“A chance at a new beginning?” Taz asked.
Kes nodded. “Something like that.”
They stood there in the darkness of the abandoned home, lit by a few spheres of golden light Tazlim had thrown into the air, his chiaan, the color of the sun.
“Were you an overlord?” Kes asked. “Before you went to Earth?”
Tazlim shook his head. “That was the last thing I wanted to be. I left before I got the chance to be anything but an overlord’s son and a soldier.”
The dim light in the room played on Tazlim’s face, flickering like a candle. “What would you have been instead?” Kes asked. “A palace scholar?”
Tazlim shook his head. “A pajai.”
Kes’s eyes widened. “You wanted to be a temple priest?”
Tazlim smiled at Kes’s surprise. “My jinn call me the Mystic.”
“The priests are . . . celibate, no?”
“Yes.” He flushed, a lovely pink glow—so young despite his thousands of years imprisoned in a bottle. “Now I think . . .” Taz shook his head. “Never mind.”
Kes’s heart skipped one beat, two. “What?” he breathed. “What were you going to say?”
“Mystic” came Shirin’s harsh voice from outside. “Kill the skag and let’s get a move on.”
Tazlim moved toward the door. “Good luck with Calar.”
Kes waited until Tazlim left, then slid to the floor, closing his eyes. He could smell the Shaitan’s cinnamon-scented evanescence from here and a small smile played on his lips.
Foolish. What utter and complete foolishness. There was a war on and his life was in shambles. What was wrong with him? Kesmir threw his head into his hands. As if he didn’t have enough to hide from Calar.
A shadow covered the floor and Kes looked up, to where Thatur towered above him, eyes full.
“The Djan’Urbi boy saw the white phoenix with Nalia. In a vision.” He ground his claws into the rotting wood. “I was so certain . . .”
“Hif la’azi vi,” Kes whispered. My heart breaks for you.
“She loved him,” Thatur said, as if to himself. Wonder and confusion swirled in his eyes, which were more colors than Kes could count or name.
Kes nodded. “That gives me hope.”
Thatur glanced at him, considering. “She always was different from the others,” he said, his voice a soft rumble, like a far-off thunderstorm.
“Their love will change everything,” Kes said. “It already has.”
PART TWO
I love you as the earth loves rain
Without you I will die
—Djan field song
Destruction leads to life anew.
—Godsnight prophecy, the Sadranishta
21
ONE YEAR LATER
RAIF STOOD ON A CLIFF OVERLOOKING THE BEACH BELOW, arms crossed, frowning. He ran his hand across his face, fingers skimming the dark hair of his beard.
A memory came then, a swift stab to his heart, unexpected and brutal as it always was: this time, Nalia was running a razor over his skin.
“You look like your father with this beard.” She takes the razor from his hand and gently shaves his face. He watches her, breathless. He’s never loved anyone so much in his life.
Tomorrow, she’d have been gone a year and a day. At dawn, he would be expected to end his mourning. A year and a day: the time always marked the end of one journey, the beginning of another. The beginning of a life without Nalia. Every time Raif thought of her, he had to wrap his mind around the fact that she was gone, had to force himself to remember the white phoenix. Godsdamn that bird.
Except: some nights, he’d wake up from a troubled, dreamless sleep and hear her calling to him: Raif. I love you. I love you. He’d heard those words, haunting, spoken from the godlands. He never saw her, but he could feel her, smell her. Nalia. Her name was a silent, anguished cry, the only prayer he ever said. There were no more dreams of her, no more unexpected kisses, or love-drenched conversations in the middle of his sleep. Just that faint voice calling out to him, or nothing. Most of the time, he didn’t sleep. Unless there was a bottle of savri nearby or a sleeping tonic he’d snuck from the healers’ stores, sleep was as intangible as Nalia herself.
There was a roar on the sand below—Thatur was leading the soldiers in Sha’a Rho, screaming at anyone who forgot their pose, hitting them with a stick when their positions weren’t perfect. They’d be impressive if Raif had never seen Nalia go through the exercises. Next to her, they were bumbling elephants. And here, too, she was present: her gryphon, leading his troops. Her father, helping his rebellion. Pieces of her that lived on, painful because they made it so he couldn’t forget.
