Exquisite Captive

by Heather Demetrios

  Nalia could feel her brother’s desperation, the exhaustion that threatened to overtake his body. She wanted to tell Bashil how hard she was trying to get to him, but the magic of hahm’alah didn’t work that way. The images she could send him would make no sense. They’d only confuse and scare him. She tried to send Bashil hope and love, tried to hint that someone would be coming for him soon. But before she could say good-bye or see his face just one more time, an Ifrit guard bashed her brother over the head with a club. Nalia screamed as the connection between them died.

  “Nalia, what is it?” Raif called.

  Please, gods, please don’t let him be dead. Please, gods. Please.

  She turned to look up at him. “It’s my brother,” she said. She didn’t hear Raif’s response; the wind took his words before they could reach her.

  Tears pricked her eyes and she let the wind dry the salty tracks down her face. The only way she could save her brother was to kill the bastard who’d sent him to the work camp in the first place so that Raif—or maybe even Nalia herself—could return to Arjinna, alive.

  Lucky for her, she’d have the chance to do that any minute now.

  Nalia planted her feet in the sand, willing the power of the earth to flow into her. She opened her arms and felt the wind rush around her, as though Grathali, goddess of the wind, were covering Nalia’s body with sacred armor. Every time a wave crashed on the shore, Nalia felt its salty spray against her skin, reminding her of the ocean’s power that was hers for the taking. Nalia’s blood hummed with chiaan and she could feel Raif behind her, solid and reassuring.

  It was time.

  She felt Haran before he arrived: a furious whirlwind of dark energy that sped over the ocean. He evanesced onto the beach in a crimson, sulfuric cloud, sending a stream of fire toward her before the smoke had even cleared. Nalia gathered a gust of wind between her palms and pushed the flames up and away from her, until a fiery pillar shot up between them. She could see it reflected in Haran’s eyes, two vertical red lines that lent him an even more demonic appearance. He wore no glamour—he was pure ghoul, with the body of an absurdly tall cadaver. His fingernails cast sinister shadows on the sand and his teeth were so large, he couldn’t even close his lips over his mouth. He looked like something that had been living in the depths of the deepest cave for all time, an ancient sea monster finally come to shore.

  Haran sent a stream of red chiaan through the flames, so that it became a writhing beast—a dragon—bent on Nalia’s destruction. The monster reared on its hind legs and blew a river of deadly fire in her direction. If Haran had been using natural fire, she would have been able to control it. But with his dark magic, Nalia didn’t dare touch the malicious flames. She dove into the water, hurling her body away from the poison that threatened to consume her. As soon as Nalia’s skin touched the ocean, she gathered the water around her, scraping it away from the sandy floor until it was a massive tidal wave suspended above the burning beach, with her in its center, the watery outline of her body shimmering in the light of the flames. Shells and coral, fish and seaweed, littered the ground. The blue bioluminescence of phytoplankton glimmered in the water, oceanic Christmas lights skimming the surface of the giant swell. She held the wave on her back, an Atlas of the sea, straining against its power. It blocked out the stars and swiped the moon out of the sky. She could see the lines of cars going up and down the highway, the twinkle of lights inside the homes tucked into Malibu’s hills. Beyond that, Los Angeles glowed, the freeways like clogged arteries in a body of light. She looked down at the beach, now several stories below her. Raif stood on his rock, a tiny pinprick looking up at her in awe. Haran fixed her with a maniacal grin and began to evanesce.

  Nalia crashed upon the shore, then smacked against the cliff bordering the beach. Far out at sea, ships were crying out mayday alerts, and cars on the highway swerved as a wall of water toppled onto them. Haran’s dragon disappeared under the force of the wave, though the ghoul himself had managed to evanesce onto a distant cliff, his body drenched in saltwater, while Raif clung to his rock as the water pummeled him. Nalia’s watery body fell apart, then swirled back together as the wave receded, the water calmly going back out to sea as though a god had wiped the highway and beach with a sponge. Nalia stood on the soaked shore, perfectly dry. Her breath came out in strangled bursts and, despite the power the sea had infused into her chiaan, her body shook from the exertion. She raised her hands as Haran evanesced before her.

  “Haran does not only play with fire,” he said. “He has many ways with which to hurt a Ghan Aisouri.”

  “I’m sure you’ll try your best.”

