“I doubt that.” The tension in Saranya’s home had been thick enough to cut with her jade dagger. “Something was off with them,” Nalia said. “Obviously Malek hasn’t visited in a while, but there was something else. I don’t know. We’re just lucky she’s going to give us that guide.”
“True,” Zanari said. “The sooner we get that ring, the better.”
The light went out of her eyes. Nalia didn’t have to ask why; she knew Zanari was constantly checking in on the tavrai, who, from the sound of things, were barely holding on to their headquarters in the Forest of Sighs. Things were getting worse in Arjinna by the minute. If Raif didn’t return soon with the ring, he and Zanari may as well not return at all. Nalia didn’t think any good could come of the ring, and, yet, it seemed like the Djan’Urbis had no other option.
Zanari’s stomach growled. “Gods, where is my good-for-nothing brother? I’m starving.”
They could have manifested their dinner, but Fareed kept a close eye on his guests’ comfort and he had no idea any of Malek’s companions were jinn. Nalia needed to keep it that way.
“I just hope Raif can figure out how to pay with human money,” she said.
A tug.
Nalia gasped.
“Nal? What is it?”
A tingling, burning tug on her chest. Someone was calling Nalia, using her true name. And only one person knew it now that her mother was dead.
“Bashil!” Nalia cried out. Her hands flew to her chest and she leaned over, tears slipping down her cheeks.
Zanari shot off the bed. “Are you okay?”
“More than okay,” Nalia said. The weight of her fear now momentarily suspended, it was as if she’d suddenly become a wisp of cloud, a swirl of evanescence. Laughter bubbled up inside her, a spring, then a geyser. “My brother—he’s alive. Alive, Zan. He just used hahm’alah!”
Zanari clapped her hands and crowed. “Who says the gods don’t listen to us on Earth?”
Nalia lifted her hand and in a puff of golden smoke she saw Bashil’s face in some kind of jail cell. Then it was gone. She tried to connect with him again, but there was nothing.
“I don’t understand . . . Where’d he go?” she said, panic rising once again. “Fire and blood.” Nalia balled her fist, disappointment covering her joy like a cloud crossing the sun. He’s alive, she reminded herself. That was all that mattered right now.
“Listen, sister. Now that he’s awake, I have a better chance of seeing how he is,” Zanari said. “I’ll use my voiqhif, okay?”
Zanari had tried to find Bashil several times before, but all she’d seen was darkness, an impenetrable wall that had been impossible to break through. Nalia had refused to believe he was dead. Unconscious, maybe. But not dead.
And she’d been right.
Zanari sat on the floor, then pulled off the pouch of earth from around her neck. She opened it, then swung it in an arc over her head. The dirt hovered in the air, then settled on the floor in a perfect circle, with Zanari in its center. She held out her hand as she muttered under her breath. Seconds later, a pad of paper and a pencil appeared on her palm. Then she closed her eyes.
Nalia watched as Zanari’s eyelids flickered, like the delicate petals of a flower caught in a slight breeze. Her breathing became deeper as she settled into a trance state. Nalia imagined the lines of information Zanari traveled as an enormous set of underground freeways, each one leading to a specific person, place, or event. She hoped Zanari would be able to find Bashil among the millions of psychic roadways.
Zanari’s pencil began to fly across the paper in her hand. Nalia couldn’t see what she was drawing; the movements were too quick, too agitated. After a few seconds, Zanari’s eyes flew open. She stared, unseeing, her gaze outside the room’s walls. She took one shuddering breath and then it was over.
“I have no idea why this came up when I searched for your brother,” Zanari said. She held the pad of paper up for her to see. Nalia stopped breathing, her mind clear of every thought, her body suddenly cold. The face drawn with Zanari’s quick, sure hand had invaded Nalia’s nightmares for over three years.
She’d never forget the Ifrit jinni she’d saved from more of her mother’s torture and the certain death that would follow. This was the jinni who had betrayed Nalia’s kindness by leading the Ifrit army through the same secret passage beneath the Qaf Mountains that Nalia had shown her.
“That’s the one,” Nalia whispered.
