‘And what is it that I want?’ I asked.
‘You want to live,’ Zaahir said simply. I felt the chasm of fear I’d been trying to look away from all these weeks open inside me anew. And even in the dark I could tell he was smirking. Because we both knew he was right. More than anything, that was what I wanted. He turned the ring so that it caught the light from the camp, drawing my eye. It was a bronze band with a single bauble mounted on it. But when I looked closer, I saw that it wasn’t a gemstone or a pearl. It looked like glass, and inside there was a shifting, colourless light. ‘You want to release Fereshteh’s soul and stay alive. Fereshteh’s endless fire has to go somewhere. But you don’t need to burn. It can be contained inside this ring. All you have to do, once you are near enough to the machine, is smash the glass on this ring. And all that immortal energy, it will not lash out and annihilate you like an insect in the path of a fire. The ring will draw the fire instead. Absorb it like water dashed across the sand. Instead of swelling up to drown you. And you, little Demdji, you can live.’
It still felt like a trick. I knew enough stories of the Djinn to know that if it seemed too good to be true, then it probably was. But it was too late to stop the jump of hope in my chest that came with his words. And as I stared at the ring, I could feel the hope seducing me.
I thought of being in Eremot with Zaahir. The way he had simply touched the Abdals and their light went out. It had been like watching their spark get sucked into a greater fire. I remembered how he had reached out a hand and Ashra’s Wall had shattered harmlessly. He had some power over Djinni fire that I didn’t understand.
And Zaahir was right. I didn’t want to die. It didn’t matter how far I’d come across the desert. A part of me would always be that selfish girl from Dustwalk bent on surviving.
My hand closed around the ring. And then suddenly, like a shadow disappearing into the night, Zaahir was gone.
And I was holding my salvation in my hand.
Chapter 36
It didn’t take me long to find Jin. He was on the edge of camp, where he’d pitched his tent, as far as he could get from Ahmed without giving himself over to the desert completely.
His eyes were closed, and a bottle of something dangled loosely in his fingers. He didn’t hear me, or if he did, he didn’t care. He didn’t even look up when I sank down next to him. His head tipped back against the side of his tent, eyes closed.
‘So, are you planning on finishing the whole bottle, or are you going to share?’
His eyes snapped open. A long silence stretched between us as I turned my head so that our gazes met. Until finally he handed me the booze. I took a swig and made a face. ‘You couldn’t find something better?’
‘Two weeks in Iliaz and you’re suddenly an expert on fine wine?’ His tone was light, but his eyes never left me, looking for answers to why I was here.
‘I’m just saying –’ I took another swig – ‘I know we’ve got something better than this around here.’
‘Yeah, well, the good liquor is being saved to drink to victory tomorrow.’ Jin prised the bottle out of my hands, taking a swig. I read a whole lot in that silence. That there wasn’t going to be a tomorrow for a whole lot of people. But we were all acting like this might not be our last night alive. And now that included me. ‘So, Blue-Eyed Bandit.’ He didn’t look at me when he spoke again. ‘Did you just come to torture me, or is there another reason you’re here?’
‘Why?’ I challenged, watching him carefully, my blood racing in my ears. I knew what I’d come for. I just didn’t know if I was ready to say it yet. ‘You don’t want me here?’
‘You already know what I want, Amani.’ Jin’s voice carving out my name was low and rough with feeling, and it shattered the last of my pretence, sinking a hook into my chest and pulling me towards him.
We’d kissed a hundred times before. But this felt different somehow. This felt like the first time all over again, when he’d pinned me up against the side of a train carriage that shook around us like it might fall apart at any second, as we clung to the only other thing in the world that seemed sturdy, both of us on that train rushing ahead into something we didn’t wholly understand. When everything in me had seemed to come alive under his hands. When he turned me from a spark into a fire, and I didn’t know how anyone could have enough power to do that to me.