  With everything in her, Nalia threw her chiaan at his heart, but Haran was fast and evanesced before the full might of her magic could cut him down. She whirled around just as a rope of red chiaan bit at her legs and the whole left side of her body. She fell to the sand, gasping in pain as her skin blistered. As the poison worked deep into her bones, Nalia fought to gather her chiaan, but it kept slipping out of her grasp. It was like trying to catch a fish with her bare hands. Haran walked toward her, slowly, as though he were approaching a curious object that had washed up on the beach. Jinn driftwood.

  Nalia tried to push herself onto her feet, but her legs gave way beneath her. The Ifrit fire he’d shot at her was searing. Vertigo and nausea set in. Nalia lifted her hands, forcing her palms in front of her, mumbled prayers on her lips. Haran loomed over her, ready to strike. An emerald whip of chiaan lashed his back and he turned toward Raif’s rock, roaring. Raif evanesced from the rock just as Haran hurled a ball of fire at him. He landed lightly on the sand, missing the deadly inferno by a breath. Haran opened his palms and a swarm of vashtu—birds born of Ifrit volcanic rock and dark magic—ascended from his palms. Part vulture, part bat, the vashtu were relentless killers that focused with vicious intent on whatever prey their master ordered them to hunt.

  Haran laughed, a bone-chilling cackle, as Raif battled the bloodthirsty birds, beating them back with his chiaan, then finally manifesting two scimitars to cut them out of the sky. He lashed at the vashtu and they chased him out of sight, beyond the rock with the arch.

  “She’s a tricky jinni, this almost-dead Ghan Aisouri,” Haran said, turning back to Nalia. “Haran did not realize that she brought friends. But Haran will not complain: he has been wanting to try this revolutionary delicacy for quite some time.”

  “It will be hard to eat when you’re dead,” she said through gritted teeth.

  Haran walked toward her, hands raised for a second volley of chiaan, but Nalia placed her palms on the sand, willing the earth to tremble. The ground shook under Haran’s body, throwing him into the cliff face with a violent shove that sent a cascade of sand to the sky. Haran was up in an instant, charging across the sand, but something black and metallic was in his hand this time. It glinted in the bright moonlight.

  A gun.

  Nalia shoved herself onto her feet, biting back a scream of agony as she sprinted toward the water. If she could just melt into the waves, the bullets couldn’t hurt her and her burning skin would forget the pain of the saltwater once it became one with the ocean. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a flash of green and then Raif was on top of Haran, throwing him to the ground, his clothes covered in the blood of slain vashtu. They rolled around in the sand, Haran’s mouth opening wide. Raif reached a hand out to the enormous rock behind them and used his chiaan to send a piece of it hurling at Haran. It hit the ghoul in the shoulder, giving Raif enough time to scramble away. He was a nimble fighter, quick and intelligent. Nearly as good as a Ghan Aisouri.

  “Nalia, go!” he yelled, turning to her.

  “Raif!” she screamed, as the ghoul loomed behind him.

  The gun went off, but Haran shot too wide and the bullet glanced off the rock behind Raif, who immediately launched himself at Haran. They wrestled one another, and the air echoed with the sound of their pounding blows. Raif grabbed Haran in a choke hold, but the ghoul s
wung back and bashed Raif over the head with the butt of the gun. Raif crumpled to the sand, unconscious. Forgetting the safety of the water, Nalia ran toward Haran, deadly violet lasers of chiaan shooting from her fingertips. But with the shackles on her arms draining her power, the magic was too weak and it fell around him like misfired arrows.

  She raised her hands, bare of chiaan. She knew Haran had every intention of killing Raif—he was just waiting until he’d eaten her to do it. She’d have to kill him without magic.

  “Okay,” she said. “You win.”

  The fog moved onto the shore, enveloping her in a thick haze. It seemed as if the world had turned upside down, the clouds at her feet. As though she were already entering the godlands.

  Haran raised the gun, the barrel now pointed at Nalia. She clenched her teeth to hide the fear a gun in this jinni’s hand brought on. Her mother’s words came back to her from long ago, that night she made Nalia prove her worth as a Ghan Aisouri. The night Nalia killed the boy.

  Fear is your greatest enemy. Conquer fear and you conquer yourself. Conquer yourself and you conquer the world.

  For the first time since the night of the coup, Nalia wasn’t afraid.

