by Emma Holly
“With respect, Your Highness, the sultan’s power is low. He isn’t healing normally, undoubtedly on account of his inferior copied body and the effect of those iron restraints. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I assume you want to torture him at length.”
Luna’s glare warned the demon he was treading close to insubordination. For a heartbeat, Iksander dared hope the pair might fall out. Naturally, he wasn’t that lucky.
“Fine,” the empress conceded. She smoothed her white equestrian shirt, now sporting multiple sprays of red. “We’ll give him a few minutes.”
“Shall I check his chains in the meantime? The left-hand anchor looks like it might be loose.”
Luna waved for him to proceed.
Wary, Iksander watched the lizard man approach. No masochist, Taytoch pulled on leather gloves before examining his restraints, link by link. Though businesslike, the demon was true enough to his nature to enjoy making Iksander hiss by pressing the iron to uncovered skin. Only when he checked the final wrist manacle did he behave unexpectedly.
Seemingly by accident, he allowed his bare, scaled forearm to brush the sultan’s wrist. The flesh-to-flesh contact allowed him to speak directly into Iksander’s mind.
Hang on for me sultan, he instructed silently. I can hold back a little but not so much that Herself notices.
The idea that he’d hold back at all was extraordinary. Born ifrit weren’t known for their compassion. Turned ifrit weren’t either, to be truthful—Luna being a case in point.
Wondering what the hell the demon was up to, Iksander prayed the empress hadn’t seen his eyes widen.
“That’s enough coddling,” she interrupted. “Some of his lacerations are closing.”
“So they are,” Taytoch said. “What’ll it be, sultan? Shall you and I play a while, or would you like to answer Her Majesty’s questions?”
“Thank you for the choice,” Iksander said, his voice rasping in his throat. “I’m afraid I’m not in the mood to chat.”
When Taytoch bared his piranha teeth in a grin, Iksander knew he was in for it.
PINK’S PREDICTION WAS correct. Even hunched on his hands and knees, Connor’s shoulders were a challenge to push through the cabinet’s small opening. Nonetheless, he made it into the mirror space—and without alerting his mistress.
Taytoch’s shadow was a licorice-colored darkness directly in front of the entry hole. Connor crawled into it, relieved to discover it extended high enough for him to stand upright. He also found he could see perfectly through the concealment.
The ifrit captain was indeed a skilled magician.
Connor took a moment to get his bearings. The duplicated dining room was a familiar place: the shining obsidian floor, the coffered ceiling, the portrait-lined paneling. Did I really help make this? he marveled. The accomplishment seemed distant.
Less distant was violent scene being enacted on the long table.
Connor winced at the bloody ruin Taytoch had made of Iksander’s skin. Connor knew a body was but a part of a person’s being. Pain, no matter how intense, couldn’t harm the sultan’s eternal spirit. All the same, Connor hurt to see him suffer. Harder still was his awareness that Iksander had no idea they were trying to rescue him. He believed the empress had erased the only version of Georgie who cared for him.
Connor’s Georgie hadn’t come through the cabinet yet. She waited for him to signal that it was safe. He hesitated to say it was. Luna and Taytoch’s actions were sure to horrify her. Even supposing she hated Iksander—which Connor didn’t suppose at all—she might feel compelled to help.
I should intervene, he thought. Luna had less chance of injuring him. And he might be able to reach her. With the exception of his more angelic half, Connor was the only being in the house with the smallest interest in saving her.
When Luna gestured for the demon captain to return the whip to her, he decided.
“Please stop,” he said, stepping past the reach of Taytoch’s spelled shadow. “You don’t understand what you’re doing.”
Shocked to see him appear, the empress gaped in amazement. Her victim wasn’t less astonished. Iksander’s striped and bloodied face wrenched around on the tabletop. Only Taytoch’s demeanor was unruffled. Given the many atrocities the ifrit must have performed for various masters, perhaps nothing surprised him.
