Exquisite Captive (46 page)

Zanari nodded, her eyes still closed. “I see red smoke coming through the portal, that’s all. I’m guessing yes.”

Nalia’s heart ached, knowing that if things continued the way they were with Raif, it wouldn’t be possible to have a friendship with Zanari. After losing Leilan, it had been a comfort to know that she had someone to turn to. Just the thought of Leilan sent a wave of grief through her. She’d never forgive herself for being the cause of her death.

Nalia shook her head; she couldn’t think of that, not right now. If she did, she’d never stop, and she had to stay strong so that she could rescue her brother. Nalia looked at her cell phone—it’d been nearly two hours since she’d drugged Malek. Was he still lying on the futon mattress, surrounded by candles? Nalia’s hand went to her stomach, an unconscious gesture, as she waited for the summons she knew he could no longer command. Her eyes followed Raif as he walked around the clearing, pressing his hands against the trees and drawing their strength into him. She saw his
chiaan
around his fingers, a soft springtime light that floated over the bark. Then he joined Nalia where she stood in a small pool of moonlight in the center of the clearing. The circle around her glowed bright green. For the first time since she’d knocked on the door of Malek’s loft, he looked into her eyes. She wanted to look away, but she couldn’t. In them, she saw a flash of the tenderness she’d seen the morning before, when he’d caught her watching him sleep. Her eyes stung and she looked down, before he could see how much his disgust over Malek had cost her.

Nalia handed Raif the coin purse. Without speaking, he took it out and wound the chain around her hand three times, muttering in Kada on each revolution, then interlaced his fingers with hers, pressing their hands together. His
chiaan
thrummed in her and he drew close, so close she could see the smattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose, faint constellations she longed to map.

“Are you ready?” he asked, his voice barely a whisper.

She looked down at her hand in Raif’s. Though she wasn’t touching the bottle, she could feel its energy, a strong pulse, a heartbeat that wouldn’t fade. She remembered the days and nights when she’d been captured inside it, scratching at its iron walls, screaming to be let free.

She forced her eyes to meet his. “Yes.”

She had only dared to imagine a life beyond rescuing Bashil a handful of times. It seemed a fantasy, to think she would live to be an old jinni. Her original plan had been to find Bashil a safe haven before the Ifrit or the resistance killed her. If their father were still alive, maybe he could help hide Bashil until the war ended. But if Nalia
did
manage to evade all those who wished her dead, what would she do in her war-torn realm where her caste was extinct and the serfs and Ifrit alike would be happy to see her hang among the Ghan Aisouri? Though she longed for Arjinna with all her heart, Nalia wondered if she belonged there anymore.

“Just so you know,” she said, “you won’t have to worry about me mucking things up for you in Arjinna. I’m renouncing any claim I have to the throne. As soon as I get my brother, I’m coming back to Earth.” Raif sucked in the air, but she wouldn’t look at his face. “After I take you to the sigil, you and I won’t need to see each other again—we can pretend whatever . . . whatever mistakes we made on Earth . . . never happened. You’ll fight your revolution and I will free the jinn on the dark caravan.”

“No,”
Raif said, his voice hoarse.

She looked up at him, startled. All the anger had drained out of his face and he was staring at her, broken and miserable.

“I don’t under—” Nalia began, but her words were lost as he pulled her close to him and his lips found hers in a desperate kiss.

She gave into it, knowing she shouldn’t and doing it anyway. His lips were achingly familiar, the only thing on Earth she thought it’d be hard to live without. But she couldn’t forget the look on his face, when she’d stood before him in Malek’s shirt. It was as if he’d called her all those things she was afraid she’d become. Nalia pushed Raif away, but he held on to her, the bottle swaying between them.

“Nalia—”

“Stop,” she said. “You don’t have to do this, Raif. I made a vow, you’ll get the sigil. I haven’t changed my mind just because . . . Let’s get on with it.”

“You think that’s what I care about right now?”

Nalia stared at him, bewildered. “Of course!”

This didn’t make any sense.
He
didn’t make any sense. What did he want from her, from this?

