Exquisite Captive

by Heather Demetrios

  Nalia held on to Raif’s shoulders as he lowered her back to the floor, blushing as her body slid against his. She could feel the heat of his hands through the thin fabric of her dress, and she shivered as he pulled her against him. Raif twined his fingers through her own so that their palms kissed. Skin on skin, not one barrier between them.

  She’d forgotten how powerful jinn physical contact could be. It was why Malek literally burned when he touched her, and he was only half jinn. It was why she made excuses when Leilan encouraged her to dance, why she turned down every jinni who asked her on a date. Raif was the first jinni she’d touched since she’d left Arjinna. Unless you counted Malek, which Nalia didn’t. He was a pardjinn, had no idea what chiaan was, how it worked.

  Nalia’s chiaan spiked as it mingled with Raif’s and his magic flowed into her. It had his energy—charged, yes, but she could feel the deep resolve underneath it too. A softness he’d never shown. She heard his sharp intake of breath as her own chiaan entered his bloodstream.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, pulling her hands out of his. “I don’t usually . . . I mean, I’m not used to . . . It’s been awhile.”

  It was too much, this intimacy. For most of her life, Nalia had worn a pair of soft leather gloves, part of the standard Ghan Aisouri uniform. She knew the other castes thought it was because the Aisouri couldn’t bear to touch the lower classes, but that wasn’t true, at least not for Nalia. Touching another jinni was like kissing or telling a secret. The Ghan Aisouri did neither.

  Raif shook his head and grabbed her hands again. “It’s okay. It was just surprising. Your chiaan is—I’ve never felt anything like it.”

  Nalia took a breath, lost in the uncertainty of this new sensation. Was it wrong, to touch?

  Oh, Mother, if you could see me now.

  The sensation of Raif’s skin was so different from Malek’s—where her master’s scorched, Raif’s tingled, like fine grains of sand shifting under a breeze. Nalia wondered what he picked up in her chiaan. It’d been so long since she’d truly been herself; maybe all he could feel was her desperation to be free.

  The tabla’s percussive beats grew slower and the Shaitan singer’s sultry voice rose and fell like soft waves on a midnight shore. Hypnotic. Raif slowly raised their hands toward the heavens, his gaze never once leaving her face. His eyes shone in the soft, dim light.

  “See, our dances aren’t so bad,” he said.

  Somehow, their lips were inches apart—how did that happen? He smelled like a summer afternoon: fresh grass and sun-warmed skin.

  “That’s a matter of perspective,” she said, taking a step back.

  Raif gave her a wicked grin and spun her around, so that her back was against his chest, his fingers on her hips.

  This was nothing like the court dances at the palace. Nalia swallowed, trying to copy the fluid movements of the jinn around her. Raif’s fingers gently pushed against her to indicate which way her hips were supposed to sway. Nalia had no choice but to put her hands over his own. It was a strange sensation, having someone else’s magic seep into her skin.

  “Relax,” he murmured, his lips hot against her ear.

  “I’m keeping an eye out for assassins,” she said. “I’m not in the habit of relaxing when someone wants to kill me.”

  But it was his breath on her neck that made it so hard to concentrate on the unfamiliar dance. Did he know that? She wondered if this was just one of the many weapons Raif had at his disposal.

  “Actually, there’s only one assassin,” Raif said.

  “Really?” Nalia smiled. “Then we have nothing to worry about.”

  “Not exactly,” he said. “It’s Haran.”

  The blood drained from Nalia’s face. “Of course it is,” she whispered.

  Just hearing that name and she was fifteen summers old again, standing against a wall in the palace while Ifrit soldiers pointed guns smuggled from Earth at Nalia and the other Ghan Aisouri. She could still smell the acrid stench of dark magic and gunpowder. The sourness of the blood. She could still see the way Haran smiled when the suffering began, when the bullets broke Aisouri skin.

  “Nalia?”

  She turned her head to look at Raif. “The coup,” she said. “He was the one . . .”

  He nodded. “I thought as much.”

