Exquisite Captive (37 page)

A shout: “Nalia!”

She turned around. Raif was a few feet away, walking toward her. Just seeing him brought back the afternoon’s disappointment—the kiss that had woken her up and buried her at the same time. As he got closer, she could see the fury on his face that he barely held in check.

“You’re not changing anything, you hear me?” he shouted. “We made a vow, I
trusted
you—”

Now she was angry. “First of all, you
never
trusted me! Zanari already admitted to spying on me. And second, why don’t you listen to what I have to say before you start assuming things?”

“The words
I want to change the terms of our agreement
seemed pretty clear to me.”

Nalia angrily pushed away the wet locks of hair that kept falling into her eyes and took a step closer to Raif. “There’s a ninety percent chance that I’m going to die tonight,” she said.

Raif was silent, his mouth slightly open, whatever words he was going to say forgotten.

“We both know it,” she continued. The rain was punishing now, harder than before, but she didn’t care. “My master’s gone. There’s no way I’m getting the bottle before Haran finds me. I called you because I’m going to tell you how to get to the sigil without me. So, don’t worry, you’ll have your precious godsdamned ring.”

She turned and started toward the conservatory. Tears pooled in her eyes; it wasn’t easy being a hardened soldier when your heart was broken. No wonder the Ghan Aisouri frowned on romance.

“Fire and blood,” she growled as she wiped the heels of her hands across her face. Now that she’d allowed herself to cry just that once in the traffic jam, it was as if her body had forgotten how to stop.

Nalia threw open the conservatory’s door and stumbled inside. Humid warmth and the scent of hundreds of flowers and plants enveloped her. The rain pounded on the glass panes above, but its sound was muted, as though she was underwater. Nalia pushed deeper inside, past tendrils of fragrant jasmine and clusters of hibiscus and frangipani. She almost felt safe, surrounded by the quiet beauty of the flowers, sheltered from the storm.

Then Raif shut the door behind him.

“Hey,” he said. His voice was surprisingly quiet, gentle. “Nalia, look at me.” She didn’t turn around, but she heard him draw closer. “Please.”

She felt his breath on her neck and then his hands were on her shoulders, turning her around. Raindrops had gathered on his eyelashes, tiny diamonds that dripped onto his face whenever he blinked. Rain beat against the glass panes that surrounded them, blurring the world outside so that it seemed as if they were the only two people left on Earth.

“I made a vow to free you from your master,” he said.

“I’m releasing you from it.” Nalia tried to push him away, but he wouldn’t let go of her.

“You can’t release me unless I agree, and I don’t agree.” Raif’s eyes reminded her of the predator cats that roamed the highest points of the Qaf Mountains, fierce and deadly. “I’m getting you away from that
skag
and his bottle and the way he looks at you and hurts you, and it’s not up for discussion, not at all, do you understand me?”

Raif reached up and wiped away the rain and tears on her cheek with the back of his fingers. She stood completely still.

“You hate me,” she whispered, reminding him.

When he answered, his voice was rough. “No I don’t.”

Not now,
she thought. After a lifetime of wanting to be loved, she didn’t think she could bear it if it finally happened just before she was about to die.

“Raif—”

A soft smile tugged at his lips. “I think you’ll find I’m just as stubborn as you are.”

Lightning flashed outside, bright and hot. They moved at the same time, his mouth meeting hers, hungry and gentle and warm. His
chiaan
poured into her, faster than before, and it fused with her own, twining through Nalia. She tried to resist it, didn’t want to be this close to Raif, to be distracted from what she knew she had to do—

Raif leaned against the table next to them and pulled her closer, his kiss deepening until she didn’t know what was her and what was him. The kiss lasted forever, and no time at all. It was the first experience Nalia had of feeling safe, truly safe, and for a little while it didn’t matter that this might be the last beautiful moment of her short life. She drank it like nectar, filled herself up with him, gorging on the want and the need and the intense sensation of her energy in someone else. There was only Raif, and kissing him was moonlight dancing through
widr
leaves and the taste of sun-ripened fruit, juicy and sweet. The sigh that escaped his lips as she pressed against him was a caressing wind. His arms became the circumference of her world, his breath the air she breathed. His lips fed her starved heart and she pulled him closer, drank in the smell of him, the taste of him, until she was drunk. If Nalia could make a wish, it would be for this moment to go on forever.

