Exquisite Captive

by Heather Demetrios

  He eased next to her, keeping enough distance so as not to attract her master’s notice. He spoke in Kada, the jinn language, lest any guests be eavesdropping.

  “I’m not here to kill you.”

  She raised her eyebrows, then stared ahead, slowly moving through the crush of weary bodies as if he wasn’t there. The guests parted before her and Raif kept pace, annoyed that he had to play catch-up.

  “Then why are you here?” she asked, her lips barely moving.

  “It’s complicated,” he said. “Where can we talk?”

  “I don’t speak to traitors.” Hatred oozed from her voice. “You’re a Djan. How can you work for the Ifrit? They’re monsters—butchers.”

  The anger he’d been keeping at bay throughout the party flared to life, igniting green sparks in his eyes.

  “I’d never work for them,” he spat. “If you hadn’t been so intent on fighting me in the garage, you would have known that.”

  “Something about the word salfit must have confused me about your intentions,” she said.

  “Look, if you’re through being your master’s pet for the night, I can—”

  She glared, looking him full in the face for the first time. “Pet?”

  This wasn’t going well. His sister, Zanari, was constantly reminding Raif that the art of diplomacy was just as important as the art of war. The only way to get this Ghan Aisouri scum to listen to him was to play the part of the docile serf.

  “Forgive me . . . My Empress.”

  Nalia went still. When she looked at him, her eyes betrayed nothing—had she detected his mockery?

  “Your empress is dead,” she said in a flat voice.

  Interesting, he thought. He’d assumed she’d been biding her time, waiting for Malek to make his third wish so that she could return to Arjinna and claim her place as the land’s rightful heir to the throne. It seemed this one didn’t fit the power-hungry mold of the royal Aisouri.

  “You are the last Ghan Aisouri—the only jinni with royal blood in all of Arjinna. By ancient law—which I don’t agree with, by the way—the Amethyst Crown is yours.”

  “I am not worthy of it.”

  He looked at her for a moment, fascinated.

  “Unfortunately,” Raif said, more gently than he’d intended, “that’s not enough assurance for the Ifrit.”

  Nalia started up the stairway that led to the mansion’s second floor. When she spoke, it was in the imperious tone of a royal to her subject.

  “Meet me in the rose garden behind the house in five minutes.”

  His momentary sympathy evaporated. Typical salfit, he thought. Raif slid back into the shadows. Now for the hard part.

  5

  AS SOON AS NALIA GOT INSIDE HER BEDROOM SHE changed into clothes she could fight in, though it wasn’t at all clear anymore whether or not the jinni intended to kill her. If he came in peace, what had his behavior in the garage been—a spirited introduction? Surely he hadn’t come all this way to warn her about Ifrit assassins; he had no respect for the Ghan Aisouri. But whether the Djan jinni wanted to kill or rescue her didn’t matter: Malek would never make his third wish. And it was the only way she could be free.

  Nalia glanced at the clock beside her bed. She only had a few minutes until Malek knocked on her door: I haven’t seen enough of you tonight, Malek had whispered in her ear before she left his circle of admirers. I’ll be up as soon as the guests leave.

  If she was going to deal with this jinni, she’d better do it now. Nalia couldn’t imagine her master’s rage if he came to her room in the middle of the night and found her gone, then realized she was in the rose garden with a handsome jinni.

  Handsome? That smirk. The way he fought—dirty and rough. No. He’s just a serf on a power trip, she thought.

  She slipped on her boots with an angry tug and made sure her dagger was secure, then opened her window and let the wind soak into her skin. It was the time of the Santa Anas—the strong gusts that blew through Los Angeles every year, carrying mysteries of other worlds and filling Nalia with power. Even on Earth, it seemed, the wind goddess Grathali reigned supreme. Like her Shaitan overlord father, Nalia favored wind above all other elements. She was one of only a handful of Aisouri who knew their parents; jinn infants born with purple eyes were immediately sent to the palace and given new identities. Neither the children nor their parents knew one another. But Nalia’s mother was a Ghan Aisouri. Because of this, Nalia saw her father on occasion, when he came to court on business or to have a tryst with her mother. Though Aisouri were prohibited from marriage, many had lovers. Love—no. It was said that the Aisouri heart could not love, though Nalia hated to believe that was true. The last empress had certainly proved the stereotype, though.