  She expected him to take pleasure in her pain, as he seemed to have done the night before, but there was no malice in his eyes. Raif let go of Nalia’s hips on the next back step and slid in front of her. She mirrored his footwork without thinking, as though she were matching him step for step in an intricate sword fight.

  Raif leaned forward as he guided her into the next steps. “Smile. We’re two young jinn having fun, remember?”

  Nalia rolled her eyes. “How will you explain asking a Shaitan to dance? Doesn’t seem very revolutionary to me.”

  The golden eyes she used to cover her Ghan Aisouri violet ones marked her as an enemy of the revolution. Every jinni in the room would want to know why Raif was associating with her. Though many Shaitan had begun to work with the resistance after the coup, the other castes had not forgiven their former overlords for centuries of slavery. It didn’t help that even in the wake of Ifrit control, many former Shaitan slaveholders still held coveted positions at the palace as scholars, artists, mages, and scribes. They were slaves now, too, but their invaluable skills afforded them comforts most serfs lacked.

  “You heard Jordif,” Raif said. “The man needs a drink, and a jinni in his bed.”

  Nalia moved to hit him, but he pulled her closer, spinning them away from the crush of bodies.

  “Can’t we just go in a dark corner like normal people who need to hide from highly trained evil killers?” she said.

  “What, and let everyone imagine all the delightful things two jinn can do in the dark?”

  “You’re unbelievable.”

  “Thank you.”

  Their argument dissolved in the thick, fragrant hookah smoke that swirled around them. The seductive notes of the flute, an Egyptian ney, conjured images of harems and sand dunes, its whispering trill beckoning the night to come closer. For a while it was just their hips and hands and sweat and the way Raif’s long, dark hair kept falling into his eyes.

  He leaned slightly to the side and placed his hand in the crook of her knee, pulling Nalia’s leg up and against him, so that the side of her knee rested against his hip bone. She gasped at the intimate touch and a corner of his mouth turned up.

  “Are our serf dances too friendly for your kind?” he asked.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the other couples, their bodies locked in lovers’ embraces. Nalia reached her arms around his neck and pressed against him. She arched an eyebrow, her lips nearly brushing his.

  “Actually, I was thinking they were a little tame.”

  Raif’s eyes widened and Nalia experienced the same thrill she’d felt when sparring in the Ghan Aisouri training room. The rush of combat was nectar of the gods. Raif shook his head a little, then released her knee as his hand slid up the side of her leg and returned to her waist. She could feel the stares of the jinn around them, but for once she didn’t care.

  “Your slave trader’s dead,” Raif said, when the couple dancing near them moved out of earshot.

  For a moment, Nalia stopped breathing. She waited for the gloating joy she always imagined she’d feel whenever she pictured the slave trader brought to justice, but his death didn’t feel like a victory. It didn’t feel like anything at all.

  “That’s a good thing, right?” she said, her voice hollow. “Dead jinn can’t talk.”

  “My sources aren’t sure what information he was able to give, but I’m sure the Ifrit got everything he knew before he died. Do you know how the dark caravan operates? You’ll be harder to track down if Malek had a go-between, but if he bought you directly from the trader, they’ll find you in no time.”

  “Malek won’t talk about it and I was too drugged to remember. One minute
I’m in Arjinna, the next there’s . . .” She swallowed as the memory resurfaced.

  Cigarette smoke filling a small, dark room with velvet walls.

  A handful of well-dressed men, lounging on plush chairs.

  The tiny stage illuminated by a single spotlight.

  Nalia looks out, dressed in a thin shift, barefoot.

  Everything’s blurry. She can’t feel her chiaan.

  She can’t feel anything.

  “The bidding starts at ten million, gentlemen.”

  “There’s what?” Raif asked.

  Nalia resurfaced. “Nothing.” Raif frowned, but she pushed on, ignoring his questioning stare.

  “One minute I’m in Arjinna,” she repeated, “and the next I’m waking up in my bedroom at Malek’s house. But . . . it’s a little more complicated than that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Malek’s a pardjinn.”

  Raif stopped and Nalia pitched forward. She would have fallen except for Raif’s arm tightening around her waist. She leaned into his touch, then pulled away, embarrassed.