But wishes like that were impossible.

A fire truck, siren blaring, sped past the house, the harshness of the sound cutting through her delirium.

“Raif,” Nalia whispered. Breaking away from him was like coming up for air, only she didn’t want to breathe.

His eyes held hers for a long moment and when she tried to speak, he put a finger against her lips. “Now do you understand why I can’t possibly imagine leaving you behind?”

She pressed her lips against his fingers and he let them drop. “You are the most confusing person I have ever met, and that is saying
a lot
,” she said.

He smiled. “You’re a bit of a puzzle yourself.”

It was too much like a dream, this moment. The heady perfume of the tropical flowers, the rain, the moonlight, and the way the crimson tangerine of the distant fires flickered across his face, stained-glass shadows that perfectly captured the passion Raif carried inside him. Nalia had to wake up—to wake them
both
up. It was as if they were under a spell and had forgotten everything that mattered.

She let her glamour fade away so that the Ghan Aisouri tattoos appeared on her arms, then she looked up at Raif, her violet eyes gazing into his emerald ones. Raif stared, as though he were seeing her for the first time. In a way, he was.

“I’m glad the glamour doesn’t cover everything up,” he finally said, the tips of his fingers brushing across her birthmark. Nalia stood still under his light, gentle touch, confused. Showing her the eyes of his enemy was supposed to have pushed him away, not drawn him closer.

“Beautiful,” he murmured, his eyes moving from her birthmark to her eyes.

She’d wanted to remind him what she was, that no matter how they felt, they weren’t on the same team—couldn’t be. But he kept blocking her path, refusing to let Nalia show him what needed to be done.

“Where’s the Raif Djan’Urbi who defied the Ghan Aisouri?” she said quietly. “The one whose people come first, the one who’d rather die than see the Amethyst Crown on my head?” She had to make him see and there was no time. Hurting herself—and him—had to be brutal and swift. “Will you bow before me when I ride by on my gryphon? Be my consort, kiss my lips
and
my feet?”

Raif was quiet, a thoughtful expression in his eyes. Nalia waited for the look of disgust that would cross his face when he came to his senses and realized he was kissing the enemy. Because somewhere along the line he’d forgotten and he needed to remember or all of this—his trip to Earth, her intimacy with Malek, hiding from the Ifrit—it would have meant nothing. If they both died fighting Haran, who would save her brother? Who would end Calar’s reign of terror or stop the dark caravan?

She saw the battle he was fighting inside, the arguments he was losing and winning.

“Would you die for your empress, Raif? Die for
me
?” Her voice was low, a knife in the dark. “Because if you stay here right now, you will. Do you understand? This isn’t some little resistance skirmish, this is Haran fighting a Ghan Aisouri on Calar’s orders.”

He smiled and took one of her hands between his own. “What you’re trying to do right now—it’s not working. You want to know why?”

Nalia trembled, but she threw her shoulders back, lifted her chin. She tried to infuse her voice with the regal disdain the empress had perfected. “Why?”

“Because I know you. I can feel you inside me
right now
. And what I feel is good and brave and fierce and fucking beautiful. And you don’t care at all about the throne or power. Zanari told me about your brother, so don’t even pretend that you care about anything more than saving him. And if you want me to kiss your feet, don’t worry, because I intend on kissing every inch of you the first chance I get, so if you want me to start with your feet I’m more than happy to,
My Empress
.”

Nalia’s eyes grew wide. “Gods,” she breathed. “I am way out of my league here.”

A smile dusted his face and he pulled her against him. “Yes you are.”

“Raif, this is insane,” she said into his chest. “
Please
listen to me.” She held up her tattooed arm and traced her finger along the pattern.
“Lefia,”
she whispered. The word of power unlocked the magic in her skin and the lines began to glow. “It’s a map.”

The elegant swirls and dips and turns, when looked at just the right way, made the shape of one of Earth’s continents: Africa. She pressed her finger against a complicated series of twisted knots and a hologramlike image appeared above her arm.

“That’s the cave. It’s in Earth’s greatest desert.”