Raif reached out his hand and touched her cheek with the tips of his fingers. In the moonlight, he looked like a dream, a phantom come to tease her. But Nalia would wake up, she knew she would, and all that would be left was despair and darkness. She shook her head and his hand dropped to his side.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“You don’t get to decide that you’re suddenly sorry, not after you looked at me like I was a . . . a . . .” Nalia couldn’t bring herself to say the word.

“No!” Raif tugged at her hand, his eyes panicked. “I never thought that. Not once.” Raif sighed, his breath hot against her skin. “Nalia, I’m a bastard, and I knew I was hurting you and I couldn’t stop. I went a little crazy when I saw you in his shirt and you smelled like him and I just . . . hated myself.”

“Why would you hate yourself? Hate
him
.”

His jaw hardened. “I hate myself because the resistance isn’t the most important thing in my life anymore. I hate myself because you had to be with Malek tonight since
I
couldn’t help you. And it kills me, Nalia, it kills me that I will never be able to protect you.”

“I don’t
need
you to protect me,” she said. “I need you to—”

Love me.

She stopped herself. What she needed was something he couldn’t give. What no Ghan Aisouri was allowed to have.
Love the realm,
she thought.
Love the empress
. But there was no empress, and the realm had no place for her. There was only her certainty that she had to save Bashil and end the dark caravan. And there was Raif. But she didn’t know what that meant, not now.

“What do you need?” he said, his voice soft. “Tell me.”

She took a step back, but the bottle was still hanging beneath their clasped hands, and its chain dug into her skin. She couldn’t let go now, even if she wanted to.

“Raif, we don’t have time. Malek could wake up, the Ifrit are coming—
please
.”

The moon went behind a cloud and Raif found her eyes in the darkness. He rested his forehead against hers. “I love you, Nalia.”

The words dropped into her heart, one by one, like precious jewels placed gently in a velvet pouch. It was nothing like hearing them from Malek’s lips.

Nalia took a shuddering breath. After everything that had happened: the coup, captivity, Haran—it was hard to believe that there was this.
This.
Her heart full of fear and a strange, inexplicable joy, she brought her lips to Raif’s ear and whispered the three words she had only ever said to Bashil. All the shadows fled from his face, as if the sun had suddenly slipped into the night sky and threw a golden beam across him.

Nalia stepped back. “Now make me free.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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AFTER EVERYTHING THAT HAD HAPPENED, ALL NALIA
had been through, in the end he’d have to hurt her. A pain so bad he only remembered his own experience of the unbinding as a white-hot poker tearing through his heart.

“I’ll do my best to make it quick,” he said, “but you have to be strong.”

“I trust you,” she said.

“You’re never afraid, are you?”

She grinned. “I’m afraid all the time. I just hide it really well.”

Raif leaned in and brushed his lips against hers. He had to hurry.

“Whatever happens, don’t let go of my hand,” he said.

Nalia nodded and Raif closed his eyes, searching for the ribbons of
chiaan
inside him. His magic was rushing through him, a river with eddies he had to push through and falls that tumbled out of his heart and made a path through his ribs. This particular piece of magic was second nature to him, a spell he’d performed on many of his
tavrai
, but this, Raif knew, would be his most difficult attempt. Nalia was the most powerful jinni he had ever known, and therefore the bind to her master was ironclad, even stronger because it was reinforced by the complicated ties of Malek’s feelings for her. And the bottle was something he had never dealt with before. The Shaitan overlords of Arjinna had no need of such devices—their own magical abilities so outweighed those of their slaves that bottles were unnecessary for summoning or magically imprisoning their property. The bonds between jinni masters and their serfs tended to be weaker than the bonds between masters and slaves on the dark caravan because a jinni overlord may have hundreds of serfs, whereas a human master only had one jinni.

Every time he performed this ritual, Raif remembered his father, holding his hand just before his own unbinding.
Be brave, little one,
Dthar Djan’Urbi had said. The pain had been excruciating, severing the connection to his master overlord that Raif had had since he was born. Since then, he’d been stabbed, shot, beaten, and burned. It all paled in comparison to those few minutes being unbound.