  “When were you going to tell me this?” he snapped.

  Nalia glared. “Well, there wasn’t time in our first few conversations—what with you trying to throw me around a garage and threaten me in a rose garden.”

  The tabla’s beats grew faster and the singer’s voice wailed. Raif scowled as he walked around her, clapping in time to the music with the other male jinn on the dance floor while Nalia mimicked the females who swayed their hips from side to side, her lips pulled into a frown.

  “This changes everything,” Raif said. “He could be working with Calar or—”

  “There’s no way. If he were, she’d know he has a jinni. Wouldn’t she have asked him about me? If Malek was doing business with Calar, I’d already be on my way to Arjinna in the bottle.”

  But Nalia wasn’t so sure. Not after tonight. Not after the rush of feeling her master had shown.

  Raif guided her through the next series of steps, placing his hand on the small of her back as she ducked underneath his arm.

  “He knows about Draega’s Amulet—obviously his jinni father let that slip. But what else?” he said.

  Nalia shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  Standing in front of her again, Raif drew Nalia close before launching them into a dizzying reel as the music flowed seamlessly into the next dance. Her breath caught when her eyes snagged on his and Raif’s lips tugged up, ever so slightly. She looked away. Raif grabbed her wrist in a handhold and she cried out, her eyes watering with pain. He let go and lifted up Nalia’s sleeve. When he saw the extent of her bruising, he swore.

  “He did this to you?”

  “What do you care?” She pulled her hand out of Raif’s and yanked down her sweater.

  “Nalia—”

  “I’m fine.” Stop being so damn weak, she chided herself. What a pathetic excuse she was for a Ghan Aisouri. The mockery and contempt that was usually in Raif’s eyes had disappeared and in its place was . . . not quite pity, but something soft and yielding. She preferred his hatred.

  Nalia put her hands on his shoulders. “Now what the hell’s the next step?”

  “Um . . .” Raif shook his head, at a loss. He looked past her at a nearby couple.

  “Dip,” he said.

  “What?”

  He bent her backward toward the floor and Nalia relaxed her spine, somehow trusting that he wasn’t going to drop her on her head. Her eyes focused on the intricate lamps in the shape of teardrops and stars that hung in midair, orbs of light encased in purple, green, and red glass. The light threw shards of color all over the dancers.

  When Raif let her back up, he gave her another searching look. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  He looked at her for a long moment. “If you say so,” he said as he took her hands and guided her through the next round of steps.

  “Where is Haran now?” she asked. The thought of the red-eyed monster roaming Earth and looking to gut her because he hadn’t succeeded the first time wasn’t particularly comforting. On the other hand, she’d love a chance at making him hurt.

  Making him hurt a lot.

  “No idea.”

  “I thought your sister was a seer.”

  “She is. But her powers aren’t exactly consistent. Last she saw, he was in a hot place. Dusty. The women wore clothes more similar to jinn. There were monkeys.”

  Nalia bit her lip. There definitely weren’t monkeys in America. That was some consolation.

  Raif’s hair fell into his face again and he shook his head to get it out of his eyes. “That’s her over there—Zanari.” He nodded toward the jinni with braids in her hair and sparkling eyes who had been with Raif when he’d entered the club. As though she sensed them looking at her, she turned around and smiled at Nalia.

  “She seems a lot nicer than you,” Nalia said, with a small smile in Zanari’s direction.

  “That’s what they say.” His voice was fond and she could see how fiercely proud Raif was of his sister. A stab of sadness cut through Nalia—Bashil had once looked at her like that.

  “So what do I owe you, for going to all this trouble for me? Obviously I’m not in a position to negotiate,” she said.

  Raif hesitated, then smoothly pulled her into the nearest darkened corner. Nalia looked over her shoulder; no one was paying attention. With a wave of his hand, Raif manifested a thin, nearly invisible wall between them and the dance floor. Where the light hit it, the barrier shimmered, like oil on water.

