Exquisite Captive

by Heather Demetrios

  He roughly brushes her hair aside and stares at the birthmark on the right side of her face, near her temple. Touches it. “Haran remembers you now.”

  He holds up his hand where Nalia bit him when he captured her in the throne room. Her teeth marks make a half-moon in the space between his thumb and wrist.

  Nalia spits in his face and he backhands her so hard she is certain her skull will burst open. Pain radiates from her stomach wounds as he pulls her body off the pile of corpses. Haran’s dirty nails dig into her arms, the skin cracking and bleeding.

  “It is time for the salfit to die,” he growls.

  The body next to her tumbles to the floor and she sees the corpse’s face. The sound that comes out of Nalia’s mouth is a howl, a shriek of pure pain, more animal than jinn.

  Her mother’s lifeless violet eyes stare at nothing. A perfectly round bullet hole pierces the center of her forehead, like a crude jewel.

  Haran smiles and runs a finger along the line of blood that has dripped down her mother’s face. He licks it, moaning with pleasure.

  “Delicious,” he says. “Come closer,” he whispers. “Haran wants to know what an empress tastes like.”

  The ends of Haran’s teeth drip with her mother’s blood and he licks his lips as he shoves Nalia to the floor, straddling her. She thrashes in his arms, kicking and scratching, but he is too strong. She can’t get away—

  “Nalia! Hayati, wake up.”

  “Let go of me!” she screamed. She pushed at the hands that held her down. “Hala shalinta! Hala shalinta!”

  Gods forgive me. Gods forgive me.

  She shouted the words, praying the gods would give her mercy when she died for all the deaths that were her fault and the thousand other transgressions she had committed.

  Nalia squeezed her eyes shut against Haran, waiting for him to kill her, but instead, she heard a familiar voice, as though it were at the end of a tunnel, coming closer:

  “Hayati!”

  She awoke with a start, kicking and screaming against the weight that held her against the bed. Her room was pitch black, but she felt her fists connect with flesh. A muffled curse and the body was off her. Her fingers immediately reached for the jade dagger under her pillow. One cut from the enchanted blade and her attacker would be paralyzed. It was in her hand and at Malek’s throat before she recognized him. She looked at her master, eyes wide, her blade a breath from his neck.

  “Nalia,” he said, his voice calm, soothing. “Give me the dagger.”

  At the sound of his command, she released her hold on the hilt. Malek took it from her fingers and placed it on the bedside table, his eyes never leaving hers. There was a soft click, and a tiny ball of warm light spread across her pillow from the antique lamp beside her bed. He leaned over her, shirtless, his hair tousled, anxious eyes roving over her face. She wondered how long she’d been screaming before he’d heard her at the other end of the hall.

  “It’s okay,” Malek said, his voice gentle. “It was just a dream.”

  But that was the problem—it wasn’t a dream. Every bullet slicing through her flesh, every scream that echoed off the lapis lazuli walls of the palace, the smell of sweat and vomit and shit; it had all been real three years ago. And the way Haran had spoken to her . . . how had he gotten into her dream? Haran had seen her—the real Haran, who was searching all of Earth for her—and now he knew exactly what she looked like. She wasn’t a nameless, faceless Ghan Aisouri anymore. He knew she was in America—somehow the dream had transmitted her location. He’d recognize her if he saw her on the street.

  “It wasn’t a dream, Malek. It was a memory . . . a . . . a message.”

  It is time for the salfit to die, he’d said.

  It had been time then, too, but the Ifrit had left the bodies unguarded. Nalia had waited for several agonizing moments before crawling toward a secret passageway. Just before she reached the door that would have gotten her out of the palace, one of the serfs who cleaned the kitchens found her. She’d thought he was her savior, this slave trader in disguise. Nalia had let him take her, swallowed the drugs he’d offered her for the pain. Believed he would patch her up so that she could avenge the death of her family. But then he’d put her in the bottle and she’d been too drugged to fight, unable to feel her chiaan, her wounds still raw. It was a kind of death, her survival.

  Malek shook his head. “A dream. Just a dream, hayati.”