“The one what?”
“She’s the Ifrit I told you about—the one I snuck out of the palace. The mind reader. I saved her and she . . .” Nalia tore her eyes from the beautiful face with the proud tilt to her chin. Though she looked different without the bruises and cut lip she’d had in the dungeon, Nalia would recognize the jinni anywhere.
Zanari’s eyes went wide, her face suddenly ashen. “Nalia . . . how can you not know who she is?”
“The prisoner wouldn’t talk during the interrogations. At all. We never learned her name.”
Fear bloomed in Nalia’s stomach, a thorny terror pushing up, past her ribs and into her chest, her throat. And she knew—before Zanari said a word—she suddenly knew who the prisoner was.
“Calar,” Zanari said, her eyes drifting to the sketch. “That’s her name.”
The silence in the room became a roar in Nalia’s ears. The walls seemed to close in, like hunters surrounding a kill.
Calar. Calar. Calar.
She might as well have killed the Ghan Aisouri empress herself and handed the Amethyst Crown to the Ifrit.
“But . . .” Nalia stared at Zanari, eyes pleading. Undo it, they begged her. Let me not know this.
“When I looked for your brother, I hit that black wall for a second—the thing that’s been there since I started looking for him. Then I could suddenly push through. Everything was blurry. I saw Calar’s face. A dark room. That’s all.”
Nalia gripped at her hair, pulling until the pain focused her. “My father. Calar might have questioned him. He’s Shaitan. If he’s alive, I’m sure he’s been forced to serve the Ifrit at the palace. He’s a scholar, a mage. He could have . . . fire and blood, he might have told her Bashil was alive . . . and if she knows he’s my brother—oh, gods.”
“Whoa. Nalia, you’re jumping to some conclusions here. Remember, my gift isn’t one hundred percent. The lines are really focused on you right now so since you’re looking for Bashil and Calar’s looking for you, it’s all coming at me in the same way. And me seeing Calar doesn’t mean Calar herself, necessarily—you have to remember that. It could mean she gave an order about all the work camps in Ithkar and because this affects Bashil that’s why we’re seeing her face. It could be a million things.”
Nalia hugged herself. “But what if it’s not a million things? What if he’s in the palace dungeon? He looked like he was alone in a cell, not with all the prisoners in Ithkar like he usually is.”
The door opened and Raif stepped inside, balancing cartons of food and bottles of water.
“There should be enough,” he said. “I got everything Fareed suggested . . .” He trailed off as Nalia turned toward him.
“What happened?” He set the food down on the nearest table and crossed to her.
“I think Calar has my brother.”
“What?”
Zanari threw up her hands. “Nalia, don’t take this the wrong way, but I seriously doubt Calar has time to go looking through all of Ithkar for your kid brother. Even if she wanted him, it’d be almost impossible to find him so quickly. There are thousands of prisoners in the camps, most of them children that look just like him.”
“But if she has him, if she’s hurt him, then maybe that’s why the hahm’alah isn’t working right. He doesn’t have the strength to—” Her voice broke and she covered her mouth. “I just need to be alone right now.”
Raif reached for her. “Nalia, you have to eat.”
“I’m not hungry.”
It was too much—knowing B
ashil was alive, but unsure if Calar had him locked up in the palace dungeon; knowing that Calar was the Ifrit she had saved, that Nalia had practically given the kingdom away to the usurper empress . . .
The game of cat and mouse they were playing wasn’t simply Calar trying to secure the throne.
This was personal.
She’d buried him alive.
The surrounding darkness was a black, writhing worm—hungry. It twisted around his body, tightening its grip. Malek finally understood what those hours, days, months in the bottle had cost Nalia. Her betrayal, why she couldn’t love him: that all made sense now. How could she ever forgive him for this?
What little air remained inside the metal box the Ifrit had stuffed him into stank of iron as Malek’s blood continued to gush out of his nose, his mouth, his ears. His body was folded into the steamer trunk like a contortionist’s: knees hitting forehead, the curved bones of his spine digging into the trunk’s side. Each round with the psychic jinni pushed him past his threshold of pain into a whole new universe of agony. She’d been going through the contents of his brain like it was a drawer full of junk, throwing whatever wasn’t of use to her to the side. He didn’t know how much he was losing or what would be left when she was through with him.
