Several bottles were so tiny, they could have rested in Kesmir’s palm. Others were grotesque—tall, but incredibly thin, so that the jinn inside had no choice but to stand with their arms raised above their heads. There were bottles that were so squat, they resembled discs more than vessels, and the jinn inside these looked like contortionists, their limbs held at painful, impossible angles.
They hadn’t noticed Kesmir yet. He couldn’t bear to see their accusing eyes. He might as well have put them in there himself. He’d often considered setting them free, but there was little good that would do. Calar would just kill them all, then find some horribly inventive way to punish her disobedient lover.
It was already too late for the prisoners whose bottles no longer emanated light. The corpses inside were slowly decaying, their spirits finally free of the bottles’ confines. He’d tried to get Calar to take the dead jinn away, but she wouldn’t.
They’re a message, she’d said, to anyone who dares to defy me.
Just last night, Kesmir had been present when an Ifrit peasant begged that Calar spare his daughter’s life. Begged on his knees, forehead touching the mosaic floor in deference. Sweaty skin against tiles that curled into elegant geometric stars and vines. Kesmir had been standing in his usual spot: three steps to Calar’s left. The Royal Consort, His Wretchedness Kesmir Ifri’Lhas. Royal Whore, more like, he thought.
He faced the great hall as the sun streamed through the latticework windows and climbed the carved pillars covered with ancient Kada scrollwork—prayers to the gods for the safekeeping of the Aisouri who were long dead. The high, vaulted ceilings were covered in mother-of-pearl mosaics made to look like the sky at dawn, when the Aisouri had once trained in their ancient martial art, Sha’a Rho. It was the most magnificent place Kes had ever been. Yet in the three years since taking up residence in the palace, Calar had turned it into a slaughterhouse. The throne room stank of dark magic, fear, and blood. This day would be no exception.
“Why should I spare a traitor’s life?” Calar had said. She spoke in a wine-drenched drawl, more interested in the savri in her hand than the agonized father at her feet.
She was toying with him. Kesmir had already seen what Calar had done to the jinni’s daughter—this false hope she was dangling before him was nothing more than the amusement of a bored tyrant. He shuddered and Calar’s eyes flicked to his. He gave her a small smile, the cruel one they used in their games. Only he didn’t want to play the games anymore. She returned the smile and Kesmir relaxed: she hadn’t noticed his revulsion. Gods, when had that happened—revulsion? Not so long ago his sole purpose in life had been to love her, and love her well.
“Not a traitor, My Empress. No,” the jinni had said. “A silly child in love. The boy’s a Djan, yes, but not a tavrai. I swear it. He is still a serf—please, you can ask his overlord. My daughter is a good Ifrit.”
“What would you tell your daughter right now, if she could hear you?” Calar had said, her voice going soft.
This, Kesmir knew, was her favorite part.
The Ifrit began to cry. “I . . . I’d tell her I love her and that I will find a . . . a good Ifrit boy for her. No more Djan. A . . . a soldier from My Empress’s army, perhaps.”
Calar smiled, false benevolence. She gestured to one of the bottles behind her. Inside, an Ifrit girl’s mouth was open in a silent scream, palms against the glass. Her face was bruised, lips swollen and bleeding. Like the other jinn in the bottles, she was naked. The bottle was just big enough for her to sit on her knees, her arms covering her breasts, a useless attempt at modesty. Her eyes were full of terror and shame.
The old jinni looked past Calar. Even now, Kesmir could still hear that father’s precise howl of pain. It echoed in his heart and would not let him sleep at night. Not that he would have, anyway.
A sound near a far corner of the room brought Kesmir out of the memory. He gripped his scimitar, waiting. A figure in a dark cloak strode toward him, wearing a wooden mask that disguised the jinni’s features—a peasant mask from the harvest celebrations, this one depicting a fox. Necessary precautions when you were trying to overthrow an empress who could read minds.
“I heard a phoenix cry tonight,” the jinni said. A male this time.
Kesmir drew closer, his hand still gripping his scimitar. “I’m surprised it still has tears,” he answered, voice soft.
It was a different jinni each time, but the same code. Kesmir suspected the jinni behind the mask was a Shaitan—he had the soft cadence of the jinn aristocracy, the perfect diction only the wealthy could afford to have.
“We’ve found someone who can help you,” the jinni said.
“There are many jinn who offer to ‘help’ me.”
The jinni slowly lifted his index finger to the side of his mask and gently tapped twice near his temple. “This kind of help, General,” he said, his voice soft.
