Exquisite Captive (39 page)

She didn’t kill them,
he reminded himself.
She’s not like the other Ghan Aisouri.

He winced as an image of Nalia on the battlefield flashed into his head. He hadn’t seen her, but he could imagine Nalia on the moors in her Aisouri leathers, a scimitar in her hand. That proud tilt of her chin, the glint in her eyes.

“Stop it,” he whispered to himself.

It was hard to reconcile her past with their present, but he had to. Because no matter how hard he tried, Raif couldn’t pretend not to care. Things had gone much too far for that.

Raif closed his eyes. He could picture his father, sitting by himself on a sand dune near the sea, watching the glowing ball of the sun slip behind the horizon. It was the day before the second uprising; the day before the Ghan Aisouri would cut Dthar Djan’Urbi down in the middle of a muddy field that stank of cow shit. Perhaps his father had known it was his last sunset and was in need of solace. Maybe he was trying to bargain with the gods. Raif watched as the setting sun bathed his familiar face in a warm, buttery glow. He was about to call out to his father when he noticed the tears streaming down Dthar’s cheeks, falling into the forest of his dark beard. Raif froze, staring. As if sensing his son’s presence, Dthar turned around and beckoned Raif to come closer.

Why are you crying, Papa?

His father was silent for a moment, his eyes on the waves that crashed upon the shore.
Because I love you. And your mother and sister.
He put an arm around Raif’s shoulders and pulled him closer.
Whatever happens tomorrow, I don’t want you to forget that. We fight because we love, not in spite of it. Someday you’ll understand.

Tonight, now,
this
was Raif’s moment on the dunes. He finally understood what his father had been trying to tell him, all those years ago, when he’d made his own choice.

There’s no choice. There never was.

Nalia was his weakness and his courage, his distraction and his focus. The push-pull of her was a crucible that had left him irrevocably changed. This was the moment, the crux that would define him as a leader; he wanted to make a choice worthy of the blood that ran in his veins and the love that pulsed in his heart. Nalia was an extension of everything he was fighting for: freedom, love, equality. She was the embodiment of his young life’s work. What was the point of caring so much for her, of breaking down all those barriers, if they were the only ones who knew it was possible? Arjinna, the revolution, the dead that weighed on their hearts: all of it was bigger than them. It always had been.

Raif sighed and turned his back on the city. He’d made his decision—but could he live with it?

“Zan?” he called, shutting the door behind him. Jordif’s loft was still and quiet.

He walked down the hall, toward Zanari’s bedroom. Her door was open and she was kneeling on the floor in a circle of earth that glowed bright green, her eyes closed and an expression of intense pain on her face.

“Zanari!”

Her eyes flew open and for a moment she just looked at Raif, her expression cloudy, her body convulsing with shivers. He broke through the circle of
chiaan
-infused earth and knelt down next to her.

“Where is he? What’s happening?” he asked, panicked. He’d only seen Zanari’s
voiqhif
affect her like this once: the day she saw Haran torturing one of the
tavrai
.

“Raif—there’s so much darkness in him. Like he doesn’t have a soul. It’s like being at the bottom of a dark well in the middle of the night.”

She wasn’t answering his question.

“Did he get to her? Is Haran with Nalia?”

He should never have left her alone. He jumped up, preparing to evanesce—then he froze, crushed by the choice he had made on the roof.

A sand dune.

His father’s tear-stained face.

“I have no idea where he is. It was dark,” Zanari said. “I heard sirens, but gods, that’s all over the city. Everything else is fuzzy.” Zanari shook her head and tears welled in her eyes. “It’s so frustrating. I feel like I get close to understanding, to seeing more, and then it’s like someone’s covering my eyes. What’s the point of this gift if I can’t use it right? If I were a Shaitan, they would have taught me how to do this, but . . .”

Zanari buried her face in her hands.

Raif rubbed her back. “It’s okay. You’re doing your best.”

“My best is going to get her killed.”

“Don’t say that,” he said quietly.

If Nalia died, whatever bits of him she’d taken with her would die too. He’d have to learn to accept that, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to start now.

Zanari shivered again and Raif pulled her up. “Listen, there’s been a change of plans.”