  Nalia couldn’t get Haran’s face out of her mind: the bloodred eyes, the hulking mass of him. The teeth, like miniature blades. A whimper escaped from her lips and she clamped her hands over her mouth, as if she could keep her fear bottled up inside her.

  Malek frowned and made to get up. “I’ll fetch you some water.”

  “No!” She hadn’t meant to shout, but the fear was pulsing in her, so strong she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. She sat up, clutching the blankets in her fists. The bisahm on the house would prevent Haran from evanescing into her room, but dreams were an entirely different landscape, another dimension outside the confines of Malek’s mansion, outside the boundaries of Earth.

  “Don’t leave,” she whispered.

  Nalia wasn’t a Ghan Aisouri anymore—she was a girl, frightened and alone, pursued by a vicious monster. Haran had killed all the Ghan Aisouri in less time than it took to sharpen a sword. She didn’t stand a chance against him.

  Malek sat on the edge of the bed, uncertain. The silence was trapped and anxious. Their argument from earlier in the night still hung in the air, suspended over them.

  “I’m sorry you had to see that tonight,” Malek finally said. “It was a living nightmare, I know.”

  Nalia was confused, but then she realized he meant the Getty. Malek thought she had dreamed of the client’s drowning.

  His lips snaked up. “Well, I suppose you didn’t see much, him being invisible and all.”

  “I’ve experienced worse, believe me.”

  “I hope you’ll tell me about it sometime,” he said quietly.

  “You always want to know my secrets,” she said. “But you never tell me yours.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  Nalia looked down, her gaze lingering on the bottle, dark gold and jewels against a backdrop of almond skin. Beside its chain was a twist of knots and symbols carved onto his chest: Draega’s Amulet. A blessing and a curse—total protection for the price of the thing the bearer loved most. It was why Nalia had never gotten it; Bashil’s life was more precious than all the protection in the worlds.

  She reached out and traced the amulet’s knots, clean lines of scars on his chest that glowed warm under her fingertips. Malek watched her, his body completely still.

  “What did you give up for it?” she asked softly.

  He shook his head, his eyes shuttered and dark. “All you need to know, hayati, is that when I got this, I was willing to give up the thing I loved most in the world.” He ran the back of his finger across her cheek. “I couldn’t do that again.”

  Before she could puzzle out what that meant, he stood. “I’ll get you some water.” He left the room, closing the door softly behind him.

  Her eyes scanned the corners, the curtainless window. She knew Haran couldn’t possibly be inside the room and yet it felt like he was. The shadows felt darker than they had before.

  Nalia’s body hummed with pain, the echo of those moments on the brink of death. She ran her hands over her stomach, half expecting to feel blood from the gunshot wounds and the poisonous fire that had filled her dream. Her fingers slid over the skin on her arms, remembering the burns from the Ifrit fire, the bullets. Old wounds long healed. But she gasped a little as she touched the new stinging cuts near her shoulders—fingernail marks from Haran.

  She didn’t realize Malek had returned until she heard him draw in a sharp breath as she brought her arm closer to the light. There was no mistaking the deep indentations in her skin where Haran had held her in the dream. The blood was fresh.

 
; “Did the client do that?” Malek asked.

  Nalia shook her head. “My dream . . .”

  Deep purple bruises were already blooming on her skin to match the ones that covered her body.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It must be a kind of dark magic,” she said, “in which a dreamer can find you and make contact. I didn’t even know this was possible.”

  “Who the hell’s trying to contact you this way?”

  “Someone from my past. He—”

  She opened her mouth, tried to say the words, but they wouldn’t come. All that came out was a strangled choke. Malek stared for a moment, then he gathered Nalia into his arms, careful not to let the bottle touch her skin lest she evanesce into it. He held her as she silently sobbed, her cheek against his bare chest. It was one of the first things she’d learned as a Ghan Aisouri: how to cry without shedding a tear.

  Nalia hated herself for being weak, for needing his comfort, but Haran would find her any day now, to finish the job he’d started that night in the palace.

  And facing that alone was too much.

