by Lucy Tempest
My mother then told her of the wish Jumana had made without knowing she had, and how she believed it made her run and not look back. She also told her how she’d fallen in Faerie after the confrontation that to her had been mere days ago.
Nariman froze, tears flowing down her cheeks as my mother finally exhaled. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am for everything that happened to you. But I also suffered from fear and alienation for long years. And I ended up leaving Adelaide alone for years. But there’s no use wondering what could have happened if either of us acted differently. What’s done is done.”
Nariman’s tears stopped, her expression growing cold, her tone lethal. “This is how you make yourself feel better about abandoning me? And because you were stupid enough to flee the Folkshore and met some hardships away from your husband’s mansion on that backward island, that makes us equal in suffering? And you thought I’d kill you and only ended up making your daughter live lonely, dangerous years on the streets. You think that was a better fate than being with me? And now you want me to believe if I surrender, I won’t be buried up to my neck in sand and stoned to death by all of you?”
At a loss for words, my mother’s hands dimmed. She looked at me, bound and useless on the floor, then back to the space between her and Nariman—where the staff lay on the ground.
She made a leap for it, only to get kicked halfway across the room, and a transparent orb, just big enough to hold her crouching body manifested around her, had her floating in midair.
“Mama!” I struggled to approximate the ring to my lips through the chains, to think of a wish practical enough to save us.
“Do you feel that?” Nariman taunted, pacing around the orb. “The helplessness? The suffocation? That’s what I felt every day until Xerxes dropped dead.”
It was horrible to feel her anguish, to see it. She was glowing a glittering red aura, her appearance blurring, distorting, like she was being consumed by her own pain and magic.
“But what else could I expect from the woman who married Azal Berlanti, the man who stood aside and let his horror of a father kill his child? You’re nothing but a self-serving social climber, and if anything I’m glad you exiled yourself over your paranoid misconceptions to a life of struggle and poverty. Consider it penance.”
My mother’s spells fizzled against the orb until she banged her fists against it, screaming soundlessly.
“You better save your breath, you don’t have a lot of air in there.”
“Let her go!” Cyrus strode towards her, but she dodged him in a red blur, vibrating.
Nariman tutted, still making no move to bind or hurt him. “Can’t you see your future mother-in-law and I are having a talk? We need to settle a few things before we decide who names the grandchildren.”
“You’re not my mother.”
Cyrus’s statement, laced with profound pain and disappointment rang all around us.
The room plunged into darkness.
Chapter Forty
For horrifying moments, I thought she’d blinded me.
Then the lights came back on, but my relief was short-lived.
The fireplaces were gone and all light came from opulent crystal chandeliers above, revealing us all arranged in a spacious circle, bound to chairs by her invisible force.
Across from me, still blurry and glowing red, was Nariman, her eyes more snake-like, and on either side of her were Cyrus and Darius.
“I admit I wronged you,” Darius said. “Many times over. But if you stop now, I will grant you clemency, I’ll absolve—”
She swiped the air between them and a cut sliced down Darius’s cheek, spilling bright blood into his greying beard. “I’ve had enough of your promises for ten lifetimes.”
Cyrus shot out of his seat, the only one she hadn’t bound. “Don’t you dare hurt him.”
She rounded on him. “Or what? You’ll attack me like that all did? It’s not enough for you to break my heart?”
“You’d have to love me first for that to happen.”
“Of course I love you!” Her voice fractured, vibrating and echoing at the same time, like three inhuman beings were speaking in unison. “I refused to leave you behind, wanted you to become the best king Cahraman ever saw. I raised you like I would have my own son. You’re the only child I’ll ever have. I only wanted the best for you.”
“Then why did you overthrow my father and take away my birthright?”
“I wanted you to be my heir, to help sway the people in my favor, to support my reign until you were ready to succeed, but you refused. Then you escaped, and tried to overthrow me—twice. I tried my best with you, but you just keep letting me down—like your father did.”
