by S. K. Sayari
“How do I kill you?” she murmured to the portrait, and she could have sworn the eyes flickered in response.
Mira stared at the feast spread before her, the long dining table hidden beneath dozens of food-laden trays. He hadn’t been kidding when he’d said he would have dinner. This looked much more appetizing than the snacks she’d found in her raid of the kitchen last night.
She stiffened as the jinn entered, the steak knife she’d tucked into her—his—pants suddenly feeling like rubber as she noted the way those infernal shadows twisted and curled over his lean form, seeping out of his dark blue suit like smoke.
“Hello,” he greeted her, taking a seat at the opposite end of the table. “Glad you decided to join me.”
“Did I have a choice?”
He didn’t answer, his eyes dropping to the shirt she’d stolen from his room that morning. A plain white one, ridiculously soft, and rolled up at the sleeves to accommodate her shorter arms.
“What am I to call you?” she asked. “If I am to be here for a while.”
“Theo. Please.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “Theo? Really?”
“My true name is Theodorizain. I assumed Theo would be more palatable for your…human tongue.”
She flinched at the reminder that he was not human, that something otherworldly lived in his veins. Then she shrugged. “Call me Mira.”
Theo smirked. “Does this mean you no longer wish to kill me, Mira?”
“I haven’t decided yet,” she responded, eyeing a platter of roasted duck.
“Shall we eat while you figure it out?”
Drool practically dripped down Mira’s chin, but she hesitated.
“It’s not poisoned,” he assured her, as if reading her fears. He cut a bite off a chunk of steaming venison, scraping his teeth across the fork as he exaggerated the bite.
The gesture did little to ease Mira’s fears, but she grabbed the plate closest to her anyway. If he wanted her dead, he’d had plenty of opportunity before now. She still wasn’t sure why he hadn’t killed her last night—in retribution for stabbing him, if nothing else.
She shuddered, disguising the tremor by picking up her fork. There was something inherently terrifying about trying to kill something that wouldn’t die.
“Tell me about my mother,” she said around a mouthful of duck. The juice burst in her mouth in an explosion of flavor and she nearly swooned, temporarily forgetting the nightmare she’d landed in.
“Enchantress. Sorceress. Slayer of babies and destroyer of an entire nation.”
Mira paused in her chewing to glare at him. “Some might say the same about you.”
To her surprise, he looked chagrined. “I have paid for my sins,” he said quietly. “Many times over.”
A haunted look passed through his eyes, and Mira hoped she never had to face the thing that could scar an immortal being. Well, almost immortal. There was still that business about his heart. “My mother doesn’t think so.”
“I do wish you would stop calling her that.”
“My parents were killed when I was a baby. Isandra raised me. What else should I call her?”
“Murderer, perhaps? If your parents were killed, she is sure to have done it.” He idly stabbed a piece of meat with a fork, rose-colored liquid oozing onto the plate.
“Why would she do that?”
“Isandra kills without shame or regret. Ending the lives of two humans in order to obtain a baby would mean nothing to her.”
Mira forced herself to swallow, the perfectly cooked meat suddenly tasting like ash on her tongue. As much as she wanted to brush his words off as slanderous, the lies of a beast, she had seen Mother’s darkness for herself, the callous way she could talk of ending someone’s life. The many ways she had taught Mira to do the same.
“And, what?” she demanded, thumping her fork against delicate china. “She asked you to destroy her family, her entire race? Earth doesn’t even believe in the Fae anymore. They’ve been debased as fantasy, a story to tell children!”
“Yes.” Theo’s eyes turned impossibly dark, laced with the same shadows tattooed across his neck. “It was her second wish.”
Mira shook her head, not wanting to believe. Theo did—that much she could see in a glance. Though he sat calmly in his chair on the other side of the table, silky black tendrils slipped over his fork, and his eyes glittered with an otherworldly malice.
“Why?” she breathed, her voice barely audible in the aching silence of the dining room.