My lips grazed his just slightly, like a match, seeing if it would strike. He tasted like cheap alcohol and gunpowder and desert dust and, somehow, still of salt air. That first kiss and every kiss since hung between us. The desperate ones, the angry ones, the joyful ones. And now this one, a whisper of my mouth over his, a question. We might all be dead tomorrow. But we might not. And right now, we were alive.
‘I’ve decided,’ I said, my mouth against his, ‘that I’m not going to die tomorrow. I reckoned you might be interested in knowing that.’
It was a fragment of a story. Of what had passed between me and Zaahir in the desert. But it was enough. For now. And I felt him exhale, like some great weight had been lifted off him, a second before his arms went around me. They circled me completely, crushing me to him as his mouth claimed mine.
The match caught between us, and we turned from kindling into an inferno.
The bottle fell out of my hands, spilling the wine into the sand. I was lost in him. I didn’t know how I could’ve made any other choice but him. It would have been impossible. I slid my hands under his shirt, across his back, up his spine. I anchored him to me, my fingers digging into his bare skin. I didn’t just want him. I needed him.
He stood suddenly, barely breaking the kiss, our bodies clinging together, his grip tight enough that he lifted me up with him easily. Sometimes I forgot how strong Jin was. It was a few staggering steps, but my feet barely touched the ground as we moved. I was dimly aware we were at the entrance of his tent as canvas hit my back. My feet found the ground long enough to stumble inside.
My head bumped something – a hanging lamp. We broke apart as I cursed. Jin laughed, rubbing the spot at the back of my head. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Fine.’ My breathing was shallow. I was very aware that we were alone together in such a small space.
‘You’re very graceful. It’s one of the things I love about you, Bandit.’ He reached past me, steadying the lamp I’d struck, releasing me just for a second. Just long enough to set a match to the small amount of oil left in the light. The tent was filled with a warm glow. And I could see him now, more clearly than in the dark of the desert, the faint stubble on the planes of his cheeks, the way his dark hair fell into his dark eyes, the way his broad shoulders rose and fell in his white shirt when he breathed, revealing his tattoo. We’d known each other long enough that I was used to him now, but in this moment it was like I was seeing him for the first time again, fascinated by him without entirely knowing why. When his hands came back to me, they were gentler, pushing my hair away from my face so that he could look at me. ‘God above, you’re beautiful,’ he breathed.
‘You don’t believe in God,’ I reminded him, my voice low.
‘Right now, I think I just might.’
I needed more of him. I slid my hands under the hem of his shirt, pushing it up. He shifted obligingly and tried to lift it over his head. But the tent’s ceiling was too low. He dropped to his knees, pulling me down with him. His shirt came off in one smooth motion, and he discarded it to one side.
I had seen Jin half-undressed a hundred times. But everything felt different now. And for the first time since that day in the store in Dustwalk, I was keenly aware of how much of him there was. He was a whole kingdom of bare skin and ink under my hands. I leaned close to him, tracing the outline of the sun over his heart.
I felt the ragged exhale of breath into my hair as I did. He lifted my face and kissed me again, curling his fingers into the fabric of my shirt. Neither of us spoke as his hands ran the length of my sides, pushing the cloth up. My stomach rose and fell under his callused thumb
s; his fingers grazed my ribs one by one. My breathing came harder as his thumbs brushed higher, and then in one quick motion, a break in our kiss, my shirt was over my head, away from my skin, landing in a tangled pile with his. And there was nothing between my skin and his hands.
I suddenly felt shy, intimidated by the certainty of that movement. ‘You’ve done this before.’ I tried to keep my tone light, joking. But it was too late for that. The skin of his stomach was pressed to mine as we breathed. There was nothing left between us. No lies or pretence or secrets.
‘Yes,’ he said seriously. He traced a scar on my shoulder with his thumb, one of the places my aunt had cut the iron out of me. He was being careful – careful not to cross any lines I didn’t want crossed. He met my eyes steadily. Like he did when we stood in Ahmed’s tent planning something, or in a fight, checking what the other one was doing as we moved together. His dark gaze was serious. ‘Does that bother you?’