  “Haran prefers to hunt with his teeth,” the ghoul said. “But sometimes, a more modern approach is necessary.”

  He pulled the trigger.

  It sounded like the end of the world.

  Nalia tried to swerve out of the bullet’s path, but the metal cut into her stomach. She fell to the sand as thick, hot blood poured out of her. He’d used steel casings; her body began convulsing from the iron almost as soon as the poison touched her skin. The moon and stars shivered above her. Her body remembered this pain. The white-hot blaze of it. The sudden cold.

  The sea sounded louder here, and Nalia realized she’d fallen onto the strip of sand the tide was just beginning to claim, the top of her head pointing at the ocean—like the burning biers the Ghan Aisouri created for their dead sisters, sending them on their journey to the godlands in smokeless fire.

  “Hala shaktai mundeer,” she gasped. “Ashanai . . . sokha . . . vidim . . .” The words for the dead trickled out of her lips, fading with her slowing heartbeat.

  Freezing water licked her hair, then flowed over her face. She couldn’t breathe in the water as she had only moments before. She was too weak, too out of touch with all the elements, unable to access her chiaan. Nalia would drown soon, if she didn’t bleed to death or Haran didn’t eat her.

  I am Ghan Aisouri, she thought. I am Ghan Aisouri.

  She couldn’t give in to the sea’s call. Couldn’t be food in a ghoul’s belly. She had to fight Haran until her last breath and even after that, if it were possible.

  Her hand reached down to where her jade dagger lay nestled inside her boot, each movement sending hot irons of pain through every part of her. One more chance. It was all she had. Nalia felt the familiar hilt in her hand and eased the blade out, masking her movement by rolling onto her side, further into the sea.

  Haran’s voice murmured above her. “The Ghan Aisouri will not pretend to die this time.”

  His claws dug into the tender skin on her shoulders and then flipped Nalia onto her back. He viewed her with an almost clinical detachment, then leaned down and dug into her bullet wound with a dirty claw. The world spun, pain threatening to throw her into a never-ending sleep. Haran took his finger out of the hole in her stomach and held it up to the light, red and glistening, then he ran it over his tongue, tasting her. A connoisseur of flesh.

  “The Ghan Aisouri tastes like her sisters,” he said. His tongue darted out to catch the drops of blood pooling in the corner of his lips. “Like a good wine.”

  I am Ghan Aisouri.

  Haran leaned over Nalia, his mouth gaping, the teeth so unbearably sharp, dipping closer to her face. His body was heavy and smelled like rotten meat. To look at him was to know death. With the last bit of strength remaining to her, Nalia drove the dagger into the exposed flesh on his arm. Haran shuddered once, then fell on top of her, his entire body paralyzed by the Ghan Aisouri blade.

  She pulled the dagger out, then plunged the blade into his heart, twisting as his eyes bulged in silent agony. She killed him for Bashil, her mother, the entire race of Ghan Aisouri. She killed him for Leilan and, finally, for herself. She would die with him on this beach, but it was a good death. An honorable end. The only vengeance the gods would give her for the slaughter of her people.

  As the jade dagger dug deeper into Haran, his body shimmered and changed. Dozens of faces and bodies flew over his skin, each of his victims memorialized in those last seconds of consciousness. At the end, it was Leilan staring back at her, the blue of her eyes dim and lifeless. Not Leilan—a distorted echo of her. Then the face and body transformed back into that of the ghoul who’d destroyed her life. The eyes remained open, but Nalia felt the life leave him, felt the moment his soiled chiaan bled through her and into the earth.

  Nalia let go of the hilt, her hand falling into the sea. She screamed as his head tilted forward, the venomous teeth resting against her neck, sharp and wet with fetid saliva, a breath from puncturing her skin. Her nose filled with Haran’s putrid stench and she gagged. A wave crashed over them, filling her mouth with bloody seawater: his blood, her blood. The gray, dead flesh of the ghoul pressed Nalia into the wet sand, suffocating her. His ribs dug into the bullet wound in her stomach. She was cold, so cold. Another wave crashed on top of them, and the water swarmed over their bodies, covering Nalia’s face completely. She couldn’t breathe and it was just like the palace, bodies on top of her, dying, dying, she was dying.

  Bashil’s face. Dawn in the Qaf Mountains. The gryphons teaching Sha’a Rho. Malek’s black, black eyes. Her mother’s hands. The Ifrit girl she’d set free. Leilan’s laugh. Zanari’s quick smile. Raif’s lips.