Theo placed his fork on the plate and leaned back in his chair, a soft breath escaping in a sigh. “She wanted to be the only one.”
“The only what?”
“The only one with gifts. Being Fae was not enough for her. She used her first wish to demand magic. But pure magic is…unreliable, at best. Malevolent, at worst. I only gave her a shadow, but it…changed her. Evil loves a good host. It fed on her ambitions, her desires. Corrupted her.”
Mira thought of Isandra’s study in their mansion on Earth. Floor-to-ceiling shelves of ancient books and tomes. Scrolls with ink no longer legible. Dozens of jars and vials whose contents Mira did not want to think about. Her adopted mother had been obsessed with magic, trying every possible combination of spells and potions to get it back. Mira had entered the room once by accident. Isandra had made sure she would never do it again.
“She became convinced the Fae were a threat,” Theo continued. “For her second wish, she ordered them destroyed. I tried to talk her out of it, tried to resist, but—”
He broke off, jaw clenched so tightly a tic appeared in his temples. Mira’s heart jolted in response to his pain, and she tried to convince herself he was lying. How many times had she seen her mother fake tears, manipulating people with her emotions?
“And her third wish?”
At this Theo almost smiled, though his black eyes still reflected bitter regret. “That is where she made her mistake,” he said, voice hissing in triumph. “She wished to be as powerful as a jinn. But she did not say which one. I split my own power in half, then secluded myself here before it could reach her.”
Mira shook her head in confusion. “Before what could reach her?”
He held his hand up, showing off the black tendrils that whispered over his skin. “Magic.”
Mira watched the shadows in fascination rather than fear, seeing them in a new light. The other half of his magic. Sentient power looking for its host.
Looking for Isandra.
“And the wish overrode her previous magic,” Theo said almost proudly. “Even her natural Fae powers.”
“Leaving her with nothing,” Mira finished, the pieces snapping into place with a bone-jarring thud.
“As long as I stay here, in the Other-Realm, she cannot access magic there on Earth.”
“Why does she not just come here herself?” Mira asked, thinking of all the training, all the plans, all she had endured to come in her mother’s place. “If you’re in the same realm, couldn’t she get it that way?”
“Yes, but at a price. This is the Other-Realm. The space between. The place from which jinn are summoned. On Earth, the magic is merely a part of her wish. Here, she would become a true jinn, linked to a mirror, bound to the wishes of others. She will not come here, even for magic.”
Mira nodded, long and slow. “That’s why she wants your heart. She thinks if she can destroy you, she will become a full jinn.”
He nodded.
“Is she right?”
Their eyes locked across the table, and Mira forced herself not to blink.
“If I am destroyed, the curse will be broken,” Theo said quietly.
“And the only way to kill a jinn is to destroy its heart?”
He shrugged, mouth quirking up a little at the edges. “So they say. But it will not help Isandra. As I told you before, I have no heart. And if I knew how to kill myself, I would have already done it.”
Mira nodded idly, scraping her fork across he
r plate, drawing designs in the rich gravy that seeped off her uneaten duck. “I think,” she said slowly, “that I believe you.”
The air hung heavy with unspoken promises, untethered hope. Mira wasn’t sure which was hers and which was his.
“So what will you do?” Theo asked. Though he looked calm, she noticed the shadows had stopped moving, hovering above his skin in quiet anticipation.
Mira pushed her chair back, the stillness broken as he rose with her.
“That,” she announced, “is something I will need to think about.”
To Theo’s best guess, unreliable as that was, a week passed before Mira made her decision. He was sitting in his study, nothing moving but the fire in the hearth and the shadows against his skin, when she finally approached him.
“Theo.”
He turned at her voice, pretending he didn’t know she was there, that he hadn’t sensed her presence long before she’d reached his study. “Mira.”
She entered the room slowly, with a mixture of caution and respect. He tried to ignore the way his borrowed shirt flattered her slender frame, the collar hanging loosely over one shoulder, the black pants somehow a perfect fit. She must have ripped up a pair of his own, found something sharp to sew them back together with. She seemed never to lack a sharp object.