She rose to face him, giving me her back. It was my chance to do something.
I couldn’t move, couldn’t even see my ring. But I had to act on my new theory. I hoped now Esfandiar was inside, I didn’t have to put it near my lips like before, that it was now powerful enough to hear me whisper from afar. I had nothing to lose anyway.
I whispered the wish, and in two breaths I was freed from my chair.
I rose on shaking legs, praying I wouldn’t bump the chair. I bated my breath as I crept behind her, catching Cyrus’s eyes, raised my finger to my lips.
She started to follow his gaze and Cyrus set a hand on her arm. “I’m sorry I said that. I was angry but it doesn’t excuse it. You are the only mother I’ve ever known.”
It wasn’t only a ploy to keep her attention off me. I knew he meant it.
“I’ll marry you!” Darius interrupted. “I don’t know—why I could never keep my promise to you. But I will this time. You’ll be queen legitimately that way.”
“You think that’s what I wanted?”
“Isn’t it?”
Outrage poured out of her, filling the room in hot waves, brightening the chandelier above us until it rained down candlewax.
“I wanted to be your wife! I wanted to reign by your side, to be a true mother to Cyrus and to give you more children!” she cried, twitching again, the glow flickering off her like a dying firefly. “This was what I deserved!”
I chose that moment to strike.
I ripped the staff from her loosened grip and swung it at the floor, shattering its face and ruby eyes.
The effect was instantaneous. The room reverted to its previous ruined state, the binding seats were gone and Nariman’s image stabilized, becoming human again, if still frail and old.
Disbelief had her frozen in a startled pose, mouth half-open as she stared at the glittering pieces strewn on the ground. “No…”
The staff had both fed on and amplified her power. Now she was suddenly without it, she was at a loss.
“It’s over, Lady Rostam.” Cyrus reached gently for her arm. “Please, come with—”
Nariman pushed him off, retreating, panting. “It’s not ending like this…I did not survive years of turmoil…to still end up rotting in a dungeon or beheaded!”
Cyrus followed her, concern wavering his words. “That’s not going to happen to you!”
“No. I’ve had enough of all of you lying to me!”
She reached into the billowy sleeves of her cloak and pulled out the golden lamp.
She had one wish left, and I couldn’t begin to think what she would use it for now.
“Give me the lamp,” Cyrus begged, choking up. “You know I’d never let anyone harm you.”
She shook her head furiously. “Don’t pretend to love me, not now.”
“Why would anyone love you?” I found myself asking, voice steady despite my racing heart. “Why would you think that anyone here owes you a place in their lives or hearts?”
“Ada, stop!” Cyrus hissed.
“No, I want her to tell us. Just why does she think she’s ever been owed more than what everyone gave her? Than what Darius gave her?”
But Nariman’s response to my goading was to hurriedly polish the lamp with her sleeve and mutter the enchantment under her breath, urging blu
e smoke from its spout.
“He used me,” she rasped, trembling with consuming anger. “Just like everyone else, smiling to my face then spitting at my back once I did what they wanted. Only none of them ever claimed to love me. Like he did. He got a rush from being desired by every girl who saw him, but I provided him with far more gratification, because I loved him.”
The throne room reverberated with her anguished shriek. I felt as if it echoed, not just in my ears and bones but also in my soul.
“Twenty-two years of postponed promises,” she wailed. “Telling me he loved me then marrying a princess. Telling me he would make me a princess but had to mourn first, then telling me we’d leave, live in a mansion, govern a city together and give you siblings, but only leaving us, leaving me under his father’s insane cruelty. Then he became king and the promises of becoming his queen were the new bait dangled before me. He used my counsel, passed it off as his own, acted on my innovative ideas of advancement and foreign relations, took credit for your upbringing and when I had enough, asked him for a final decision, he banished me.”