Impossible. It was too much to hope for. And yet, what this jinni presumed to offer was what Kesmir’s whole plan hinged on: the first step on the path to wresting his lover’s hold on Arjinna was for Kes to control his own mind, build a wall between his thoughts and her own. It would be pointless for Kesmir to overthrow Calar until he knew how to keep her in the dark, to protect his mind from being ravaged until he begged for death. Reading his mind was a pastime of hers. It used to be a way for Calar to be closer to him, but not anymore. Her mind was a weapon pointed at him as often as not. He couldn’t influence her anymore, couldn’t hope that her tyranny was just a phase. If he didn’t depose her, someone else would. And, unlike him, they would kill her. Fool that he was, Kesmir still had hope that once she no longer had power, Calar would return to herself, to the girl she’d been when she’d rescued him long ago.
“I don’t have time to waste—you’ve put us both at risk by setting up this meeting,” Kesmir now said to the jinni before him. Disappointment tinged his voice—he couldn’t hide the desolation of yet another hope dashed. “Calar killed every Aisouri trainer during the coup. There is no one left with that knowledge.”
Gryphons, Shaitan warriors—anyone who knew how to protect the mind had been burned in the massive cauldron that now sat before the palace.
“That is what you were supposed to think,” the jinni said evenly. He took off his mask, revealing a gaunt face with too-large golden eyes and a mess of burn scars covering nearly every inch of his skin. Even so, Kesmir recognized him.
“You’re dead,” he said, taking an involuntary step back. “I saw Calar set you on fire, saw her kick you off the cliff.”
“My daughter is the last living Ghan Aisouri,” Baron Ajwar Shai’Dzar said. His eyes glimmered in the wan light of the bottles. “Did you really think there was no one who wanted to keep me alive long enough for me to see my child on the throne your imposter empress has claimed?”
“Your daughter is barred from Arjinna. The portal—”
“The gods will find a way,” Ajwar said. “She is their eyes, their voice, their sword in the darkness.”
Before Kesmir could say another word, the baron pressed a golden whistle into Kesmir’s hand. “Blow this from the top of Mount Zhiqui when the sun rises.”
Without another word, Nalia Aisouri’Taifyeh’s father evanesced. Golden smoke swirled around him and then he was gone, leaving behind nothing but wisps of honeyed evanescence and the whistle in Kesmir’s palm.
He’d seen them on the Aisouri, when Kesmir and the others had fastened the ropes around the dead royals’ necks before hanging them from the palace gate where they remained to this day.
It was how they’d contacted their gryphons.
Kesmir’s eyes fell on the throne. The Ghan Aisouri dais had been replaced by one made of pure volcanic rock, a massive thing with hard edges and evil spirals that spilled around it like a demon’s halo. Its smooth surface reflected the light of the bottles, and Calar’s dark energy hung about it like a shroud.
His mind settled on his own daughter. What had the gods planned
for her, this child of luckless love?
Calar wouldn’t understand what Kes was doing, but it didn’t matter: she’d left him no choice. The jinni who’d taken him in after he’d lost everything, who had shown him tenderness and a loyal, fierce love that brought down a kingdom, was still inside her, lurking in some forgotten corner of Calar’s heart. But if he didn’t act quickly, the best parts of Calar would be gone, stamped out by her increasing dependence on dark magic, her obsessive need to kill Nalia, whether or not the portal was closed.
Kesmir was trying to overthrow the jinni he’d once loved more than anything in the worlds not because he wanted to destroy Calar, but because it was the only way to save her.
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About the Author
Photo by Zach Fehst
When HEATHER DEMETRIOS isn’t traipsing around the world or spending time in imaginary places, she lives with her husband in New York City. Originally from Los Angeles, she now calls the East Coast home. Heather received her MFA in writing for children and young adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is a recipient of the PEN New England Susan P. Bloom Discovery Award for her debut young adult novel, Something Real. Her other titles include Book One in the Dark Caravan Cycle, Exquisite Captive, as well as I’ll Meet You There. She is the founder of Live Your What, an organization dedicated to fostering passion in people of all ages and creating writing opportunities for underserved youth. She’s never met a jinni she didn’t like. You can visit Heather online at www.heatherdemetrios.com.
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Books by Heather Demetrios
Exquisite Captive
BOOK ONE OF THE DARK CARAVAN CYCLE
Blood Passage
Credits
Cover design by Elizabeth Casal
Copyright
Balzer + Bray is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
BLOOD PASSAGE. Copyright © 2015 by Heather Demetrios. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Demetrios, Heather.
Blood passage / Heather Demetrios. — First edition.
pages cm (Dark caravan cycle ; book 2)
Summary: “Nalia and her comrades travel to Morocco to search for Solomon’s sigil”— Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-0-06-231859-6 (hardback)
EPub Edition © February 2016 ISBN 9780062318619
[1. Genies—Fiction. 2. Magic—Fiction. 3. Wishes—Fiction. 4. Morocco—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.D3923Blo 2015 2014048045
[Fic]—dc23 CIP
AC
* * *
Map art © 2014 by Jordan Saia
15 16 17 18 19 LP/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FIRST EDITION
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Blood Passage Page 38