“I’ve decided what to do.”
She stopped in front of him, the fire turning her pale skin amber, and he tried to ignore the buzz in his ears, the way the shadows quickened around him. “It does not involve death, I hope.”
She took a breath, her eyes never leaving his, the shadows from the fireplace flickering dangerously across her face.
“It does,” she said, her voice brushing against his skin like a caress. “You’re going to help me kill my mother.”
Mira held her breath, the heat from the fire making her arms prickle with sweat.
“Interesting,” Theo said, his grey eyes reflecting nothing. “And how do you propose we do that?”
“I take it she cannot be killed with a knife to the chest?” Mira asked the question lightly, but all her hopes hung on his answer. If he could tell her how to kill Isandra, maybe she could do the same to him instead.
“The same restrictions apply to her as they do to me,” Theo answered vaguely.
Mira crossed her arms, irritated. “Which means she can only die if her heart is destroyed, but she doesn’t have a heart either?”
A soft grin played on Theo’s lips. “Something like that.”
“Well, she wants to kill you to get both halves of your magic. Does that mean if I kill her, you’ll get both?”
He shook his head, eyes tight. “We are bound irrevocably now. If one of us dies, so does the other.”
The words hung in the air, then crashed around Mira like broken glass, destroying days, months, years of planning. “Does Mother know about this?” she whispered.
“Would she have sent you to kill me if she did?”
Mira opened her mouth to deny it, then shook her head, trying to unscramble the pieces of what he’d said. The idea was so absurd she wanted to laugh. Three times—she had stabbed him three times. What if one of them had worked? Would Isandra have died as well?
And would that have been such a bad thing?
Mira dismissed the thought for now, tucking it in that dark place of her soul she tried not to think about, full of dangerous whispers and promises not yet broken.
“Can’t you just undo it?” she asked.
“Once a jinn grants a wish, it cannot be undone.”
Sorrow laced his words, and Mira thought of the Fae, an entire race of people destroyed, a wish he could not undo. As much as she tried to ignore the idea that Isandra had been the one to order it, Mira couldn’t deny that Theo’s confession at dinner last week had left a bad taste in her mouth. Still, she had a job to do.
“Is there a way?” she asked. “To separate the magic again? To kill one but not the other?”
Theo shrugged, the movement as casual as if she’d asked what he wanted for supper. “You’re welcome to look. The library here is quite extensive.”
“Now?”
He shrugged, waving an arm in invitation, and something sparked in Mira’s chest as she followed him down the hallway. Excitement? A silly emotion for an assassin to have, and yet when he opened the doors to reveal dozens of bookshelves, her chest swelled in delight. Lights appeared instantly, sconces bursting to life, a large fireplace spontaneously erupting in a glow of ember and flames. The shelves seemed to go on forever, row after row of gleaming mahogany, each one framed with ornate columns reaching for an impossibly high ceiling. Elegant spiral staircases bore entry to a second and even third story, where open mezzanines revealed even more bookcases.
“Do you like it?” he asked.
“It’s incredible,” she breathed. She had already resigned herself to a bleak stay in a manor full of dark rooms and shadowy hallways, but this…this made a year in the Other-Realm almost worth it.
“I’m glad,” he said, and for a moment she forgot to hate him, forgot the reason she had come to this realm in the first place. Then she saw the shadows inking over his skin, remembered the two nights she’d spent in the dungeon, and snapped herself back to reality.
“Well,” she said, shoving her excitement into the black box with everything else. “I guess we should get started.”
Theo watched her.
For months Mira scoured his boundless library, poring through dozens of books a day. She drank the words, feasting on knowledge, her papercuts lined with ink.