  Malek’s voice was low and soothing. “You’re safe. I’m not going to let anyone hurt you, I promise.”

  Nalia clung to him. As her usual defenses against her master crumbled, Nalia’s chiaan opened itself up to Malek’s, like Arjinna’s calia nocturne flowers that only blossomed at night, their petals glimmering like fireflies. Heat spread through her, as though invisible flames were flowing between them. It wasn’t the joyful warmth of Raif’s chiaan—the fire in Malek wanted to consume her, a dangerous energy he couldn’t control. But rather than run from it, Nalia let it wash over her. She felt his desire for her, every bit of it, mixed in with a slew of other emotions—fear, regret, joy—and over it all lay a fierce longing she couldn’t name.

  Malek’s arms tightened around her. She hesitated for a heartbeat, then reached her hands up and ran them through his thick black hair—in all the human movies and novels, romantic couples seemed to like doing that. She leaned back and looked at him. Without hair gel and expensive suits, he seemed younger, somehow. Less intimidating.

  “What?” he whispered, kissing the corner of her mouth that had unconsciously turned up. He’d done it without thinking and his eyes shifted to hers, suddenly bashful. She ran her fingers over his lips and he smiled.

  Is this what it feels like, to have someone love you? She wished she had something to compare his dangerous affection to. She wished she didn’t care.

  “I’ve just never seen you like this,” she said.

  “Like what?”

  “Messy.” Human. Sweet. Vulnerable.

  “Well, I don’t sleep in my suits, hayati.” Malek took her hand and held it between his own. “Nalia . . .” He stopped, his voice tense.

  “Yes?”

  “I want to start over. I’ve been a brute, and every time I attempt to reform myself it seems I upset you all the more.” He brought his forehead close to hers and drew a finger along the neckline of her nightgown. “I want to make you happy. Will you let me try?”

  It had only been a day since he’d lost control in the theater. She shouldn’t feel guilty about pretending to care, or for thinking about how to scheme that bottle into her hands while he was trying so hard to win her heart.

  But she did.

  Get on with it.

  “Yes,” she said softly.

  Nalia rolled onto her back, careful to avoid the bottle, and pulled him close, her mouth on his before she could change her mind. He tasted like dusk and candlelight. All the fear and pain and anger that was threatening to overwhelm Nalia gave way to the need inside her, like kissing him had suddenly changed not just the rules of the game, but the game itself. She was alive right here, right now—somehow she’d survived Haran, and wasn’t that miraculous?

  Malek’s body pressed against her as his lips traveled down her neck. She could feel the bottle between her breasts, digging into her through the gown. And she was herself once more, back in the skin of a vengeful warrior instead of whatever luminescent, light-as-air girl she’d been just seconds before.

  Almost as if he sensed the bottle’s power to tear Nalia away from him, Malek sat up. As he shifted his weight, the bottle swayed before Nalia’s eyes, like a hypnotist’s pendant. Just the slightest contact with her skin, and she’d be inside it. She shrank away from the tiny prison just as Malek pulled the chain over his neck. She heard a thud as it hit the ground.

  Oh gods. Nalia gripped the sheets in her fists, lest she scream with relief. This was really going to happen. Her mind raced with thoughts of Bashil, home, freedom—all of it suddenly so close she could lick it.

  “Come here,” he whispered, pulling Nalia to him.

  Malek’s lips found hers again and his kiss became more insistent. Panic welled within her at the thought of what was about to happen, but she ignored it and wrapped her legs around his waist, her eye straying to the bottle on the floor. She could just see its golden top, glinting in a patch of moonlight. She jumped as Malek’s hand slid over her breasts and he whispered soothing words against her lips. Taming words. She ran her hands down his back, felt his breath against her ear, and then his fingers were underneath her nightgown—and she wanted, no she didn’t want, but she had to, didn’t she, she had to, the bottle, the bottle—but as his fingers neared the elastic band of her underwear, he froze.

  “What’s wrong?” she whispered. Her chiaan was swirling inside her, so quickly she couldn’t think. There was too much fire between them. Could he sense her terror, the argument her body and mind were having?