Looking as anguished as she sounded, Cyrus attempted to approach her again. “I didn’t know any of that. But I do now, and I agree you were wronged, in so many ways, suffered abuse I can’t even imagine.” He paused, drew in a shaky breath. “But I do have an explanation for some of my father’s actions, at least. You might not want to hear it, but it was my mo—Jumana’s other wish, words the genie took out of context and turned into a wish that bound my father never to marry again if she died.”
Darius heaved up to his feet, face half-covered in blood, looking as if he’d seen a ghost. “Is that true, Cyrus?”
“Of course, it isn’t true,” Nariman screamed. “He’s trying to find an excuse for your dishonorable exploitation!”
“You raised me better than that, Lady Rostam,” Cyrus said. “I’d never lie about that, no matter the stakes. But even if it wasn’t true, it doesn’t make what you did right.”
“What other choice did I have?” she yelled at him. “I had nowhere else to go. Not even Zhadugar, not even Almaskham, my homeland, would harbor a witch banished by a king. I had wasted my life on him, on you, and did I get any thanks? Did you even notice I was gone?”
Cyrus became so visibly shaken my heart ached for him. “Of course, I did!”
“Then why didn’t you stand up for me? Fight to bring me back? You just blindly believed your father and aunt, who you barely have a connection with, over me, the woman who raised you. I had no other options but to get back Jumana’s lamp and finish my three wishes. I was tired of waiting, tired of serving and being discarded, tired of loving and being spurned.”
I could see guilt crushing him as he reached out an imploring hand to her, and she stumbled away from him, continued to rub the lamp and chant.
My earlier distraction ploy had given me an idea. It was a terrible thing if it worked. But I was down to playing my last card.
I strode towards her, injecting my voice with all the taunting venom I could. “Such ridiculous, nauseating self-pity. You’re an overgrown, entitled brat, aren’t you? You think you deserve their love, and when you didn’t get it, you usurped them and destroyed their kingdom? And now what? You’ll wish for them to suffer what you have for the rest of their lives?”
She stumbled away from me, even when she could easily swat me away, shaking her head. “I only ever wished to be afforded the respect and consideration of a wife and mother.”
“Me, me, me!” I sneered. “What about all of us? We all suffered, all had misfortunes. You don’t see us all going on a rampage and forcing people to pay for our pain and losses, do you?” She shook her head again, and I roared at her. “Look at these two men. One you claimed to have loved, and the other you say you still do. See what you’ve done to them?”
She looked, at the two men she’d loved most of her life, and it was like she was realizing their state for the first time. They both looked wrecked.
Darius’s face was crumpled with confusion and regret, his great body diminished and defeated, his vigor extinguished. While Cyrus looked like something inside him had shattered, his eyes filling, his trembling hand still extended to her.
“Is this what you want?” I yelled at the top of my lungs. “For them to be broken? For them to hate you? Is this what you wish for?”
“No!” she screamed. “I only ever wished for them to love me!”
As the words left her mouth, she stiffened, inhaling a shocked gasp as she realized what she’d just done.
She’d mindlessly wasted her third wish, just like Jumana had. But it was far worse.
She’d wasted it on a forbidden wish.
Nariman spun around, arms out as if to ward off the fiery mass that was the genie as it blasted out of the lamp. It grew until it reached the towering ceiling before it bent over her as if it was going to engulf her.
As we all froze in horror, it only tapped her arm and sneered in its heart-rending voice, “Wish denied.”
With a devastated screech, Nariman burst into flames.
Chapter Forty-One
With a bellow of horror, Cyrus tore off his cloak and hurtled to put her out.
Ayman barreled to tear off a curtain then back to help him. Darius shouted her name as he staggered to join in their frantic efforts, looking as if he was about to have a heart attack.
My mother, freed from the orb, rushed to her former friend’s side, trying to counteract the genie’s magic with her own. Everyone else did one thing or another to help.
But nothing worked. For it wasn’t fire that had engulfed Nariman.
