Exquisite Captive

by Heather Demetrios

  Please don’t wake up.

  Raif was behind her and she hated how her body had already become attuned to his presence. Their exchange of chiaan and the pieces of herself she’d offered up to him like a gift made it so that she could sense his mood, the restlessness inside him. If she were blindfolded and thrown into a room filled with a hundred jinn, she’d be able to find Raif in a second.

  Malek’s face flashed into her mind. His joy when he saw her waiting for him on the tarmac. The gentleness in his eyes when he’d said he loved her. His cruelty had been so much easier to bear; his kindness—and Raif’s rejection—left her raw and confused. She wasn’t sure she knew what love was. If it were even possible. Was this all the universe was going to give her—the love of a man who had traded money for her body?

  You are Ghan Aisouri, she reminded herself. None of this should have been a surprise. From the moment she could understand speech, Nalia had been told that love could not exist for her, except love for the realm. Why had she let herself believe the gods would grace her with something she had never been destined to have? Why would they bless her with more than a few moments of happiness when she had taken a life and rained destruction upon her realm?

  A loveless existence was what she deserved. She was lucky she had even that much.

  Her thoughts wandered back to those first moments with Raif, her master’s shirt heavy on her body. Nalia had known something was wrong the minute he opened the door. Saw the look of disgust on his face. He had no idea she hadn’t slept with Malek. All he saw was that shirt, her tousled hair. She’d wanted to tell him right away, but something had stopped her. Maybe it was because Zanari was in the room and the conversation felt too private, something she and Raif needed to whisper in the dark. No, she thought. He’d looked at her differently—she’d done what she’d had to do, what they all knew she had to do, and then he’d judged her for it.

  Her fingers itched to show him how much he’d hurt her. A fight was just what she needed. At the very least, it would distract Nalia from the immense disappointment that was threatening to overpower her. Here she was, on the brink of freedom, and she was more miserable than ever. Raif had been the one good thing in her life; now, everything they shared was just more collateral damage in an endless war.

  “We’re here,” she said, when the ball of light hovered over a small clearing, hidden off the path by a cluster of trees and bushes. Her voice was short, cold, and her eyes skimmed over Raif and Zanari as she stood in the center of the clearing, one hand on her hip, the other gripping Malek’s necklace. Waiting.

  Zanari immediately set up a sacred circle in the center of their chosen area, muttering over the dirt as it slid through her fingertips. Her chiaan lit up the circle and when she was finished, she moved away toward the outer perimeter of the clearing and made a smaller, second circle.

  “I’ll keep watch,” she said, sitting inside it and closing her eyes.

  Nalia took in the tense lines in Zanari’s face and wondered if she knew something Nalia didn’t.

  “Has Calar sent more Ifrit after me?” she asked.

  Zanari nodded, her eyes still closed. “I see red smoke coming through the portal. I’m guessing yes.”

  Nalia’s heart ached, knowing that if things continued the way they were with Raif, it wouldn’t be possible to have a friendship with Zanari. After losing Leilan, it had been a comfort to know that she had someone to turn to. Just the thought of Leilan sent a wave of grief through her. She’d never forgive herself for being the cause of her best friend’s death.

  Nalia shook her head; she couldn’t think of that, not right now. If she did, she’d never stop, and she had to stay strong so that she could rescue her brother. Nalia looked at her cell phone—it’d been nearly two hours since she’d drugged Malek. Was he still lying on the futon mattress, surrounded by candles? Nalia’s hand went to her stomach, an unconscious gesture, as she waited for the summons she knew he could no longer command. Her eyes followed Raif as he walked around the clearing, pressing his hands against the trees and drawing their strength into him. She saw his chiaan around his fingers, a soft springtime light that floated over the bark. Then he joined Nalia where she stood in a small pool of moonlight in the center of the clearing. The circle around her glowed bright green. For the first time since she’d knocked on the door of Malek’s loft, he looked into her eyes. She wanted to look away, but she couldn’t. In them, she saw the tenderness she’d seen the morning before, when he’d caught her watching him sleep. Her eyes stung and she looked down, before he could see how much his disgust over Malek had cost her.