  Empress. Fire and blood, she cursed.

  Nalia wished the Djan hadn’t made the connection between her and the throne. She never thought about herself that way—not once had Nalia allowed herself to consider what being the only Ghan Aisouri meant in terms of the crown. To her, the empress had died, leaving behind a gaping hole that could never be filled again, especially not by a jinni only eighteen summers old.

  Empress.

  Nalia Aisouri’Taifyeh didn’t deserve to be alive, let alone the leader of her land. Not after what she’d done. Once again, Nalia wondered why she’d been the one to survive—she, who deserved to be the first to die. And now the Ifrit empress, Calar, thought Nalia could take the Amethyst Crown from her. It didn’t make sense. The Ifrit had been able to gun down her entire race and set their own empress on the throne in a matter of minutes. Why would they fear her?

  Maybe the Djan would have some answers. Nalia pictured the rose garden, then evanesced, her smoke borne away on the heavy wind almost as soon as she landed on the smooth stone courtyard in the center of the garden. The moonlight painted the blossoms iridescent silver, and the rosebushes shivered at the wind’s rough caress. It was almost peaceful—the splash of water as it spit out of a fountain, the hiss of crickets, and the airplanes that traveled across the sky—still such a strange sight to Nalia’s Arjinnan eyes.

  The Djan jinni was sitting on the lip of an ornately carved fountain, digging the toe of his scuffed boot into the grass at his feet. He looked up, his keen eyes watchful. Nalia pulled the jade dagger out of her boot and settled into a fighting stance. Too late, she realized the garden had not been the best choice of meeting places: he would receive just as much power from the rich soil as she would, though she could still benefit from the water in the fountain and the wind. Still, she hoped he would pick up the shift in her energy and think twice about battling with her again—after all, she’d been trained since birth to deal with ruffians like him.

  “If you’re not here to kill me, then what do you want?” she said.

  He spread his hands wide. “Come on. We both know that knife’s useless—I’m not one of your little wishmakers.”

  She’d let him keep thinking that. Nalia was sure he’d find out soon enough just how special the blade could be. It was the only thing she’d taken with her out of Arjinna, so cleverly disguised with an invisibility charm that neither Malek nor the slave trader was the wiser.

  “All the same, I think I’ll keep pointing it at you,” she said. “Now answer my question.”

  The jinni stood, a scowl on his face. “I don’t take orders from Ghan Aisouri, let’s get that straight.”

  She wished he were ugly—it’d be only too easy to come up with just the right insult. But Nalia couldn’t deny that he actually was handsome in a roguish kind of way. His shaggy brown hair kept falling into his eyes, which were a particular shade of green that she’d never seen on Earth. He’d slung the fancy suit coat he’d worn at the party over a rosebush, opting for rolled-up sleeves and an untucked shirt. His cheeks had the shadow of a beard—a week’s worth of stubble—and he carried himself with a certain thuggish wariness, as though he expected to find enemies around every corner. She felt that sense of recognition again, but it’d
been so long since she’d been in Arjinna. Why was he so familiar? A memory tugged on the edge of her consciousness, but it was too fuzzy to make out. He clearly hadn’t been on Earth long—he seemed uncomfortable in its heavy air, startled by noises that had grown familiar to her. She looked down at his bare wrists—no shackles. Maybe he was telling the truth about not working for the Ifrit. If he did, he wouldn’t be a free jinni. Maybe he was a jinni in exile—a runaway slave whose shackles had disappeared as soon as he stepped on Earth through the portal. But what would a runaway slave want with her?

  “Who sent you?” she asked.

  A corner of his lips turned up. “I sent myself. I’m sure it’s hard for you to imagine a Djan with free will, but I assure you, it’s possible.”

  “Who are you, serfling?” Nalia asked, her breath suddenly shallow.