  Malek looked down at her, uncertain. “Nothing,” he whispered, his voice ragged. “Nothing’s wrong. It’s . . . the opposite, actually.”

  He pushed himself up, resting his hands on her thighs. This wasn’t like the movies—it was supposed to keep going until their clothes were on the floor and she let him take one of the last things she called her own. Then they would fall asleep—only she wouldn’t. She’d stay awake and get the bottle and be free and rescue her brother and pretend this night had never happened.

  But his breathing had slowed and he was looking at her as though they had all the time in the worlds.

  Nalia grabbed his hands and Malek twined his fingers through hers. He seemed calm, but she could feel his blood rushing through him, fast and insistent. She gave him what she hoped was a sultry smile and tugged him toward her.

  “Don’t tempt me, hayati. I’m trying to be a gentleman and I don’t have much patience for it.”

  Fire and blood.

  “Malek, I don’t want you to be a gentleman—not right now, anyway.”

  He reluctantly disentangled himself from Nalia and sat beside her, leaning his back against the headboard and closing his eyes. “I’m not going to take advantage of you.”

  “I’m not some—what do you call it—damsel in distress. Is that the right expression?”

  English had come to her instantly, a simple magic that all jinn knew. It tasted like wheat and the middle of the afternoon, when the sun burned brightest. Still, the magic wasn’t perfect—she struggled with some of the finer points.

  He smiled and opened his eyes. “Yes. And I know you’re not.” He twirled a lock of her hair around his finger. “I haven’t always been good to you. I need to start making up for it somehow.”

  Nalia could feel the moment slipping away, an untethered boat she’d never be able to reach.

  She hated herself for it, but she leaned in close to him, her mouth brushing his earlobe. “I know a few ways you can start.”

  He turned so that their lips pressed together. He was gentle and slow, each kiss a promise. She never knew there was so much that could be said in silence.

  “Malek,” she whispered.

  “Soon,” he murmured.

  He reached his hand down to the floor and picked up the bottle. He put it back around his neck, turning the chain so that the bottle rested on his back, away from her skin. Nalia
slumped against him, defeated. Yes, this day had truly been wasted. And now that Haran had seen her face in the dream, she wasn’t sure if another night was promised her.

  “Where are you?” Malek ran the back of his hand across her cheek, his eyes traveling over her face.

  “I’m here,” she said, trying to smile.

  He pulled her down beside him, so her head rested on his shoulder. They lay like that for a long time, so long that their breath flowed in unison.

  “Who’s Haran?” Malek asked. “You kept saying his name, just before you woke up.”

  She shivered a little, and Malek pulled the blankets over them.

  “Someone . . . bad,” she said. “From Arjinna.”

  “The one who hurt you in the dream.”

  “Yes.”

  “And did he hurt you in Arjinna, too?”

  Malek’s voice was quiet, but he spoke in the same voice he’d used after killing the client. She looked up at him and gave a slight nod. In the darkness of the room, his eyes flashed red, just for a minute.

  “How?” he asked quietly.

  It didn’t matter if he knew—Nalia’s game of hide-and-seek with the Ifrit would be over in a matter of days. Hours.

  “He killed everyone I loved. And he shot me five times, then filled the wounds with poisoned fire.”

  Malek stared.

  She curled on her side, facing away from him.

  “Tell me how to make it better.”

  She turned a little, to look into his eyes. “Let me grant your third wish. Then I can go home and kill him.”

  The truth—it felt like casting a pair of dice off the side of a cliff.

  Hurt lashed across his face, but it was so quick that she could almost tell herself she’d imagined it. Malek tucked a strand of Nalia’s hair behind her ear. “You know I can’t do that.”

  She was suddenly aware of her shackles, heavy and binding.

  “Can’t?”

  “Won’t.”

  She turned away from his resolve, but Malek pulled Nalia close to him and kept his arm around her, his palm against her stomach. “Go to sleep, hayati.”

  It was a command she was too tired to fight. Nalia closed her eyes, lulled into sleep by the sound of Malek’s breath and the steady thrum of his heart against her skin.