If she would ever be through with him.
I deserve this, he thought. And not just because of Nalia. Malek had been the shadow that lurked in the corner of so many people’s lives, but Amir . . . he’d been nothing but light.
Amir stares at the piles of American dollars as Malek throws them on the bed. “Brother, I don’t understand.”
Malek beams. He’s never felt so proud in his life. “I got it for us. I used my power, and the banker, he just gave it to me.”
Amir’s eyes darken. “But none of it’s yours.”
“It is now.”
“Take it back,” Amir says. “At once. This isn’t who you are. Who we are. And what will we tell Mother?”
“We’ll tell her the truth: that our jinn father left us with one good thing that will help us survive.” Malek threw the empty bag across the room. “If you want to keep begging on the street, be my guest. I’m buying us passage to America and you can come with us or go to hell, for all I care.”
“Where is she, pardjinn?” his captor asked once again. Her muffled voice came to him from above. Malek knew the bitch was standing over the trunk in the icy room her soldiers had thrown him into, waiting for him to break. She’d already assured him several times that he would.
Malek tried to conjure Nalia’s face in the darkness: the cinnamon skin, those eyes that always held a secret, the curve of her lips he’d hardly gotten to kiss. He hoped to God he never saw her again. If he did, it would mean his captor had won.
It would mean Nalia would die right there in front of him.
“My dear, I admire your tenacity, truly I do,” Malek said through clenched teeth. “But I can assure you that there is no way in hell I’m helping you find her.”
The spinning started again and the box shot off the ground, whirling faster and faster until all Malek could do was scream. It was a primal howl heard by no one but the cruel jinni who had thrown him into this unending vortex. He heard her laugh then, a delighted trill that was far more terrifying than the box they’d put him in.
Finally, the trunk lay still. The lid flew open and once again Malek stared into the crimson eyes of his torturer.
“Do you remember where she is now?” Calar asked.
“I can’t say that I do, no.” He spit out the words, and drops of blood landed on the stone floor.
Fiery ripples of chiaan slipped from her fingers and wound around Malek’s head, pushing underneath the skin. He cried out as the blood vessels popped, as his brain became a sponge.
Malek bit back the whimper that clawed up his throat and closed his eyes. Nalia, descending the staircase in his mansion, her eyes meeting his across the crowded room. Nalia, pressing her lips to his in an empty movie theater. Nalia, saying, I’ll never love you.
Calar smiled. “Let’s try this again, shall we?”
Malek needed to catch his breath, find that reserve of strength inside him that had been reduced to Nalia’s face, her smell. If he could just keep holding on to that, he could stand whatever Calar threw at him, he was sure of it. He sat up slowly, his body screaming.
“A . . . question . . . if I may.” Just a few minutes of peace, he silently prayed.
The corner of Calar’s mouth turned up. “An answer, if I wish.”
“You’re the empress of Arjinna. You have an army. Why are you bothering with me at all?”
“My army is in the middle of a civil war,” Calar said. “They don’t have time to run around Earth chasing one girl.”
“But you do?”
“She’s an old acquaintance of mine. I’m doing her a courtesy.”
It was a good act, but Malek wasn’t buying it.
“You’re afraid of her,” he said softly.
Of course. Calar’s power was terrifying, but Nalia’s was greater, if what he’d learned of the Ghan Aisouri were true. What would happen if Nalia came back to Arjinna and fought for the throne?
“Let me tell you a story,” Calar said, her voice low and dangerous. “Once upon a time there were two girls in a dungeon. One was the prisoner, one was the guard. The prisoner wanted to be there. It was her choice, part of a much larger plan. She let the royal knights beat her and cut her. She let them think they had broken her will. But she was just waiting for the right moment to use her power. The guard . . . she didn’t want to be there. She was weak and scared. Her mind was filled with pretty magic, the face of a little boy. She did not have a warrior’s mind. The prisoner was not afraid of her.”