“What do you think?” Shirin asked, coming to stand beside him.
“I think Calar’s gonna beat the shit out of us, as usual.”
A coordinated attack with Kesmir and his resistance had required months of painstaking planning. Though Kesmir had been able to shield his thoughts from Calar for a long time, it wasn’t until recently he’d been able to resist psychic attacks. And now Kes was ready.
“Are you certain he’s good to go?” Shirin asked. “Because he only has one chance to kill Calar, you know that.”
Gods knew what she would do to him if Kesmir tried and failed.
Raif was sick of this war, sick of his life, sick down to his bones. Ready or not, he wanted out.
“I made a promise to Samar,” he said. “To his people. I’m not waiting any longer.”
There was this, too: with both Samar and Nalia gone, Taz’s army had begun to grumble. They didn’t feel like they belonged anywhere—Arjinna or Earth. Without an empress, the soldiers were no longer certain why they were fighting. Calar had destroyed the realm to the extent that it was nearly uninhabitable. She’d given her monsters free reign to leach all the chiaan out of it. The shadows stayed away from fire and water—everything else was fair game. Other than the forest, which was protected by its own enigmatic power, the rest of the land resembled a desert—parched, not a bit of color. The only place the Djan could replenish their chiaan was in the forest itself. The Shaitan were having the most trouble accessing their chiaan, since the air had been soiled by the shadows’ evanescence. The Marid still had the ocean, but many of the streams and ponds had dried up.
Raif understood how the Brass Army felt: there was nothing left to fight for.
He was almost glad Nalia wasn’t alive to witness the horror that had unleashed itself upon Arjinna since he’d returned with the Brass Army. He shook his head slightly, as though she could tumble out of his mind. Thoughts of Nalia were forbidden, something he only indulged in late at night, once he was alone. Pushing her away was how he could be of any use to the tavrai.
“Hey,” Shirin said, her voice soft.
He turned, the ice inside him cracking just a little at the warmth in her eyes. I can’t give you what you want. He’d told her that in so many ways and yet she remained, his raiga, baring her teeth at his enemies, loyal to a fault. He could feel her winning him over, day by day. Never had become maybe, and the fact that there was even the possibility of feeling something for Shirin somehow widened the raw, gaping wound Nalia’s loss had left inside him. Maybe he could love her, in a hundred years and with only a fraction of what he’d felt for Nalia. Maybe that would be enough for her. Maybe that would be enough for him—a shadow love, a shadow life. Maybe.
But probably not.
He tried to smile. “At least if we die, we’ll go out swinging.”
The plan was simple: every jinni in the Forest of Sighs would evanesce to the entrance of the prison in Ithkar. They’d fight. They’d die. And maybe in the process they’d free the Dhoma and other innocent jinn Calar had imprisoned. Meanwhile, Kesmir would overthrow Calar with the Ifrit he’d recruited.
“And if we don’t die?” she asked, her eyes on his, refusing to look away.
“Shirin . . .” I can’t give you what you want.
She leaned closer
and then her lips brushed his cheek, warm and soft. “See you down there.”
Raif watched her walk away, a small part of him—the lonely part that spent his nights sitting by the Gate of the Eye with Touma, who still refused to end his vigil—wishing he could return what she felt for him. He rubbed a finger across the crescent-shaped scar on the inside of his wrist, there since he and Nalia had promised to help one another on a rooftop in Los Angeles. It was all he had of her, except her jade dagger and his memories. He was starting to forget things—the exact shape of the birthmark on her cheek, the angle of her nose.
“She’s not coming back, Raif.” Zanari sits beside him on a sand dune, watching the sun set just as Raif and his father did so many years ago. Nalia has been gone for six months.
“I know.”
Zanari places her palm on his knee. “It’s time to move on. To be happy.”
She nods to where Shirin and Taz are building a bonfire on the sand, preparing for the evening meal. Because the shadows fear water, the resistance has taken to training on the beach, since the Forest of Sighs has become so crowded with refugees. The evening ritual of fishing and bonfires has become oddly comforting to him.