  Resistance, she thought. He had to be with the rebels who had fought the Ghan Aisouri for centuries and now pitted themselves against the Ifrit. Ever since Nalia was a child, the mystery of the free serfs had fascinated her. How was it possible that jinn with no magical education had somehow discovered a magic that had eluded the most gifted mages? For the past three years, Nalia had ached to contact them so that she, too, could be free of her shackles. But doing so would have amounted to suicide: other than the Ifrit, there would be no one happier to kill Nalia than the resistance.

  The Djan’s eyes narrowed. “Not a serf,” he said, holding up his bare wrists. He paused and gave a pointed look at Nalia’s shackles, just long enough for her to blush. “I’m called Raif. Raif Djan’Urbi.”

  Nalia’s eyes widened. He smirked. Of course. Now she knew why he’d seemed so familiar. What is the leader of the Arjinnan revolution doing in Malek’s rose garden?

  She’d only seen Raif for a moment, years ago, but the image had seared itself into her memory. Though she’d thought of it often, he was now almost unrecognizable from the tiny youth she’d encountered standing on top of a pile of burning rubble, a defiant fist raised to the sky. Seconds before, she’d seen his father, the leader of the revolution, die in the mud at the hands of the senior Ghan Aisouri. Nalia had known what she was supposed to do—the empress had made it very clear that Dthar Djan’Urbi and his son needed to die. Nalia had raised her hands, preparing to rip the life force out of the young revolutionary. But the purity of his zeal, the passion blazing in his eyes—she couldn’t do it. Something like that didn’t belong in a cage or on a pyre.

  And now here they were. Every time Nalia showed mercy, somewhere down the line, the jinni she spared tried to murder her.

  “So you are here to kill me,” she said.

  “Unfortunately, no.” Raif stood. “The Ifrit assassins who do plan to kill you could be here at any moment. Obviously, I don’t need to tell you that Calar and her Ifrit puppets aren’t happy about the idea of a legitimate heir to the Arjinnan throne.”

  Calar: just the mention of her name made Nalia want to go on a rampage. She inched closer, her blade still pointed at Raif’s chest. Her survival depended on everyone believing she’d died in that room with the others. She was only safe if Calar thought the Ifrit soldiers had destroyed the whole royal line. But here was Raif, telling Nalia that Calar already had her vicious minions out looking for her. She’d known this day would come. She’d just been hoping a miracle would have seen her free of Malek by then.

  “It seems to me that you’d be happy to have Calar do your dirty work for you. Isn’t that what you revolutionaries always wanted—royal blood spilling in the streets?”

  Raif shrugged. “Right now we’re more worried about the Ifrit. Someone with your powers could help us. For once, a Ghan Aisouri is better alive than dead.”

  Nalia gripped the handle of the dagger tighter. One cut and she could wipe that self-satisfied smirk off his face. “I’m having a hard time believing the leader of the revolution wants to help the heir to the throne. There must be a pretty good reason you’re warning me about the Ifrit.” Nalia leaned forward. “I was there that day on the moors. I saw you. I helped end the second uprising. You hate me. I hate you. Don’t pretend otherwise.”

  “Oh, trust me, I won’t pretend. I’ll die before I see you wear the Amethyst Crown. But there’s something you can do for us, else I wouldn’t be here.”

  Travel through the portal between Earth and Arjinna was dangerous, especially if you were at the top of Calar’s most wanted list. There was no way Raif Djan’Urbi would take the risk of being killed or captured unless there was something he urgently needed.

  “Big surprise,” she said. “With jinn, nothing’s free.”

  What could she possibly have that he wanted?

  “Everything has a price. But you know that already, don’t you?” A hard smile played on Raif’s lips. “I wonder what the going rate is for a Ghan Aisouri slave.”

  Nalia’s chiaan spiked. “I might be a slave,” she hissed, “but at least my master paid for me. When you were born on your overlord’s estate, it cost him nothing to own you. Nothing.” Raif blanched and Nalia stepped closer to him. “And last I remembered,” she said, low and dangerous, “you came to me. You think because you call yourself a leader, you have power. But the blood in my veins is the same as the ancient queens of our land, where even the serfs you fight for believe I am a daughter of the gods. You’d do well to remember that, serfling.”

  He looked at her for a long moment, his face a smooth stone.