I wasn’t sure whether it did or not. That there had been other girls before me, girls who were better at this than I was. Jin had worn my sharper edges smooth in the year since we met. But now I felt them there, still under my skin, holding me back from him just a moment longer. ‘Does it bother you that I haven’t?’
He let out a short huff of air, a relieved laugh that tangled into my hair. ‘No.’ His thumb had moved away from the scar on my shoulder now, and it ran the length of my jaw, mapping it out like I was uncertain territory. ‘But if you don’t—’ He cut himself off, like he was picking the right words. ‘I meant what I said about saving the good liquor. I’m planning on surviving tomorrow.’ He pressed his mouth to the dip in my throat. ‘And now I’m planning on you surviving, too. We don’t have to do anything tonight. This isn’t our last night. You and I, we’re going to get tomorrow, and the next night, and a thousand nights after that. For now, it can be enough that I am yours.’ He kissed me gently. ‘All that I am I give to you, and all that I have is yours. Because the day that we die, it’s not going to be tomorrow.’
He said it with the certainty of a Demdji truth-telling even though he was entirely human. His calmness always tied me together – like he was holding me firm in a sandstorm. He was sure, I realised. He was sure that he wanted me. And I was sure that I wanted him. And it was more than a want.
I leaned in, struggling to hold myself together inside my own skin when I felt like I might shatter out of it if I touched him again. But I would break apart entirely if I didn’t. I pressed a kiss against his mouth softly and felt him smile against me. ‘I’m yours,’ I offered back. I traced my mouth along the line of his jaw. ‘All that I am I give to you.’ I dipped my head, my mouth exploring his collarbone and the lean, muscled line of his shoulder. ‘All that I have is yours.’ I felt his hand curl into a fist against my bare back. Like he was grasping for something to hang on to, to anchor himself. But all he could find was skin. Finally I leaned my mouth against the tattoo over his heart. ‘Until the day we die.’
Whatever thin barriers were left between us disappeared. I was keenly aware of everything as it happened, though later, it only came back in flashes. Like I was drunk on him. On us together. I remembered some advice I once heard a mother give her daughter on her wedding day back in Dustwalk: to lie back, close her eyes, bear it and wait until it was over. But I didn’t want to close my eyes. I wanted to see everything.
Together we shed pieces of clothing until we were nothing but skin. His hands questioned when they were not sure. As he shifted over me, I caught sight of the ink that went across his hipbone, the tattoo I had only seen an edge of before, above the line of his belt.
It was a star, I realised. A small circle bursting with light on all sides like it was breaking apart. I drew the line of it with my finger. I heard Jin make a sound like I’d never heard before as he pulled my attention back up with his mouth on mine. He kissed me deeply until I heard myself saying his name over and over in my shallow breaths, like a plea, or a prayer. He whispered my name back to me against my lips like a secret that belonged to him. My breath came in small, ragged gasps, and I sank my fingers into his back. We were burning together as one single flame, bright enough that we could defy the night.
Until finally the last of the space between our bodies vanished.
I came apart in his hands, and he in mine. Both of us shattering into sand and dust and sparks, until we were both just infinite stars tangled together in the night.
Chapter 37
The Demdji and the Prince
Once there was a boy from the sea who fell in love with a girl from the desert.
The boy knew she was dangerous when he met her, with a gun in her hand and no care for her own life in a dusty desert town at the end of the world. She was all fire and gunpowder, and her finger was always on a trigger.
He guessed he was in trouble when those same fingers danced across the stories inked into his skin without seeming to understand how much power she had in her. Or how much power she could have over him. He knew it for sure when he woke up with a headache, missing the girl, and found that he was glad she had given him an excuse to go after her.
He knew it when she drove him across the desert for fear that losing her would tear him in half. He knew it when he did lose her, and he would have torn the whole world apart looking for her.
But he wondered if a boy from the sea and a girl from the desert could ever survive together. He feared that she might burn him alive or that he might drown her. Until finally he stopped fighting it and set himself on fire for her.
Chapter 38
Something was wrong.
I woke suddenly, completely certain of that.
