by J. C. Welker
Rebel stared up at her and then snorted out laughing.
An endearing sound. She doubted Rebel knew how lovable the sound was, the voice which had softened some of her hardness. It reverberated off the gold walls, filling the vessel with a noise it had never heard. Since her imprisonment, she couldn’t remember ever laughing, and never inside here. A warm feeling crept up her spine, but she brushed it away.
The vase’s walls trembled again.
Rebel tensed, and they waited for the shaking to stop. In hopes of extinguishing both their anxiety of what was taking place outside the vessel, Anjeline flicked her wrist. The illusion of the sea rippled away. Snow flurries now drifted like tiny presents from a night sky. A fireplace crackled near, creating a cozier and more calming atmosphere. “The fox will be infuriating Skinner soon,” she said.
“You have him pegged.” Rebel puffed a breath of air.
“But not you,” Anjeline said. “You’re still a mystery.”
Rebel’s mouth opened, then closed, and a sheepish grin appeared. A flattering look, compared to the bruise on the skin of her cheekbone where it had started to heal. Countless scratches streaked her arms and neck, a reminder of the lycans attack and the witch’s gripping spell. The pendant around her throat caught the light and glittered.
An intense curiosity filled Anjeline, wondering at the way Rebel would clutch the pendant as though the thing itself were a wish. Unthinking, she reached up, and when Rebel didn’t pull away, she touched the pendant. The metal warmed as she traced the pendant’s face, the little knife, the gentle dips and points of the rose engraving. She glanced up in question. “May I?”
Rebel nodded and opened the locket, showing the photo of a woman, her irises as clear as the gray ashes of a fire. A woman, who at the time it had been taken, looked no older than Rebel did now, with features so sharp they could burn an image in your mind.
There was something distinctive about the necklace, but Anjeline couldn’t discern what, and she puzzled over the photo. “She looks familiar.”
“Because she looks like me.” Rebel didn’t need to explain. Her voice held such longing she looked like she regretted saying it.
“What happened to her?” Anjeline dared to ask.
“I…don’t know.”
“You never knew your family?”
“Welcome to the definition of being me.”
After a beat, Anjeline’s thoughts turned to understanding. “Rebel,” she said softly. “You can’t make alive the dead.”
“That’s not my wish.” Rebel snapped the pendant closed, but reluctance crossed her face. Once she spoke again, her voice cracked. “When I was little, I used to believe there was a secret world of magic. Used to believe someday my mother would come for me. For hours, I would sit on the roof waiting for her, and I would wish. I wished forever for parents who didn’t exist. Eventually…I knew to stop expecting the wish to come true.”
Such sadness pooled in those eyes that Anjeline wanted to smooth a hand down her cheek. She stilled at the thought but imagined a little, lost girl. All alone. Wishing. Thinking of all the things Rebel had never experienced, never been offered. Like affection. And she wondered what it must have been like to live forever scrounging to survive, when at any moment, something could be taken from you if you didn’t take first. Like being imprisoned, Madrath’s voice whispered to her. Still, if Rebel’s mother were alive, she imagined to be reunited would mean something far greater than any wish.
All at once, the vessel shook with a tremor.
Rebel bolted upright. “What in hell?”
Thundering footsteps sounded all around them.
One heavier than the other. Skinner and his giant. Someone was stomping now. Anjeline scowled up at the long neck of the vessel. They could barely make out what was happening, but judging by the sound of Jaxon’s curses, the magician and his behemoth were searching the club. The fox had promised to keep the vessel hidden at all times until he had defused the threat with whatever lie or bargain he could invent to have them leave.
Which is precisely what concerned her. “I’m not so fond of this plan.”
Rebel absentmindedly rubbed at her chest. “Which piece of the plan? Where we’re lying low in an illegal club surrounded by highly illegal paraphernalia, or where we could be trapped here for hours because Skinner’s anal retentive?”
“The part where we’re both vulnerable inside a vase while your friend’s outside making deals with a dragon.”
She frowned. “Jax wouldn’t betray me. He’s diverting Skinner. For us.”