It was like a swarm of blue, flaming evil, as if the genie had infected her with its vengeful magic, and it appeared to be consuming her from the inside out. It was hollowing out her flesh to show the writhing tongues within it like glass. She screamed and flailed, but no amount of frenzied begging or spellcasting spared her from her rapid devolution. The genie only hovered above us in gleeful, faceless malevolence.
I was stuck watching in horror, one thought in my mind.
I’d done that.
I’d known she’d pay some terrible price if I tricked her into making a forbidden wish.
I’d thought she deserved punishment for kidnapping me, for exiling Bonnie, for everything else she’d done to everyone since she’d taken over Cahraman.
But–but I’d thought it would be something like losing her magic—or being banished again, or cursed—I hadn’t realized, hadn’t imagined…
This was unspeakable. No one should suffer like this. She shouldn’t.
It had been the genie that had made sure she’d be abandoned, that her love for others would be exploited and unrequited for decades. It had warped her life and that of everyone around her. It had systematically driven her to madness and now fueled the flames of her pent-up bitterness and misery. Soon they would consume her and nothing of her would be left.
Looking like he was losing his mind, Cyrus threw down his cloak and dove for the lamp, roaring, “Nariman, relinquish the genie! Do it now!”
She screamed something I couldn’t understand as she hit the floor, writhing in excruciating pain that made my skin burn and my guts strangle each other in sympathy.
But what terrified me even more was what I knew he’d do.
I ran to him, panting, “Cyrus, you’ve seen what making wishes of the genie leads to. Please…”
Cyrus shook, eyes rabid. “I have to save her. She doesn’t deserve this.”
I’d just thought that, believed it. But if he made a vague or reactionary wish, it could send us all to a worse hell.
I dragged his head down with all my strength. “Then please calm down and listen.”
He sagged in my hold, let me—the one with more experience making wishes—suggest how he phrased his wish. His focus kept straying to the nightmarish sight of the expiring Nariman, and I kept dragging him back to me, so we’d vet the exact wording out together.
He
finally inhaled raggedly, nodded, separated from me, rubbing the lamp and chanting.
The genie turned to him, illuminating his noble face by its ever-shifting flames as it said, “Master, one who has set me free, wishes I will grant thee but no more than three.”
Cyrus’s voice was ragged steel as he said, “Genie, for my first wish, I wish to undo Nariman Rostam’s last two wishes and all their impact.”
I gnawed at my lips, terrified it wouldn’t grant him a wish that would undo its previous work.
But the genie only bowed its head to him subserviently. “Wish granted.”
The wish took effect at once. First, the flames withdrew from Nariman’s body, letting her convulsing body sag limply on the floor. Then a wave of blinding bluish light swept her, reverting her to her former beauty and youth, leaving her unmarked and unconscious.
Cyrus and Darius rushed to kneel beside her as ribbons of shimmering blue light whipped around us. They undid the changes to the throne room, throwing open all windows to let the afternoon light come pouring in.
I beat the others out to the balcony, trembling inside and out in dread that nothing could fix the impact of Nariman’s reign.
But like a magician lifting his bedazzled sheet to display his trick, the genie’s magic swept Sunstone in a monochrome rainbow, all shades of glittering blue, and before our eyes, Cahraman was transformed.
All the ugliness and strife and decay were being erased. Every rundown building and chaotic slum I’d lived and thieved through was being returned to its former golden glory. Soon, Cahraman was as I’d first seen it all those months ago.
The damage I’d helped create had been undone and it was like a crushing weight had been lifted off my shoulders, making me feel I was about to lift off my feet and fly away.
I turned, expecting to find Cyrus, ready to share the elation and relief of victory, but only found Cherine, clinging to Ayman, bouncing up and down excitedly.
I rushed back inside, found Cyrus and his father still by Nariman.
Cyrus cradled Nariman in his lap, the lamp with its dormant again genie beside him. Darius had a hand on Cyrus’s shoulder and the other grasping Nariman’s.