a good chance that when she found the blasted Jawarat, they might all line up to kill her.
She could easily slip through the trees and escape into the desert.
Yet when she blinked, she saw a blade through Altair’s still chest. She saw Kifah’s unblinking eyes and Benyamin’s stomach ripped to shreds. She saw the prince’s sad gray eyes, colder in death. She couldn’t leave them, even if they might never repay the favor.
With one swift maneuver, she lifted an arrow and nocked it in her bow, familiarity settling between her shoulders as she pulled it back.
“Back to back,” Altair murmured, and Zafira wondered if the general had to bite his tongue to hold back further commands.
One of the ifrit hissed. Another one shouted, words garbled by the old tongue.
“In case you didn’t notice, there are more of us than you and your prince,” Kifah said, a crest to her voice, her restlessness thwarted by the adrenaline of a skirmish.
The five of them rearranged themselves in a ring, backs to one another. Zafira tried to ease into the calm of her hunts, but her thoughts wouldn’t settle. The world buzzed and she couldn’t think straight. More shadows slipped into the small clearing. Even Zafira found it difficult to see.
Still, she counted twelve ifrit against the five of them.
The one nearest her wore Umm’s face as it tilted its head, streaks of white in her hair, almost as if listening to an order. Not real, not real, not real.
Then the world became fire.