Calar walked toward the tiny window, set high in the wall. Moonlight glinted off the metal bars.
“That being said, she’s unaccountably good at evading attacks,” she continued. “It was a stroke of luck that we were able to capture you. To be fair, I thought your mind would be more yielding, but no matter. I’ll just move on to the next plan of attack. This way’s a bit more complicated, but since you’ve proven to be rather useless, I’ll just have to exert myself.”
Calar turned around and rapped on the cell door twice. It opened immediately. “Bring the boy,” she said to the Ifrit standing guard outside.
Moments later, a child stumbled through the doorway. He was dirty, thin, as though he’d been plucked out of a coal mine. Sick, too, from the looks of him.
“Is this supposed to mean something?” Malek asked, gesturing toward the child.
Calar smiled and the boy looked up for the first time. Golden eyes with the slightest curve at the edges. Eyes that could break him in seconds. Nalia’s eyes.
Malek stared. There was only one jinni who could possibly look like Nalia.
“Bashil?”
13
RAIF STARED AT THE CEILING, LISTENING TO NALIA’S deep, even breaths as she lay beside him. He’d slipped into her room well past midnight, once it was clear Malek wasn’t coming back anytime soon. In the light from the hallway, he’d found Nalia curled up in the middle of the bed, blankets twisted around her legs. Sleeping, it was almost easy to forget she was a fierce warrior with a price on her head, an empress in hiding.
Wide awake, Raif gave himself over to the images he’d received from his mother through hahm’alah a few hours before. Details of the war in Arjinna had become a sandstorm spinning ceaselessly through his mind: whole villages burning to the ground, executions of political prisoners. The Ifrit were fighting the tavrai in earnest now, intent on eradicating them from the land entirely. If the guide Saranya had promised to provide fell through, Raif didn’t know how much longer he could afford to wait for Nalia. The ring was like the nuclear weapons humans so loved: once it was in his possession, Calar would have no choice but to leave Arjinna and take the Ifrit with her . . . or else Raif would make them. He’d promised Nalia he would never wear the ring and he wou
ld try to keep that promise. But the truth was, Calar wouldn’t go down without a fight. Raif knew Nalia would never forgive him if he put that ring on his finger. And yet, it might be the only way to save Arjinna.
Raif sighed and lifted his arm, tracing the lines of the tattoo Nalia had burned into him with her chiaan. It had only been a few nights since they’d huddled together in Malek’s conservatory while the storm Nalia had manifested thundered against the glass. She’d given him the tattoo, an exact replica of the one on her arm, so that he could locate the sigil on his own. But at the last minute, he’d decided to stay, refusing to let her accept death at the hands of a flesh-eating ghoul. She was in as much danger of dying now as she was then. Even though Haran could never hurt Nalia again, Calar had more than just a ghoul assassin to do her dirty work. Today was just a taste of what the Ifrit empress could throw their way. What would have happened if Zanari hadn’t been there, fighting by Nalia’s side? Yet it was becoming increasingly clear that the choice to stay with Nalia was also the choice to let more tavrai and innocent jinn die. Raif’s conscience hadn’t been clean for a long time, but he wasn’t sure if he’d ever be able to forgive himself for that. And neither would Zanari. She’d taken one look at their mother’s message and left the room, the door slamming behind her. She didn’t have to say it; they needed to leave. Now. Yesterday.
Raif sat up, the sheets pooling at his waist. Gods, it was too much—he didn’t know what the hell to do. Raif was a fool to travel with Nalia to the cave. If the wish protected Malek right up until the moment he picked up the ring, there was a good chance Raif would have to fight her in order to get the sigil. He was no match for a Ghan Aisouri’s power, and Nalia was powerless against the wish. When it came to the sigil, Malek had an edge. Raif’s only plan was to run faster than him, hit harder, and use every ounce of brutality he’d learned on the battlefield. But it might not be enough. Raif was quickly running out of excuses to stay—but he couldn’t quite make himself go.
I choose her. Every time. And it shamed him.