Now he had to do the same to Nalia. Raif had never understood how hard it must have been for his father to unbind his family until this moment. Knowing what he was about to put her through, just two days after she had nearly died. . . .

He felt the strong grip of Nalia’s fingers, her
chiaan
melding with his. Raif squeezed her hand, then began whispering the words his father had taught him, so many summers ago. He could feel the bind that held Nalia in its grip—a firm, invisible tentacle that had wrapped itself around her body. He knew that Malek was on the other end of the bind, that Nalia’s master would feel the severed connection, like a knife shoved deep in his stomach. This was some consolation, that Malek would hurt as well.

Raif directed his
chiaan
to the bindings, drawing upon the power of the earth all around him. He felt it rise up from his bare feet that rested on the grass, felt the trees and rocks respond to his call. He heard Nalia gasp, and his arm pulled down as she fell to her knees. Raif opened his eyes and knelt next to her, chanting the words, faster and faster. The wall he usually came up against when he worked magic moved further away as he went deeper into the spell, unraveling the binds that tied Nalia to Malek. He pushed beyond the boundaries of his body so that it seemed he was outside it, expanding into the earth, one with the
chiaan
it offered up to him. Sweat stood out on his forehead and he felt lightheaded, but the power filled him as
chiaan
swirled around their bodies, gold and green, Nalia’s gold turning to purple as she lost the ability to hold on to her glamour.

Her eyes, now violet, burned, her whole body writhing inside a beautiful inferno. Nalia’s shackles blazed, the gold of them so bright he had to close his eyes against the glare. The power between them built, her
chiaan
fighting its way out of the bind, like a dragon caught in a net. Still, the shackles stayed around her wrists and the bottle remained whole, not shattering into a million pieces as he’d expected it to. There were no more words he could say, no further he could go. Raif felt his body begin to sag under the weight of the bind.

It won’t break,
he thought. A wild despair stabbed at him and Raif held on to Nalia because it was the only thing left for him to do. He had failed her once again.

There was Raif, on his knees, cradling Nalia’s head in his lap as the magic tore through her, cutting away the binds that linked her to Malek. She could see the defeat in his face, but she didn’t have the strength to tell him it was working, that Malek’s hold on her was unraveling, thread by painful thread. She closed her eyes to focus her
chiaan
, every ounce of her intention devoted to maintaining the process Raif had started in her with the unbinding spell.

Suddenly she felt the familiar weightlessness that came with evanescing and her eyes flew open.
No!

All Nalia could do was scream as honeyed smoke surrounded her. This wasn’t Malek’s doing—it was the bottle itself, rejecting her claim to sovereignty. The magic in it was unlike any Nalia had experienced: she could feel it resisting her, as though it were a conscious, living entity. A parasite that needed her to stay alive. It fed on its connection to Nalia, on the bind the slave trader had created the first time she was imprisoned within its iron walls. Like Haran, it wanted to consume her.

Raif shouted her name, crushing Nalia to him, but she could feel herself dissolving in his arms as the bottle refused to give up its claim on her. She held on tight, until her evanescence took over, pulling Nalia away from the safety of his embrace. Her hands clawed at the earth beneath her, the sky above her. Raif cried out as his fingers slid through her smoke. Nalia swirled, a whirlpool of evanescence, spinning, spinning—nothing but atoms and
chiaan
twirling around around around, dizzy—

Stars.

Trees.

Dirt.

Moon.

The mouth of the bottle—

Golden—

Gaping—

Hungry—

Darkness.

Black: impenetrable.

Iron. Heat. Silence.

Nalia raised her head. The darkness was so thick, she couldn’t even see her hand in front of her face.

She screamed.

Her fury echoed off the walls, but the only answer was the sound of her own despair. She crumpled to the ground, heaving. Panic took over and her breaths became short, labored spasms. Nalia fought to gain control, imagined the gryphons with their wooden sticks. She was a royal knight, an empress, and this was
not
how her story was going to end.

“Enough,” she said. To herself. To the bottle.