“Despite his good intentions, he’s still a thief,” she said, before she could stop herself.
“As am I.” Rebel stared pointedly with her default look—the tight jaw and rigid posture when she felt the need to guard herself. It was the same facade Anjeline used to keep others from seeing within. She opened her mouth to explain, but Rebel cut her off. “You still don’t trust me? I’m hiding with you in your vessel, but you still have no faith in me?”
They rocked back and forth like this countless times, and Anjeline was never sure how the conversation would end—in an argument or with a smile. But, of course, Rebel would think that. Thanks to a wicked, powerful hand, Anjeline’s misgivings had blossomed into a venomous flower. While she’d been trapped in the vessel, dreaming of her kin and the sky, the world around her had moved and changed and been shaped by human evil.
“Trust is an expensive gift.” She let Rebel interpret that as she pleased.
The footsteps momentarily stopped. Voices were dimmed now. The fox manipulating them into the lie he had concocted. Then the stomps headed to a different room.
Rebel was still frowning at her. “You trusted a person once? Solomon?”
“Once.”
“Has a jinni ever been known to…like a human?”
A chill snaked through Anjeline, knowing what she really was asking. “There are stories of the Jinn adoration, some who came to…cherish humans. But none ended well.”
Her first human friendship had been a thousand and one lifetimes ago. Since man took to capturing Jinn, to trust—let alone befriend them—went against everything their laws suggested, everything Madrath had drilled into her. But Solomon had shown her differently. The one human who treated the Jinn as equals, trying to build a bridge between them. Peace. He showed her friendship. Trust. Only now, the human in front of her made her feel a similar connection.
She felt fingers run over her brass wristlet and her breathing hitched.
Rebel trailed a thumb over the cuff. “All stories have a beginning. If I’m supposed to help break your bonds, I have to know how that magician trapped you.”
Their gazes locked, drifting on an ocean of vulnerability. The more Rebel pushed against Anjeline’s walls, the harder it was to keep them up. Having Rebel here left her exposed. Peeling back parts of her, displaying her secrets, remembering the dark magician ripping away her freedom… She wasn’t sure she could endure the shameful truths she’d hidden away, what she’d suffered.
“Nero,” Anjeline said, the hurt still burning as brightly as it had the first time. She hadn’t thought of the day in over a decade. “It wasn’t just the wishes that turned horrible, it’s what he carried out with the power he obtained from them. From the moment the dark magician summoned me, I endured watching it. All of it…”
Chapter Seventeen
The summons had come out of nowhere.
The moment the magician’s call wrenched at Anjeline’s essence, she’d been drawn from the Other realm, until she manifested at its plea. She appeared as a cloud of fiery smoke, contracting in the center of a summoning circle, licking the air before coming together, materializing into her human form. Her heat sizzled, flicking up her arms, blanketing the dull room in light, and engulfing every shadow.
A dark-haired man stood in a circle of his own, surrounded by candles and filled with different runes. The young boy beside him rocked back on his heels at the sight of h
er.
“What Saher summoned me?” Anjeline’s voice thundered. Her defenses were high, unsure of her location, so startled with how the summons had plucked her away. She’d almost forgotten the feeling. Forgot it was possible. It had been so long since she’d been invoked. She stood in the middle of the circle, her power flickered up, pushing against the invisible walls of it and the protective runes sketched in gold.
But it wouldn’t budge, drawn by a forceful magic.
Leaving the boy’s side, the man stepped forward, clothed in a magician’s garb embroidered with two beasts, their bodies of a lion with the twin heads of goats, and a long, reptilian tail ending in a giant serpent. The magician looked as exhausted as a corpse, with a week’s worth of stubble and months of shadows under his eyes. Sweat dotted his brow and his hands were spattered in blood. Summoning took its toll on mortals. The blood had to be of human magic, placed in the center of the circle, for only magicians could summon Jinn, as they had been created to aid them.
And summoning Anjeline was almost impossible.
The magician inclined his head toward her. “Tell me, are you the Jinn hailed as Anjeline the Wishmaker, Dalil of Prophets?”