He quickly filled her in on everything that had happened since Nalia had called him earlier that evening, leaving out those moments in the conservatory when there had been nothing but the feel and smell and taste of her.

When he was finished, Zanari put her arms around him. “I’m sorry, little brother.”

Zanari had always read between the lines, but he wondered how much of what he’d lost—what he was giving up—was showing on his face.

“We should go now,” he said. “Before Earth’s crawling with Ifrit.”

Zanari followed him up to the roof. They carried no luggage—they would manifest whatever they needed for the journey.

She reached out and Raif grabbed her hand. He pressed his fingers to the tattoo on his left arm, just as Nalia had shown him.

“Lefia,”
he whispered. It still pulsed with a dull throb of pain, but the image of the cave appeared, hovering between him and his sister.

Zanari stared at the unassuming landscape of sand and stars where Solomon’s sigil lay hidden, entranced. “I can’t believe it’s real,” she breathed.

A part of him wished it wasn’t.

Raif focused his
chiaan
and was just about to evanesce when he felt a tug on his arm. He looked over just as Zanari crumpled to the ground.

“Zan!”

She was on her knees, pressing her fingertips against her temples. He crouched down, supporting her. Sometimes this happened when she didn’t properly shut off her connection to her targets.

“He’s close, Raif,” she gasped. “Really close.” A shudder swept through Zanari’s body and she looked up, her eyes wide. “I think Haran’s at Nalia’s house.”

There’s no choice. There never was.

Raif pulled away from Zanari, the smoke from his evanescence surging around him like a tornado.

“Raif! Don’t do this,” Zanari cried. “We need the sigil, you know that.”

“Stay here.”

“Raif!” she tried to grab his arm, but he shook her off. He felt the twitch deep in his stomach as his mind and body connected to his destination.

“I’m not letting her die.”

“But the sigil—”

“Screw the sigil.”

He spun into the air, his body compressed into an infinitesimal speck as it hurled itself toward Malek’s mansion.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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THE MANSION FELT CAVERNOUS WITHOUT MALEK OR
any of the servants; Nalia hadn’t realized how much her master’s presence had filled every corner, every niche. Now her earthly prison seemed abandoned and forlorn. Lifeless.

And yet the house was holding its breath, waiting. Watching. Something was wrong: but what?
What?
Nalia’s heart quickened and she spun around. “Leilan, I really think—”

The words died on her lips as a shaft of moonlight struck her friend from the skylight above. Nalia stared at the creature standing in the middle of the room—half monster, where the moonlight skimmed its skin, half Leilan, where the shadows gathered.

Nalia froze.
No,
she thought.
No.

The dream. The too-real memory of that night in the palace. A stench so strong it overpowered the smell of blood and torn flesh. It was here, now. In front of her. Hiding in the body of her friend. But what
was
it?

The creature stepped out of the moonlight so that it once again appeared as Leilan. This was a dark magic Nalia had never seen before. Was it
possessing
Leilan? Or just disguised as her? A malevolent smile tugged on Leilan’s lips, the sudden malice on her friend’s face—what
looked
like her friend’s face—more terrifying than what the moonlight had revealed.

“Haran has been waiting a long time, Ghan Aisouri,” it said. The voice that came out of Leilan’s mouth was rough and deep, as memorable as a brush with death.

Nalia’s body worked faster than her mind. She pulled her leg back and thrust it into Leilan’s chest, using the force of the blow to flip herself back and away. Her friend’s body flew into a column, bright, scarlet blood from the back of her head smearing the marble as she slipped to the ground. Nalia winced—if Haran was possessing Leilan, she didn’t want to do any more damage to her friend’s body than she had to. She was hoping Haran would tire of his borrowed body—she knew he’d want to fight her with his own formidable, hulking form.

Nalia hesitated, watching her enemy. The jinni’s eyes snapped open: the beautiful Marid blue of Leilan’s had been replaced with the evil red of an Ifrit.

“Get out of her,
skag
,” Nalia said, her voice low and deadly.

“Gladly,” he said, in Leilan’s voice. “This jinni fit a bit too tight, anyway.”

