Page 26 of The Moon’s Fury (Moon & Sands #2)

A twig snapped beneath her feet, and the rabbit she’d been stalking fled, its small legs faster than she could ever hope to be. “Khara!” she swore. Her stomach growled loudly, displeased by her failure.

With a heavy sigh, she walked back to her new home—a small cave in the mountains. The day she woke surrounded by the burnt bodies of her village, she’d packed a bag and ran as far as she could. Merchants often visited their small town, looking for new buyers for their wares.

She didn’t want to be there when they came.

After a pitiful meal of berries—she’d quickly learned that the red, fuzzy ones were safe to eat, and the purple, smooth ones made her stomach cramp for days—she headed to the nearby stream to bathe and replenish her water supply.

She spent her day, like every day, in silence.

At night, her dreams were filled with burning flesh and horrid screams.

Ahmar trotted along the dirt trail—they were deeper in the Mountains now. The air was cooler, and somehow, Hadiyah also managed to blame that on him.

“If you hadn’t choked me into submission, I might have had time to pack a shawl,” she said icily, seated behind Soraya on the brown stallion.

If he hadn’t choked her into submission, she’d be dead.

The sharp retort rose up in his throat, ready to fly past his lips, but he clenched his jaw and forced it down. They had maybe another half hour of riding before it would be time to make camp. He could stomach her insults until then.

Soraya shot him an apologetic smile and rolled her eyes dramatically. He would have smiled back, but Hadiyah was still glaring at him. Instead, he turned his focus to the sloping dirt path cutting through the mountain.

Soraya gasped. His head snapped toward the sound, worried she’d spotted danger.

“Whoa, Zar! Whoa!” She pulled on the reins and guided the brown horse to a stop. His mouth tipped up.

She’d named the ill-mannered, grouchy horse after Zarian?

He had been hesitant to put a name to the all-encompassing, heart-squeezing feeling that warmed his limbs every time he looked at her, but this was the closest he’d ever come to calling it love.

“What is it, Soraya?” her mother asked, her perpetual frown even deeper. He scanned the mountainside for threats, but came up empty. Soraya ignored her mother and quickly dismounted, her arced leg passing scant inches from Hadiyah’s nose.

Damn. Maybe next time.

“Soraya?” he questioned, his brow furrowed.

She didn’t respond, too busy rummaging in the leather pack strapped to Zar’s hindquarters. She fished out her journal and gestured excitedly toward the mountainside.

“Look!” she said, pointing at some bushes, her bright, brown eyes flicking between him and her mother. “It’s sumzeher .”

He arched a brow in question, and she sighed. “Those look like sumzeher bushes. The Thessani botanists mentioned them during their last visit about a year ago. Apparently, if you grind up the leaves and mix them with water, it creates a deadly poison.”

“So if we steer clear of the bushes, we should be all right?” he asked slowly, still confused as to why she was so excited.

Hadiyah sighed, deep and long-suffering, and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Soraya, get back on the horse.”

Soraya shook her head excitedly, still focused on Jamil. “No, no, no. It’s not about ingesting it. In the past year, there have been reports of the poison being used to coat arrowheads and daggers and swords—”

“Soraya, get back—”

“Even a mild graze can be fatal—the wounds turn green within the hour. There’s no known antidote. If I can procure a sample, study its properties, I can—”

“ Soraya bint Khahleel !” her mother shouted.

“Did you leave your moonsdamned mind in Alzahra? We fled our home! We need to get to safety! Your father indulged your free-spirited interests too much, and now look at you! No common sense at all, ready to traipse over to a poisonous bush!” She gritted her teeth and added, “Get back. On this horse. Immediately .”

Soraya looked stricken. Her lips were parted, and she stared at her mother in shock, brown eyes glistening.

He wanted to maim Hadiyah.

Murder her.

Make her suffer for dimming the light in Soraya’s eyes.

Fearless Soraya, who had barged in and shocked the entire Nahrysban council into silence and refused to leave until they listened to her agricultural projects.

His sword called to him, urging him to cut Hadiyah down for the defeated slope in Soraya’s shoulders.

Soraya pressed her lips into a firm line and replaced her journal in the leather satchel. Silently, she remounted Zar and snapped his reins, and he quickly urged Ahmar into keeping pace.

A thousand and one sharp words flitted through his mind. A thousand and one times, he bit them back.

He had vowed to safeguard Soraya’s life.

Her heart was not his to protect, least of all, from her mother.

Soraya was quiet as they made camp near a small grove of trees. He managed to hunt three rabbits for dinner, and she said not a word during their meal either.

When they set up their bedrolls, he placed his closer to Hadiyah’s and Soraya’s—it was much cooler at night this deep in the Mountains, even if they were just passing through the base.

Hadiyah’s hawk eyes zeroed in on him. “What are you doing?” she snapped.

He lifted his chin. “The nights are cold. We should share body heat—”

“We aren’t sharing anything with you. Sleep next to the horses if you wish to stay warm.”

Soraya looked horrified, and it was the first emotion she’d shown since that afternoon.

“Mama, I’ve never known you to be so cruel.

Let him sleep here!” His heart warmed at her defense, though a lick of shame crawled up his spine and mocked him—she readily defended him, but he had not said a word when Hadiyah cruelly berated her.

Soraya continued, brows drawn tightly together as she glared at her mother. “He’s risking his life to bring us to Shahbaad. He brought Almeer to safety…”

Almeer .

He didn’t hear anything else.

Ice-cold water doused whatever warmth had alighted in his veins.

“It’s all right, Soraya,” he said quietly. He relocated his bedroll near Ahmar and Zar, then sat by the fire.

After Hadiyah fell asleep, he waited for Soraya to come sit beside him.

But she didn’t, and eventually, her light snores reached his ears.

He studied her sleeping form—somehow, she looked smaller tonight.

Jamil rubbed his temples, his mind warring with itself.

He sighed.

Decision made, he rose and checked the camp perimeter before gently waking Ahmar.

His normally friendly horse was not pleased about being woken.

“Shhh, Ahmar, shh,” he coaxed, gently leading him away. When there was enough distance from his sleeping companions, he mounted the rust-colored horse and rode back the way they came.

It was difficult to tell in the darkness of night if he was looking at the right bush, but he was fairly certain he’d found the sumzeher . He warily regarded the dark, spiny bush.

Soraya had said it was poisonous—should he be wearing gloves?

He hesitated for a moment before snapping off a small section with his bare hands. She had been ready to head up here with no protection, so he supposed it was fine.

He headed back to camp.

Soraya and Hadiyah hadn’t stirred. He quietly opened Soraya’s satchel and found her journal, the worn leather soft and supple in his hands.

Did it have letters from Almeer? Her innermost thoughts?

Against his better judgment, he flipped through and was both relieved and disappointed to find only pages and pages of pressed plants with cramped notes scribbled into the margins in her sloped handwriting.

He tucked the sumzeher between two empty pages.

With one last glance at Soraya, he lay down to sleep with the horses.