  “And yet I’m the one without a master,” Raif said quietly. “You see, I’ve learned something you never will—freedom is power. And that’s something you don’t have.”

  The words were crushingly true and they sparked a hate that ran deep and wide—for Raif, for the Ifrit, for Malek.

  “There’s a reason,” Raif continued, “why we ‘serflings’ are able to unbind ourselves from our masters. Must have drove you Ghan Aisouri crazy, watching us go free and not being able to do a thing about it.”

  “It’s been you all along, hasn’t it?” she said. “You’re the one who’s freeing the serfs.”

  “Well, first it was my father—but then you killed him.”

  Nalia winced. “Not . . . me.” The mud on Dthar Djan’Urbi’s face. His agonized scream as they gutted him. His chiaan flowing like blood into the earth. “I mean, I wasn’t the one who—”

  Raif’s eyes darkened. “Somehow that’s not terribly comforting.”

  Nalia swallowed the retort that pushed against her lips. If he could help her—or help her brother—she had to stay on Raif’s good side. Or, at least, his freedom-for-a-price side. She had to keep her mouth in check, for once.

  “Neither of us can change the past,” she said. Though, gods, if she could . . . “If there’s a way we can assist one another that is mutually beneficial, I’m interested. If not—then I’m sure you can find your way back to the portal.” Nalia thrust her dagger into her boot, then pointed to his wrists, free of the shackles that bit into her own. “I won’t do anything for you unless you free me from my master. That’s my price.”

  She turned to go. Hope fluttered in her heart, a weak, winged thing. She prayed he wouldn’t make her beg.

  “Wait.” Raif cursed under his breath. “We both know I didn’t come all this way to chat in your master’s garden.”

  Nalia let out a silent breath of relief, then looked back at him, her eyes cool. “How did you know where to find me?” she asked. If the Ifrit were really after her, Nalia had some serious planning to do: for starters, create a better disguise and convince Malek to make that move to Dubai he’d been talking about.

  “A few days ago, my contacts in the palace informed me that the Ifrit imprisoned a jinni for slave trading. Not that they think there’s anything wrong with the slave trade—he just wasn’t giving the crown its cut of the profits. After they tortured the trader, it didn’t take long for him to confess to selling you. I’m sure you can imagine the Ifrit’s surprise.”

  How many nights had Nalia lain awake, fantasizing about
all the ways she would torture her slave trader, if given the chance? So many of those last days in Arjinna were a drug-addled blur. But she’d never forget the sound of his voice.

  Raif grinned. “Lucky for me, I have a sister who’s a bit of a seer. It took us a few tries, but she finally got a handle on where you were and what you looked like. Pretty easy after that.”

  Nalia stared. That’s impossible.

  The Ghan Aisouri had been looking for a seer ever since Nalia could remember—psychic gifts were incredibly rare among jinn. There was only one jinni Nalia knew of who had psychic abilities; Nalia wished to the gods she’d never met her.

  “Did the slave trader tell the Ifrit where I am?” Nalia asked.

  “He claims he doesn’t know. They’re working him pretty hard—I’m sure he’s told them everything he can. Last I heard he’s still alive.”

  Nalia shuddered. She wanted to be happy that the jinni who’d sold her to Malek was paying for it in the worst kind of way, but she’d never had the stomach for breaking things. Just hearing about it, a part of her felt sorry for the slave trader.

  He deserves it.

  But didn’t Nalia, too, in her own way?

  “So there’s a chance he hasn’t told them everything. Maybe he’s protecting someone—a business partner?”

  “Have you ever been tortured?” Raif asked quietly.

  “No,” she whispered.

  But there was the bottle, with its poisonous iron walls and thin air. The pain of Malek’s summons. Maybe she’d been tortured after all.

  “Ah, of course. You were always the one doing the torturing,” Raif said, his voice hard. “Then, surely, in all your experience as an oppressor, you would know that everyone—everyone—gives in eventually.”

  “Not everyone.”

  She is back in the palace dungeon.

  Nalia watches, transfixed, as her mother washes her hands. The clear liquid turns the bright red of poppies. Behind her, the Ifrit prisoner stares at them through puffy, bruised eyes, her body slumped on the hard-backed chair she is tied to.