“How can you say that?” Raif turns to her, eyes fierce. “You, of all people. Do you hear me telling you to get over Phara?”
“Phara’s alive,” she says, her voice trembling. “Once the portal opens—”
“The portal.” He snorts. Nalia’s father has been clear—closing a portal is far easier than opening one. Kesmir’s insisted that the Ash Crones could help Calar open it—but she refuses to.
“Your hope is as pointless as mine,” he says. Zanari’s eyes glisten, and he curses himself for putting that sadness in her eyes. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I just . . . I can’t think about Shirin, about any of it.”
“Little brother, you’ve been saying that for months.”
Zanari stands and gently runs a hand through his hair. “Nalia would be heartbroken if she saw you like this. She’d never wish this loneliness on you.”
He doesn’t say anything as Zanari leaves, doesn’t say the one thing that gives him hope: there is a way to be with Nalia again—he just has to die to do it.
22
KES WAITED FOR TAZ IN THE TINY CAVE THAT HAD become their favorite meeting place over the past several months. It was far enough from the waves that lapped on the shore that it remained dry all day and night, but close enough to the water that Calar’s shadows wouldn’t come near. Farther down the beach, the tavrai trained and the Marid prepared their fishing boats, but the cave was tucked away in seclusion. The glittering black sand had been covered by thick cushions and blankets. If they met at night, Kes or Taz would manifest lanterns that couldn’t be spotted from land. It wasn’t a deep cave, more like a small cavern ending in a wall of rock. It was warm and cozy and theirs.
The late-afternoon sun had spread over the land, sharing its wealth of light like a generous aristocrat. Kes could feel Taz before he saw him. The wind seemed to blow a bit harder, its scent sweetened with cinnamon. And then he was there, and when he saw Kes he grinned.
“Gods, I’ve missed you,” Taz said, pulling off his armor. His lips fell onto Kes’s and they didn’t bother with words for a good long while.
Taz was everything Calar had never been: slow and gentle, with lips that kissed away pain, never inflicted it. Theirs was not a love that scorched; their lovemaking didn’t leave marks, didn’t require a hungry, bottomless passion, a passion that didn’t care who it hurt. Instead, it was the soft glow of candlelight, the flames of a campfire. It was Taz’s fingers unbuttoning Kes’s sawala and his hands tracing scars. It was Kes drawing him closer as he reached for Taz’s leather belt, his lips against his lover’s bare shoulder, his neck.
Kes had been so certain that Calar was his rohifsa, and yet how could that be, when this jinni took his breath away time and again, when hearing his name in Taz’s mouth left him shaking, the love that pulsed inside him like a second heart, almost unbearable? With Taz he felt known, not in the way he did with Calar while she read his mind—that, he now saw, was far too easy. The real feat was how Taz was able to understand exactly what Kes was feeling without him ever saying a word. Kes would stare at something beautiful that had been denied him in his life in Ithkar—a field of flowers, the way moonlight caught and held the silver in widr leaves—and Taz would simply reach over, take Kes’s hand, and gently squeeze. He knew exactly what was needed at any given moment and he gave of himself with abandon—there were no strings attached to his love, no underlying current of fear. There wasn’t an imbalance of power, a history sullied with lies and demands. There was just the certainty that this was right, that they needed each other—had always needed each other.
It seemed as though he and Taz had each been made for the express purpose of loving the other well: the way their bodies fit perfectly together, the way Taz always knew exactly how to elicit those gasps and moans that echoed softly in the cave. Kes was able to get beneath the calm facade Taz always showed his soldiers, beyond the mystic who contemplated the vastness of the universe. He’d hold Taz while he cried in frustration because everyone he’d loved had died long before he’d been rescued from his bottle. He’d listen with his whole body as Taz shared about the bottle—the fear and rage and helplessness. Kes discovered the precise spot where Taz was most ticklish, this stoic commander who led armies as easily as he prayed to his gods. Taz’s peals of laughter would bounce around the cave and he wouldn’t be able to stop until Kes kissed him.
And so it was on this afternoon. It wasn’t until they were tangled up in each other’s arms, content in their exhaustion and covered in each other’s sweat, that Kes allowed himself to think about what he had to say.