  The memories flowed through Nalia, fell over her like rain.She didn’t bother gasping for air when the water receded, because it was over, finally over—

  Then the weight and the water were both gone. She heard her name, a dim shout: Nalia! Nalia!

  Her eyes fluttered open and she drank in the air, coughing up seawater. A shock of brown hair in the dense, impenetrable fog. A pair of emerald eyes looking down at her, wide with fear. Raif.

  He was calling her name, she saw the shape of it on his lips. Then everything went black and she was back in the cold place, alone, until she felt a sting on her face. Another. She pulled her eyes open and Raif’s hand was inches from her face, ready to slap her again.

  “You have to stay awake. Nalia, stay awake. Zanari’s coming with a healer. Stay awake. Please.”

  “My brother,” she gasped.

  “We’ll find him—just keep your eyes open,” he said.

  Raif pulled Nalia into his arms and cradled her in his lap. Spasms wracked her body as the pain from Haran’s wounds worked deep into her bones. She gagged: blood in her throat, in her mouth, running down her chin. Raif’s arms tightened around her.

  “You’re not gonna die on me, you stupid salfit.” He wiped the blood away with trembling fingers, and her chiaan shivered from his touch.

  Nalia tried to smile. “Love it when you . . . talk dirty.”

  Raif shook his head. “I don’t even know what you’re saying.”

  “Human . . . thing.”

  She closed her eyes as the agony of Haran’s magic cut and smashed and broke her.

  “I’m here,” Raif whispered, his lips close to her ear. “Please. Please stay with me. Nalia. I choose you. Every time, you hear me? I choose you.”

  She had to hold on a little bit longer. For him. She had to. Nalia forced her eyes open.

  “Go,” she said through gritted teeth. “The cave . . . before you lose the map.”

  As soon as she died, it would disappear from Raif’s arm and all of this would have been for nothing.

  “Don’t . . . need me,” she said.

  “Yes, I do.” Raif brushed Nalia’s hair out of her fa
ce. Blood covered his hands, but she didn’t know if it was hers or his. Probably hers. “Look at me,” he said, his voice high and panicked as her eyes started to close again.

  He gently shook her and Nalia’s eyes flickered, two sputtering candles. Her world dwindled down to his eyes—dark and light swirls of green, more greens than she’d ever known existed. A sea of green. Sea. Green.

  “GO,” she gasped.

  “Good. Just like that. Keep looking at me,” he whispered.

  “My brother.” Nalia gripped Raif’s arm. “Raif. My brother. Don’t leave . . . him there.”

  “I know,” he said. “I won’t. I promise. Just stay with—Nalia. Nalia!”

  His face blurred, and then the darkness obliterated everything until Nalia was nothing and it didn’t hurt anymore.

  27

  DYING WAS THE EASIEST THING NALIA HAD EVER DONE.

  For once, she allowed herself to stop fighting. To stop caring about duty and honor and sacrifice. For once, she let herself be utterly selfish. She was tired, so she slept. She was in pain, so she cut herself off from her body. It was easy. The rope that tethered her to Earth was frayed, so weak all she had to do was tug a little and she was free, adrift in a place of nothing.

  A heavy mist surrounded her, but she meandered through it, unconcerned. Content. No, not quite. What she was feeling was absence. Of want. Of fear. Of despair. But then suddenly her brother was there, his face worn and haggard. Something mattered again. As soon as Nalia caught sight of him, Bashil sprinted into the clouds of mist, hidden in its cool thick folds. Nalia screamed his name and chased him—over sand dunes high as mountains and through densely packed forests with trees that blocked her path and tangled her in their sharp branches. Once, she was able to touch him with her outstretched hand, but he dissolved into nothing, and she was left alone. Mist and ice and hard white rock surrounded her. She sat and waited. For what, she wasn’t sure. Other phantoms visited Nalia, more substantial than Bashil’s wisp of spirit. Leilan, the paisley scarf still in her hair. Kir, the boy they’d made her kill, his lifeless eyes full of reproach. The Ghan Aisouri walking single file, their bodies riddled with bullet holes. Her mother. Nalia tried to touch her, but her hand passed through her mother’s body. Nalia watched as the line marched away and the mist closed over them.