Only my waking mind wasn’t as sure as my sleeping mind had been. And for just a few seconds, it didn’t seem like anything could be amiss. I was lying in the circle of Jin’s arms, fitted against him like we were two pieces meant to fit together. There was a heavy blanket between me and the morning air that I remembered Jin pulling over us last night. My head rested on the tattoo over his heart, listening to its steady beat, as he drew lazy patterns with his fingers across the bare skin of my back underneath the blanket.
And then I remembered that today was the day we were all going into battle.
Jin felt me wake up. ‘What’s wrong?’ he mumbled tiredly into my hair. I lifted my head enough so I could see him. His lids were heavy with sleep, his hair dishevelled, but his eyes were as sharp and ready as ever, watching me. I wondered how long he’d been awake.
‘I’m not sure,’ I said. But even now I couldn’t shake it. It was there, an unsettled feeling in the pit of my stomach. Like there was some danger coming that I couldn’t see yet. I sat up abruptly and smacked my head against the lamp, the same one from last night.
I cursed, rubbing my head, as Jin laughed from where he was still sprawled lazily on the ground. ‘You’ve got a new enemy. The Sultan and his army will have to wait until you’ve defeated that lamp.’
I stuck my tongue out as I pulled the blanket off him, wrapping it around myself like I’d just stepped out of the baths in Izman, before venturing outside the tent. Dawn was only just putting on its face, the faint pink of the sky igniting Izman to the east of us. But even in the half-light, I could see there was something else between us and the city.
I squinted, trying to get a better view of the shifting, blurred thing on the horizon. It almost looked like—
It hit me all at once. That feeling of wrongness wasn’t just fear – it was coming from my Demdji side.
I pushed my way hurriedly back into Jin’s tent. He looked up from where he was pulling clothes on. ‘It’s a sandstorm,’ I said, suddenly breathless. I started searching for my own clothes. ‘The Sultan, he knows we’re here.’ I found my trousers, putting them on quickly under the blanket. ‘He’s using the Abdals to – he’s doing this to keep me here.’ I grabbed my shirt out of the pile, hands shaking. I could already anticipate the pain of trying to hold back a sandstorm long enough to make it a fair fight.
I knew I couldn’t hold it back and get into the city. I yanked my shirt on.
Jin drew me to him. ‘Calm down.’ His steadiness made me still. ‘We have armies and other Demdji. You’re not alone in this fight. However –’ he hooked his hands under the hem of the shirt I had just put on – ‘I am going to need my shirt back, because I don’t think I’m going to fit in yours.’ I just had time to realise he was right – I’d taken his shirt without noticing, and I was drowning in it – before he stole a quick kiss from me and pulled the shirt back over my head, tossing me mine instead.
It was a lot harder to believe you might lose a war when you could still laugh on the morning of the last battle.
I stepped out of Jin’s tent just as the storm reached us. I took in a breath as sand rushed closer, encircling the camp, pushing towards the tents. I raised my arms, hands steady as the storm got close enough that I could feel the sands lashing at my skin.
I pushed back with everything I had in me.
The storm stopped its invasion all at once. Sand strained against me at the edges of the camp. The desert that usually obeyed me was fighting back. I couldn’t get it to disperse, couldn’t wave a hand and scatter the storm back into the dunes where it had come from. Instead, the sandstorm whipped around the camp in a cyclone, like a wild animal prowling on the outskirts of a cage, nipping occasionally at the edges of tents, making them tremble in the air.
This was a standstill.
‘God, there you are!’ I opened my eyes at the sound of Shazad’s voice to find her, Ahmed, Rahim and Sam running towards me, all of them looking unsettled as the storm raged around us. ‘I tried to find you when I saw the sandstorm, but I couldn’t track you down.’ Shazad’s eyes slid to Jin, standing in the opening of his tent just behind me. We both still looked dishevelled from more than just sleep. The sly look on my friend’s face told me she understood now she’d been looking in the wrong tent. But her mind slid quickly back to the present. ‘Amani, how long can you hold this?’
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