The other option was that he’d arranged for Pink to bring him and Georgie here.
Luna shook off her surprise. “Well, well,” she drawled acidly. “If it isn’t my personal divine traitor.”
Her comment told him she’d discovered his true nature.
Pity filled Connor’s heart. “I’m not here to betray you. Believe it or not, my dearest wish is to help.”
Luna let out a scoffing laugh. “Really. You want to help. Perhaps I should hand you this whip. You can finish splitting open my enemy.”
“If you know what I am,” Connor said, “you know I sometimes see farther and sense more than other created beings. My intuition tells me if you stay on the path you’ve chosen, you’ll be unhappy with how it ends.”
“Clearly, you have no idea what makes a woman like me happy.”
Connor understood better than she thought. He lifted calming hands and took another step toward her. “You don’t have to forgive the sultan. You definitely don’t have to love him. All you need to do to avoid a fate you’ll find miserable is cease harming him.”
“By God!” she exploded. “If this saccharine drivel is all you angels have to offer, we djinn are better off without you!”
“I speak from a place of love, to help you toward a future you’d like better than the one you’re heading to. This is your decision point. If you don’t turn back now, you won’t get another chance.”
Connor felt lifted up, his words guided by something larger and wiser than himself. Luna wasn’t impressed. Her beautiful face darkened an instant before she flew at him in anger. The attack took him unprepared.
“You turn back,” she raged, her hands and nails trying to claw him. “You go to fucking hell!”
Her power lashed him like a storm. Having no wish to hurt her, he held her off gently. “You know what I am. Your orders won’t work on me.”
“Won’t they?”
She snatched at his head, yanking hair from his scalp. Her anger was immense, her features distorted as she used the strands to power a spell.
When she threw what she held to the floor, a stage magician’s flash and puff of smoke sprang up.
“You,” she intoned. “One named Connor, whose body was made by me, in the name of Iblis, go back where you came from.”
To his everlasting amazement, her command succeeded.
GEORGIE JERKED AS CONNOR disappeared. Shit. Luna’s magic wasn’t supposed to work on him.
Georgie had been peering into the mirror space from the hidden opening at the back of the cabinet. She started to crawl the rest of the way, but Pink had squeezed into the buffet beside her. The demon restrained her with a steel grip on her bicep.
“Not yet,” the ifrit hissed. “Wait until Herself leaves.”
Georgie couldn’t imagine why the empress would, but Pink knew more than her.
“She drained her reserves banishing the angel,” the ifrit whispered. “She needs a power boost.”
Luna did look tired. She stood tall with her shoulders straight and her chin tipped high, but the haughty posture appeared to require effort.
“Does Your Highness require assistance?” Taytoch inquired.
His tone was polite, but the empress’s brows lowered. “I need an amphora from my store room. You may accompany me there.”
He understood that by “accompany” she meant support. He took her elbow as they left the altered version of the dining room through another door. They’d still be in the mirror space, Georgie realized. When Connor explained to her what one was, he’d mentioned the more celestial him had extended the copy beyond the dining room.
“Now,” Pink urged, goosing her forward.
Seeing him up close caused her breath to catch in her throat with horror. Jesus, he was a mess, his once vital warrior’s form torn viciously from head to foot. Blood pooled beneath his body, spreading out and dripping audibly to the slick black floor.
No normal person could survive their skin being turned to that glistening pulp.
“Please, please, be alive,” she said, reaching out but afraid to touch him.
His eyes opened.
“Don’t,” he croaked. “Go back where it’s safe.”
She couldn’t do it, even if it was sound advice. Because she took stuff apart all the time for work, she grabbed the nearest chain where it was fastened to the floor, to see if she could detach it. In that moment, she’d have given her right arm for a bolt cutter.
“We don’t have time for that,” Pink said as Georgie crouched to wrestle with the large screw eye bolt. “She’ll be back any moment. His restraints are spelled secure.”
“I’m strong,” Georgie argued, straining at the oversized anchor with all her might. “Help me, and together we’ll turn it.”