Leilan’s body began to shimmer. Her skin and clothes peeled away to reveal the monster underneath. Haran’s impossibly large frame unfolded from its stolen cocoon: first the long arms, then the torso, and finally the legs that straightened like an awakening spider’s. Haran stepped out of the confining web of the stolen body and stood to his full, towering height. He wasn’t possessing Leilan—he’d
consumed
her.

Haran wants to know what royalty tastes like.

Nalia’s strangled cry split the air as she watched Haran’s form settle and the last of Leilan fade away. The Haran she’d seen in the palace and in her dreams had been a disguise—here was the real fiend. He looked exactly like the illustrations of ghouls that she’d studied in the palace.
They’re real.
It wasn’t possible and yet: his skin—a corpse’s ashy gray, his teeth—black as obsidian and sharp as knives. Her best friend’s blood in his veins.

Leilan.

The beautiful, laughing eyes were gone forever. The artist’s hands. The heart that had fought its way out of grief and despair, into a joyful freedom.

Nalia’s eyes, filling.

Leilan.

Her heart, crumbling.

Leilan.

Her hate, stirring.

Leilan.

“I’m going to kill you,” Nalia said, her voice calm. Fire and grief and certainty burned through her. The ghoul smiled and, once again, he was her best friend, wearing the paisley scarf that had brought them together three years ago.

“Haran doesn’t think so.” He took off the scarf and tore it into strips with his claws. “No, it is time for the jinni to join the other Aisouri trash.”

Nalia allowed her glamour to fall away—if she had to die, she would die a Ghan Aisouri. And she would drag him to the godlands with her if she had to.

“Ah.” Haran’s eyes glimmered with delight as they roved over her face, took in the violet eyes and tattoos. “So the Ghan Aisouri doesn’t want to hide anymore, does she?”

“I see no point in it, do you?”

“Haran and the Aisouri are the same. They wear other skins to hide their true selves. They hide because the weaker jinn fear them.”

“I am
nothing
like you,” she growled.

Haran was the story in the dark, the shiver down the spine—a monstrous legend come to life. She was an empress risen from the dead.

“If you’re going to kill me,” Nalia said, “at least have the courage to do it in your own skin.”

She wouldn’t be able to kill him if he looked like her friend. The ghoul was only a few feet away now, the salivating hunger in his eyes so wrong in Leilan’s once shining blue ones. Haran gave her a mock bow and his body shimmered. With each step toward her his appearance changed. He became a Marid with jade shackles and a small birthmark beside her mouth, then a Djan with leather gloves and a birthmark near her ear. He was a Shaitan wearing a sari—her birthmark was a dark patch of skin that bled onto her neck. Then he was a Djan with a blue-checkered scarf, a Shaitan with a large, colorful ring that glinted on her finger. Finally, he wore the face of the jinni that had haunted her dreams ever since the night of the coup. The Haran of her nightmares.

Nalia stared. All that blood shed because she had wanted to live. Why couldn’t she have just let herself die when she’d had the chance? Nalia forced her grief away and channeled the hatred pulsing in her. She took a breath and raised her hands. She had to become the killer she’d been trained to be; it was time to let the fire and darkness in her take over. She could almost feel the Ghan Aisouri standing behind her, silent, ghostly witnesses to the last stand of their sacred line. Past, present, and future lay suspended above her as Nalia took a breath and slapped her hands onto the marble floor at her feet. The earth gave way under the power of her
chiaan
and the ground shuddered, then began shaking with wild, violent spasms. Haran was thrown off his feet as the ground swelled, a wave of broken marble. He failed to gain his balance as the earth bucked and thrashed under Nalia’s power, his claws sliding on the smooth floor. The chandelier in the center of the room shook, a discordant symphony of glass. As deep cracks appeared in the ceiling’s plaster, the fixture fell to the ground below in a cascade of shimmering, fractured light. Haran growled, an animal fury overtaking him as the glass found a home in his decaying skin. Nalia raised her arm to block her face from the thousands of deadly shards that sailed toward her and the earthquake slowed to a gentle rumble as her hands lost contact with the earth. Spasms shook her body as Nalia struggled to hold on to what little
chiaan
was left to her, and she gritted her teeth against the pain of the tiny knives the chandelier’s remains had dug into her arm.