  “How did you do that?” she asked. His element was earth, but there wasn’t much of it in the underground club—the walls were cement, dead stone whose energy had been compromised by human interference. Other than a few plants, there wasn’t much for a Djan to draw chiaan from.

  Raif reached into his shirt and pulled out a leather pouch he was wearing around his neck; she’d forgotten that many Djan carried them in order to have access to their element in situations such as these. Inside there was most likely dirt from one of the Djan temples in Arjinna that honored Tirgan, the god of earth.

  “A simple illusion. When people look our way, they’ll feel the need to pay attention to that potted tree over there.” He pointed his finger and manifested a palm tree at the edge of the dance floor, between two tables.

  “Because that’s not remotely suspicious,” she said.

  He shrugged. “We’re among friends. They’ll assume it is what it is: magic. We don’t have long; this much earth will only buy us a few minutes, so feel free to shoulder the burden.”

  She crossed her arms. “You know, we could have done this from the start.”

  He grinned. “Where’s the fun in that?”

  Nalia couldn’t help but feel he was putting her off. “What’s your price, Raif?”

  His face grew suddenly serious. “Solomon’s sigil.”

  Nalia went numb. “Very funny,” she said with a scornful snort. “Why don’t I get you Antharoe’s sword while I’m at it?”

  It was said that Antharoe, the famed Ghan Aisouri who had supposedly hidden Solomon’s sigil, had a sword whose cut no monster could survive. Every spring, young jinn tried to find the sword in the depths of the Infinite Lake, where legend said Antharoe had thrown the weapon just before she died.

  “Don’t mock me, Aisouri,” Raif said. “I didn’t come all the way to Earth to play games.” His voice suddenly had the hard, commanding tone of a general. She could see now why Raif’s youth was no detriment to his leadership. The boy she’d danced with was merely one side of his kaleidoscopic self.

  The ring inscribed with Solomon’s sigil was the most powerful magical object in the known universes. It had been given to Solomon, the ancient king of Israel, by his god so that he could control all jinn. As soon as Solomon put the ring on his finger, all the jinn on Earth were summoned to his court to fight his wars and build his great temple and palaces, serving at his beck and call during
the king’s reign. After his death, it was said that Antharoe slipped the sigil off Solomon’s finger and destroyed it so that the jinn would never again be slaves to the ring and its bearer. But Nalia knew the truth. Antharoe had hidden the ring deep in a cave on Earth, its location a secret passed down through generations of Aisouri. Protecting the sigil was at the very core of their vows to the realm. But how had Raif discovered that it still existed and that the Ghan Aisouri knew where it was? Since the ring’s disappearance millennia ago, the search for it had been consigned to myth, a subject of old jinn songs and human collections of stories. No one, not even the most superstitious jinn and humans, believed it could be found.

  “Raif, Solomon’s sigil was destroyed. You’re talking about tales for children, like Shiraq the Dragon or—”

  “You’re the only person alive in all the realms who knows where it is,” he said, his face darkening. “Take me to it or I will let the Ifrit tear you limb from limb, so help me gods, I will.”

  Nalia pressed her hands against the cold cinderblock wall so that he wouldn’t see them trembling.

  “How can you ask for this?” she hissed. “You, who proclaim to want nothing more than the freedom of all jinn? No good can ever come of wearing that ring.”

  This is why we rule, her mother had said, the day the Ghan Aisouri crushed the second uprising like a small bug. The average jinni cannot fathom all that we do to keep them safe. Without us, there would be nothing but chaos. Anarchy.

  Was it true, then? Had the Ghan Aisouri been Arjinna’s best hope for peace?

  Raif leaned closer, his hands on the wall behind her, boxing Nalia in. It was too close to what Malek had done only hours before and she shoved him off her.

  “Don’t think I won’t kill you,” she said.

  “I have no doubt you’ve thought about it.” He fixed her with a look of pure loathing. “And who are you to talk to me about freedom, salfit? If it weren’t for your Ghan Aisouri, we wouldn’t be here in the first place.” He lowered his voice. “I’d never use the sigil—it’s a threat. All I have to do is show it to the Ifrit and we’ll have them on their knees.”