Raif barely glanced at it. “I’m not going without you,” he said.

She kept talking, as if he hadn’t said a word. “You’ll have to be quick—grab Zanari and get out before Haran arrives. I’m going to transfer the map to your skin, but when—
if—
I die, it’ll disappear. So you have to go
now
or you won’t even be able to get in the cave.”

“Nalia, you’re wasting your time,” Raif said, his voice tense.

She ignored him. “You’ll have to rely on Zanari to get you to the sigil if the map disappears—the power she has is perfect for this, so thank gods she’s a seer.”

“But she’s been trying to look for the sigil for almost three years. She’s never found anything.”

“That’s because she wasn’t inside the cave. Remember, the sigil is protected from everything on the outside. But once you’re in . . . you’re in. The full map won’t appear until you get past the entrance. I don’t really know much more than that, except that you have to trust the map. The cave will lie to you, but the map never will. If the tattoo disappears, it means I’m dead, but Zanari’s powers will get you to the sigil—it’s just going to take longer.”

“Why can’t you just evanesce with us to the cave?”

“Haran’s able to track me now. I can’t lead the Ifrit there. And, besides, Malek will summon me and then I’m right back to where I’ve started with Haran and any other Ifrit Calar wants to send my way. I need to finish this. I
want
to finish this. Tonight.”

Raif shook his head. “No. Just
no
, okay?”

She took the bottle of blood out of her pocket. “You’ll need my blood to get inside and once more when you find the sigil. This is plenty, but I just wanted to make sure.”

Raif grabbed her other hand and turned her wrist over, then rubbed his thumb over the scar from their binding ritual.

“I made a promise to you—and you to me. We’re getting that sigil together and we’re getting out
alive
together. Keep your blood. I won’t leave you to be butchered by Haran.”

“I might survive.”

“That’s not good enough for me.” Raif ran a hand through his hair, sighing in frustration.

She looked up. “Raif, at the end of tonight, I’m either going to be dead or a slave. But that doesn’t matter anymore. You’ll be alive, Zanari . . . my brother. That’s what I meant about changing our agreement. At this point, all that really matters is getting Bashil out of Ithkar. Honestly, if it hadn’t been for him . . .”

Would she have tried to kill herself? Plenty of jinn on the dark caravan had. Nalia couldn’t imagine giving up like that, but there were nights when it had felt like Bashil was the only thing keeping her heart from the point of her jade dagger.

“Will you do it?” she asked. “After you get the sigil, will you rescue my brother?”

“You don’t need to bribe me to rescue your brother.”

“Then it’s settled. I’ll give you the map, you’ll get the sigil, rescue my brother, and get Calar the hell out of Arjinna.”

Raif’s eyes dimmed. “Nalia, don’t make me choose.”

“There’s no choice. There never was.”

He was used to impossible choices, she knew. Raif would make the right decision, if not for himself, then for his
tavrai
. He laced his fingers with hers and looked down at their hands; his, brown and callused from a life of struggle, hers, delicate and covered with Ghan Aisouri ink.

“Just being here like this,” he said, his voice low, “feels like we’re winning a battle.”

Nalia drew closer, until her lips nearly brushed his as she spoke. “And no matter what happens, that will always be true.”

Outside, the rain turned into a soft patter on the glass ceiling, a delicate drum, like the beginning of an ancient dance. She took his arm and gently pushed up the sleeve of his shirt.

“This might hurt a little,” she said.

Raif brushed his lips against her forehead. “Just do it,” he whispered.

She could hear the defeat in his voice, the frustration that they hadn’t been able to get the bottle in time and that they were losing something they’d just found. Nalia crossed her arms so that one hand pressed the tattoo of the map while the other held onto Raif’s bare forearm. Then she willed her
chiaan
to transfer the magic to Raif’s skin. He hissed as the first lines of the map were carved deep into his arm; Nalia had never forgotten the pain of her tattoos, each one a symbol of her maturation as a Ghan Aisouri. Another secret learned or ability gained or test she’d passed, forever branding her. The muscles on Raif’s forearm twitched as the last line wrapped around his wrist. The whole thing glowed, from purple to green until Nalia let go and the tattoo reverted to the chocolate color of the ink against his almond skin.