“No,” Iksander said, moving slightly and moaning from the pain. “The empress knows I care for you. She’ll torture you to get the truth from me. I don’t want to put my friends in danger.”
Maybe Georgie should have listened, but he wasn’t convincing her.
“Teach me a spell to free him,” she demanded Pink. “You must know one that would work. I’m human. People keep saying that’s big mojo.”
Pink didn’t take offense at being told what to do. Interestingly, her gaze met Georgie’s as if she’d been waiting for her to ask precisely this. “The only spell you need is a wish. Wish the empress dead, and she will be.”
“What?”
“The Moon Ruler owes you for cutting her free of that corset on your eighteenth birthday. If you wish her dead, she has to make it true.”
Georgie’s brain felt like she’d swallowed an icy drink too fast. “Genies and wishes are real things?”
“They’re real things. Plus, you being human, your wish is a very powerful compulsion.”
Pink sounded serious. Could it be that simple? Just wish Luna dead and she’d die?
“You need to say it aloud,” the ifrit instructed. “Say her proper name and call her the empress of the City of Endless Night. Her own magic will do the rest.”
How terrible that was—and how seductive! Georgie opened her mouth, but no words came out. She’d be a murderer if she said them. Then again, if anyone deserved to die, surely the empress did.
“Connor wouldn’t want me to,” she said unsurely.
“Then wish something less severe,” Pink said, seeming prepared for this. “Say you wish she’d, oh, take a long walk off a short pier, weighted by those chains she wrapped the sultan in. That will keep her away long enough for everyone to get to safety.”
Iksander jerked for some reason then made another noise of pain. Georgie glanced at his bloodied face. She guessed his power wasn’t totally quenched. A soft glow lit his flame green eyes.
“Would that wish be good enough?” she asked.
He set his jaw, his gaze reminding her unexpectedly of Pink’s in the unwavering way it held hers. “Oh yes,” he said grimly. “It would be good enough.”
“So,” Luna’s voice interrupted. “I see I’m surrounded by traitors.”
Whatever she’d done in the storeroom had rejuvenated her. Her energy seemed to crackle as she strode authoritatively back into the room. Her skin was snowy, her gray eyes more than naturally luminous. Fear dried Georgie’s mouth, her mind refusing to call up the formula Pink had just taught her to utter.
Pink paid the price for Georgie’s mental paralysis. Even as the ifrit tried to scramble out of reach, Luna darted forward at faster than human speed. Before Georgie could do more than gasp, her strong white hands snapped the ifrit’s neck.
Taytoch let out a sound of protest, but he wasn’t her next target. In a move too fast to counter, Luna seized Georgie around the neck, lifting her off her feet and shaking her till her teeth rattled.
Her strength was stunning. Georgie was no doll filled with straw. She tried calling on the protection in her tattoo, but her concentration wasn’t up to activating it.
“You owe me everything,” Luna cried. “How dare you side with them against me!”
How dare she? That was a crazy question. Not, however, a relevant one right then.
“I wish—” Georgie said, struggling to get her stressed brain to work. “Luna West, Empress of the—”
“We don’t wish in this house!” Luna screamed and flung her against the wall.
Georgie’s skull cracked on the mahogany, the impact threatening to knock her out. She fought against the clouding of her vision.
“Luna . . .” she panted from her slump on the floor. Okay, what the fuck was Luna’s real last name?
“Praetorius,” Iksander hoarsely supplied.
Georgie was determined to get this right. She slapped one palm around her tattoo, putting her passion into the curse. “Luna Praetorius, Empress of the City of Endless Night, I wish you’d take a long walk off a short pier, bound and weighted by the very chains you wrapped around Iksander.”
The effect was instantaneous.
“No,” Luna said as the chains noisily flew off Iksander and whipped themselves around her. “Take it back, damn you!”