Anjeline examined him and he met her glare with a polite smile. The magician knew of her already, her reputation and her title. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to summon her to begin with. One would need to possess a great deal of pure-light magic to perform an evocation to invoke a Wishmaker of such power. Few prophets had accomplished it, nor magicians, though countless had tried and were met with tragedy.
She announced in a powerful tone, “I am the Wishmaker known as Daughter of the Scorching Winds, and Wise Solomon’s Batal. You know this, magician. Now I charge you, tell me who you are.”
The boy stiffened.
But the man’s smile stretched and he bowed. “I am Nero, the great magician.” He came closer but remained behind the safety of his own circle, with protective runes giving him some tangible safety if Anjeline were to release her magic. “This comes as a surprise to you, doesn’t it?” he asked. “It must be decades since you’ve been summoned? Centuries? Great Solomon was the last who had the force to invoke you, no?”
Her brow narrowed. “Solomon was powerful. Unable to cast a selfish wish.” She placed her hands against the invisible wall of her circle and pushed. It resisted her magic. “How have you—”
“Ah, yes, what you Jinn deem a selfless heart.” Nero chuckled. “Tell me about him and his friendship.”
At the question, Anjeline stiffened. Smoke sizzled off her shoulders, engulfing the room in heat. “And what do you know of him, Saher?”
“Many stories, I’ve heard. Even as a boy, Solomon held such power he’d been able to summon you, and you gifted him with a ring.”
That’s not entirely true. The first time Solomon the Wise had summoned her, all he sought was knowledge, to know her and the Jinn. He did not wish. From the hazy shade of this magician’s aura, Anjeline recognized this man’s soul was anything but virtuous. It made little sense, how he’d invoked her. “Solomon did not desire wishes,” she said cautiously. “What is it you want?”
The magician canted his head. “But he did befriend you, didn’t he? Ruled over the Jinn?”
Her insides crackled into an angry ember.
What had become her worst memory had once been the most beautiful one she’d owned. Solomon held the one unselfish heart she’d ever known. Though he wasn’t without his mistakes, or his love of women. She had marveled at the boy, for the Creator had gifted him with great wisdom. And over time, he became a true friend. She’d aided him in building his temple, versed him in magic, until the day came when he was desperate to bring peace to his land. Unable to cast a selfish wish, he’d wished for the people instead. Because of his noble act, she cast it, gifting him a powerful ring. No gem was ever so beautiful as the stone in the ring of Solomon. For with it, the whole earth came under his sway. Even the Jinn.
“It must be lonely,” Nero went on, “to not be a part of the rest of your kin. To be regarded so cautiously after Solomon.”
A cloying in the air grew heavy.
Anjeline’s stomach filled with a queasy sensation like something was siphoning her essence. The touch of dark magic. The magician smiled, foul. The heat coming off her essence had told her as much. Countless dark magicians had strived in summoning her, believing their power mighty enough to outshine their tarnished souls, which resulted in their demise. But this magician’s power seemed to trump others. It overwhelmed her with a gut-wrenching weight. The boy didn’t seem to feel anything.
“What must your kin think of you?” Nero waved his hand and the seal encircling her seemed to shrink. “To have trusted a human, befriended them, then watched them capture your kind?”
“Shaitan are not my kin.” Anjeline’s eyes turned to molten light. The cloying grew with his words, flashing imagines of the past in her mind. When Solomon’s power grew, the shaitan turned to wreaking havoc in his land. Forcing him to bind them by the power of the ring, controlling them, and in return saving lives. She’d expected to earn glory and honor for punishing the shaitan and their crimes. Instead, Madrath had judged her with helping a human imprison their malicious kin. She had chased peace, but found her own looked at her in betrayal.
Isolated her.
It wasn’t until Anjeline gazed down at her trembling hands, did she realize the magician was using his foul power to manipulate her. Heat moved around her face, her rage manifested at her will, and white-hot flames flicked up against the circle in warning.
Nero’s lips stretched in delight. “There’s nothing stronger than the aid Jinn provide to unknowing mortals. But your magic has shattered people with their own wishes.”