Taz wouldn’t like it.
“You have that look,” Taz murmured, tracing the furrows in Kes’s brow.
“What look?”
“The one where you’re going to tell me something that will make me sad.” He leaned closer to Kes. “Don’t,” he whispered, “make me sad today.” Taz gently bit Kes’s lower lip and that was sufficiently distracting to quiet him for the next several minutes.
Taz tasted like mint and sugarberries and salty sweat. Kes gave in to that kiss, knowing these moments were numbered. If he failed at his task, he would never have this again. So he pressed against him as though they could fuse together, his chiaan surging into Taz so fast that his lover gasped.
But eventually Kes forced himself to gently pull away. Taz sighed. “I know what you’re going to say.”
“You do? Don’t tell me you can suddenly read minds,” Kes said. He tried to make it a joke, to keep his tone light, but Taz caught the terror, the deep, deep sadness he was trying to hold back.
“No mind reading. I just know you,” Taz said softly.
He ran his hand through Kes’s hair, longer now because Taz liked it that way and it was one of the few things Kes could do for him. Anything else would risk Calar’s discovering that her consort was absolutely, completely in love with the commander of the Brass Army.
“I know you’re ready,” Taz said. “Raif told me.”
Kes nodded, twining his fingers through Taz’s. “Thatur couldn’t get inside my head. I thought of every vile thought that would have made him claw my face off if he’d heard—replayed scenes from the coup, every last detail I remembered—but he couldn’t get in. He never knew what I was thinking about. He tried to inflict pain once I was tired from keeping him out, but he failed each time. He doesn’t quite have Calar’s gift, but he said he couldn’t even sense that I’d built a wall up. Which means that, if I do this right, she’ll be gone before she even knew I wanted it that way.”
Taz leaned against the cave wall, a thick pillow propped up between his back and the rock. He held out his arms and Kes crawled into them, resting his head on Taz’s chest. Gods, it felt good to be taken care of.
“How about keeping your face away from Thatur’s claws, hmm?”
Taz said, teasing, his voice tight beneath the lighthearted tone. “As a personal favor to me. I rather like this face of yours, you know.”
Kes could feel the blood rush to his cheeks, the smile that refused to stay hidden. “You’re the most dangerous thing Calar could ever see in my mind,” he said, wrapping his arms tighter around Taz. A surge of Shaitan chiaan flew into his veins, as invigorating as a cool breeze on a hot day.
Taz rested his cheek on the top of Kes’s head. “I know.”
For months they’d managed to pretend they were nothing more than unlikely conspirators, but that had all stopped after the night Calar nearly killed Kes.
Calar pushes her palms against Kes’s temples, her eyes filled with rage. “How dare you go behind my back!”
She’d caught him setting a group of prisoners free. He couldn’t bear seeing one more soul ripped out by the shadows.
“Calar, look what you’ve become,” he says. “This isn’t what we’re fighting for—”
White-hot pain, blinding. He hears the agonized cries of a tortured animal bouncing off the stones in the throne room and then Kes realizes it’s him, he’s the one making that terrible sound.
Kes lies unconscious for a week, waking up on the dungeon’s cold stone floor. Calar comes to visit him and he plays the repentant lover. The first place Kes goes after Calar restores him to his post is the Djan temple in the Forest of Sighs, Taz’s favorite haunt. Hidden deep in the forest, the temple is a ruin left over from the days before the Aisouri, ancient stone overgrown with moss, vixen roses snaking through crevices in the walls that surround it. The temple’s gate is formed by the branches of a grove of unusually large widrs that encircle the entire structure. The long branches of the widr have been magicked into decorative accents, resembling a wrought-iron gate bordered by stone pillars. Through the elaborate patterns Kes catches a glimpse of the temple ruins.
A hush lies over this part of the forest. There is no sound save for the rustling of the wind through the trees. Here, the forest seems to watch him, seems to pulse with more life than usual. Taz once explained that the trees were there to protect the temple and it would not do well to displease them. Kes hopes an Ifrit with Djan blood on his hands will be welcomed. The forest itself has been letting him cross its borders since the night Raif agreed to work with him.
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