Some days she curled up in a chair with a stack of dusty tomes beside her. Other days she scribbled frantically on the smooth wooden tables, papers collecting in messy heaps around her. Still other times she read right from the shelves, lost in a book for hours while she hung precariously on a tall ladder, or sat on the floor with her back to a shelf, oblivious to the harsh imprints it left on her skin.
He watched her hide weapons all over the manor like a squirrel burying nuts, not trusting that he wouldn’t take her daggers away again. Occasionally she still stabbed him with some of them, but usually only when she was bored. Then she would watch in morbid fascination as the shadows oozed out of his skin to heal the wounds every time.
He watched her cautiously try on the numerous dresses he conjured for her—green velvet, amber taffeta, shimmering azure silk—easing into them like a caterpillar trying on its wings for the first time. Eventually she stopped waiting for him to offer and met him in his bedroom first thing every morning, demanding his newest creation. Then she would watch wide-eyed as his shadows slithered over skirts and bodices, leaving delicate lace and twinkling jewels in their wake.
He watched her trace ancient pictures of Fae with a trembling finger while tears dripped down her face and collected in the scoop of her collarbone. Then she would stare into a mirror with the same look of desperate hatred that always seemed to linger under the surface of her skin.
He watched her dust the shelves when she thought he wasn’t looking, or casually straighten a three-hundred-year-old vase, humming a quiet little ditty from Earth while a dainty foot tapped the carpet.
He watched her hair lengthen, exposing roots of a rich auburn color, so different than the harshness of her false white. She twirled it through her fingers sometimes when she was deep in thought, leaving the ends gently curled.
He watched her hunt for answers, and he watched her run away from them, and he couldn’t say for certain which one scared him more.
Mira slammed the book closed. Nothing. Months of research, a million books, and not a single clue how to break the wish.
“Are you okay?”
She jumped as Theo appeared right beside her, silent as always. She’d never been able to figure out if he appeared at will, or if he was merely part shadow himself.
“Yes,” she answered, the word clipped. “Just frustrated.”
Frustrated that she couldn’t find anything. Frustrated that h
er time was almost up. Frustrated that she was no longer sure whom she wanted to kill, and whom she wanted to save. The choice was easy—kill the beast. But which one of them was the monster? Theo, or Isandra?
The longer she looked into Theo’s shadow-kissed eyes, the more she saw human emotions: pain, regret, concern, guilt…love. And the longer she resided in this haunted manor, the more something loosened inside her, allowing her to breathe freely for the first time in her life. Theo controlled the darkness, kept it away from her, rather than constantly shoving his own agenda in her face like Isandra had done, forcing her to become someone else. Here, she was only Mira, and that was enough.
“Come with me.” Theo extended a hand and Mira took it with a smile, used to the cool feel of the shadows brushing against her skin and the comforting warmth of his palm underneath.
“Where are we going?”
“I want to show you something.”
He led her to the middle of a random hallway and opened a wide glass door—a door she was positive had not been there a moment before. She stepped through the entrance, overcome with the same sense of awe at seeing his library for the first time, except that instead of books, now she found herself surrounded by paintings. Hundreds of them, filling up every inch of the room. Oil paintings rendered on sturdy canvas; delicate watercolors encased behind glass; half-finished pieces draped over easels. He had even painted the ceilings.
“Did you do all this?” She turned and found Theo watching her from the doorway with a soft smile.
“Yes.”
“This must have taken ages,” she breathed, spinning in a circle to take it all in.
He shrugged, a light smirk playing at his lips. “Couple of centuries.”
“What is it all?” She ran a hand lightly over a scene of a rose garden and half-expected to prick her finger on one of the thorns.
“These are my memories,” he said quietly.
Mira examined the paintings with a fresh perspective—the dark-haired woman selling colorful woven rugs; a sunset sinking over the ocean; a child eating a pastry, icing dripping down his chin; the tips of the pyramids gleaming in a moonlit desert. Peaceful moments frozen in time. Moments of joy and wonder and beauty that Mira hadn’t realized the human world could contain. Something twisted in her heart, an emotion Isandra had not taught her.