She bared her teeth, knew the game he was playing. “Want simple? Summon a marid. Want extraordinary? Let the Wishmaker cast your desire.”
He laughed. “Trickster. Always the Wishmaker, never casting a wish without destruction. You’ve caused great men to fall.”
“Greed caused their fall.” The circle around Anjeline shimmered against her rage, rumbling the floor. “Now you answer me, you wretched creature… How have you summoned me? Even with your forbidden magic, it’s impossible.”
He tilted his head as though she were speaking nonsense. “You underestimate the human spirit. Where there is a will, there’s a way. Didn’t Solomon teach you that?” He hissed like the warning of a snake before it bites and waved his hand in an incantation.
“Your magic’s trifling.” Anjeline’s essence manifested into an enormous leopard with a jackal’s head, ready to rip through the summoning circle.
But his power leaped through his fingers, hitting Anjeline. Her spine clenched. She slashed with claws at the invisible circle, but nothing happened. She expected her runes to be glowing rage but her magic wouldn’t rise. She felt nothing—other than her fear growing and the darkness expanding around her.
“You’d be surprised how much more magic you can fit inside yourself when you give up half your soul.” Nero’s eyes turned into bottomless pools of inkiness. “Now for the reason I’ve summoned you…”
His dark magic coiled like a serpent around Anjeline. Her power surged up to block it, pushing to escape, to flee to the Other realm, but the circle encaged her. Tiny quills rippled along her arms. With a swirl of smoke, she turned into two glowing eyes in a fog of boiling vapor. But her full force wouldn’t spring forth, her form altered rapidly, spear-tail, wings, and claws. None of her forms would stay solid. His darkness slashed out, smothering her flame, until she shrank back to a girl. With another wave of his hand, bronzed cuffs slapped onto her wrists.
Anjeline cried out.
The pain blinded her, coming down upon her like lightning and thunder. Her mouth opened to call out for her kin, but her screams were silenced as the darkness wormed its way into her throat, pushing back her magic. The cuffs glowed, blazing against her wrists, his mark on them suffocating her. Trapping her p
ower. It left her trembling in its wake, fear yawning so wide and overwhelming in her chest she thought her essence might be ripped out.
Triumph warped the lines of Nero’s face. “Be proud, Wishmaker. Your magic serves a great purpose in bringing judgment to those who have betrayed me. Because of you, they’ll never see me coming.”
Anjeline hissed. Here in this world, she was caught in his web. Bound. Just as Solomon had bound her malicious kin. She might have been captured, but she wasn’t about to give up a wish without a fight. Eventually, she’d see his demise. “By my will, from my breath may the wish you strike be your death,” she rasped, gratified to see a muscle tick around his mouth.
Then Nero drew his other hand from behind his back, and in his palm—sat a human heart. His magic swirled, caressing it as it pulsed. “You think I would go to all this sacrifice to bind you if I wasn’t able to get beyond the consequences?” He looked to the boy. “Come here, lad. It’s time to apply what you’ve been learning.”
The boy obeyed, stepping near, his cheeks dusty and streaked with dirt and blood. Anjeline saw his eyes were vacant. Dawning surfaced. Nero possessed the boy’s heart, working him as a marionette. The boy blinked and absentmindedly scratched at his chest. In all her experiences, a magician had never found a way around the consequences. She never believed they could. Her fear was coming true.
“This is your plan? An innocent child to cast your wish?” The magician would be spared the consequence if the boy cast the wish for him, and thus reaped the cost.
Nero chuckled, his face glowing in the magic enveloping him. “No one is innocent. You of all beings should know that. Look how much he desires to please me.” He stroked the heart in his hand and the boy gazed at him like a lap dog waiting for his treat. “And don’t think you can refuse to cast the wish. Decline and those bindings will rip your essence to shreds.”
Fire rose in Anjeline’s gullet, crackling the air around her. All her resolve to blot out darkness and the mantle she’d adopted as the Wishmaker meant nothing in this moment if she couldn’t save the boy. “Sabbi!” she snapped at him, trying to break through his enchantment. “Look at me. Don’t do it!”