Her eyes had gone white all around with fear, her own feet beginning to walk her backwards toward one of the dining room’s large portraits. Georgie struggled to her knees and pointed her arm at her heartlessly. “Long walk,” she repeated. “Short pier. You fucking do as you’re told, empress.”
Luna tried to resist but couldn’t fight her own recently augmented power.
Against her will, she choked out the code phrase to exit the mirror space. “A thing of beauty is a joy forever. It will never pass into nothingness.”
A seam unzipped down the center of the 17th century man’s likeness. Luna sailed through the opening as if an invisible force were dragging her backwards. The portrait rezipped behind her.
For the next two clock ticks, the strange dining room was still.
“Pink!” Taytoch cried after that, rushing to his fallen subordinate. She was a smaller ifrit than him. She seemed a child as he rocked her limp body in his blue arms.
“Is Luna really gone?” Georgie had to ask.
Taytoch was in no state to answer. He threw back his head and keened.
“The empress is gone,” Iksander confirmed quietly.
Though he wasn’t chained anymore, he was too injured to do anything but lie where he was. Georgie pushed shakily to her feet. Rising made her dizzy. She waited and took a breath before moving to check on him. She told herself she wasn’t going to think about Connor and if he still existed. One horror at a time was enough to face. Despite the sultan’s appalling condition, he met her gaze calmly.
“God,” she said. “What can I do to help?”
“If you share your energy with me as you did before, I should be able to assume my smoke form and heal. We need to wait a bit,” he cautioned. “In my current state, I might take too much and injure you.”
Georgie looked at the sheet of blood widening beneath him. “I think we better risk it now.”
She realized she was crying when tears ran wetly down her neck. Iksander stared at them in wonder and back at her. “Georgie, I couldn’t bear to harm you.”
Light flashed to the left of them, a tall man-shaped glow appearing.
“You won’t harm me,” Connor said. “I have plenty of power to spare.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
—
TRUTH REVEALED
Connor wasn’t the same person Luna banished. His skin was so radiant Georgie had to squint. As he stepped closer, she saw he was also taller—maybe as much as eight feet in height. Her heart pounded with a
dread she didn’t understand.
“I’m not a ghost,” he said, seeing fear in her expression. “I have reunited with my other half. Step aside. I shall heal the sultan.”
She stepped back to make room for him. He held shining hands above Iksander’s body, the light they emitted brightening blindingly. Iksander gasped but not with pain. When the glare ebbed, his skin was whole, his muscle and bone unbroken. With round and startled eyes, he sat up and touched his chest up and down.
Connor’s magic had repaired his clothes as well.
“There,” Connor said, nodding in satisfaction. “That is what he should be.”
Georgie’s hand went out to her lover, but she didn’t dare touch his arm. “What about Pink? Is it possible to help her?”
“He won’t,” Taytoch said even as they turned. He was on the floor, cradling Pink in his lap. “Pink and I are dark djinn.”
“I will try,” Connor corrected. “Do you refuse to let me?”
Taytoch shook his head and blinked nervously. Connor didn’t walk to them but winked over without transition and knelt before the pair. So tenderly it made Georgie’s eyes sting, he laid his shining hand on the small ifrit’s brow.
“Come back if you wish,” he said in a voice that was and was not the one she knew. “If you want them, more years of a life you’d enjoy await you.”
The body Taytoch held shuddered. Pink opened her dark green eyes.
“Holy crap,” she said at Connor looming over at her.
Connor smiled and rose. Georgie swallowed. He didn’t need wings to tell her he really was an angel—like really, truly, no fooling. The change was intimidating. When he turned to her, she had to struggle to stand her ground.
His eyes were windows to an impossibly powerful, immeasurably peaceful place. If she stared into them much longer, Georgie had a feeling she might faint.
“I cannot stay here as I am,” Connor said. “My formerly separate parts have grown too . . . energetic for this plane.”
The lump in Georgie’s throat grew bigger. “I understand. You need to be what you were born to become. I’m so grateful we had a chance to be friends.”