  Nalia handed Raif the coin purse. Without speaking, he took it out and wound the chain around her hand three times, muttering in Kada on each revolution, then interlaced his fingers with hers, pressing their hands together. His chiaan thrummed in her and he drew close, so close she could see the smattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose, faint constellations she longed to map.

  “Are you ready?” he asked, his voice barely a whisper.

  She looked down at her hand in Raif’s. Though she wasn’t touching the bottle, she could feel its energy, a strong pulse, a heartbeat that wouldn’t fade. She remembered the days and nights when she’d been captured inside it, scratching at its iron walls, screaming to be let free.

  She forced her eyes to meet his. “Yes.”

  Nalia had only dared to imagine a life beyond rescuing Bashil a handful of times. It seemed a fantasy, to think she would live to be an old jinni. Her original plan had been to find Bashil a safe haven before the Ifrit or the resistance killed her. If their father were still alive, maybe he could help hide Bashil until the war ended. But if Nalia did manage to evade all those who wished her dead, what would she do in her war-torn realm where her caste was extinct and the serfs and Ifrit alike would be happy to see her hang among the Ghan Aisouri? Though she longed for Arjinna with all her heart, Nalia knew she didn’t belong there anymore.

  “Just so you know,” she said, “you won’t have to worry about me mucking things up for you in Arjinna. I’m renouncing any claim I have to the throne. As soon as I get my brother, I’m coming back to Earth.” Raif sucked in the air, but she wouldn’t look at his face. “After I take you to the sigil, you and I won’t need to see each other again—we can pretend whatever . . . whatever mistakes we made on Earth . . . never happened. You’ll fight your revolution and I will free the jinn on the dark caravan.”

  “No,” Raif said, his voice hoarse.

  She looked up at him, startled. All the anger had drained out of his face and he was staring at her, broken and miserable.

  “I don’t under—” Nalia began, but her words were lost as his lips found hers in a desperate kiss.

  She gave in to it, knowing she shouldn’t but doing it anyway. His lips were the only thing on Earth she thought it’d be hard to live without. But she couldn’t forget the look on his face, when she’d stood before him in Malek’s shirt. It was as if he’d called her all those things she was afraid she’d become. Nalia pushed Raif away, but he held on to her, the bottle swaying between them.

  “Nalia—”

  “Stop,” she said. “You don’t have to do this, Raif. I made a vow, you’ll get the sigil. I haven’t changed my mind just because . . . Let’s get on with it.”

  “You think that’s what I care about right now?”

  Nalia stared at him, bewildered. “Of course!”

  This didn’t make any sense. He didn’t make any sense. What did he want from her, from this?

  Raif reached out his hand and touched her cheek with the tips of his fingers. In the moonlight, he looked like a dream, a phantom come to tease her. But Nalia would wake up, she knew she would, and all that would be left was despair and darkness. She shook her head and his hand dropped to his side.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “You don’t get to decide that you’re suddenly sorry, not after you looked at me like I was a . . . a . . .” Nalia c
ouldn’t bring herself to say the word.

  “No!” Raif tugged at her hand, his eyes panicked. “I never thought that. Not once.” Raif sighed, and a frustrated growl escaped his lips. “Nalia, I’m a bastard, and I knew I was hurting you and I couldn’t stop. I went a little crazy when I saw you in his shirt and you smelled like him and I just . . . hated myself.”

  “Why would you hate yourself? Hate him.”

  His jaw hardened. “I hate myself because the resistance isn’t the most important thing in my life anymore. I hate myself because you had to be with Malek tonight since I couldn’t help you. And it kills me, Nalia, it kills me that I will never be able to protect you.”

  “I don’t need you to protect me,” she said. “I need you to—”

  Love me.

  She stopped herself. What she needed was something he couldn’t give. What no Ghan Aisouri was allowed to have. Love the realm, she thought. Love the empress. But there was no empress, and the realm had no place for her. There was only her certainty that she had to save Bashil and end the dark caravan. And there was Raif. But she didn’t know what that meant, not now.

  “What do you need?” he said, his voice soft. “Tell me.”

  She took a step back, but the bottle was still hanging beneath their clasped hands, and its chain dug into her skin. She couldn’t let go now, even if she wanted to.

  “Raif, we don’t have time. Malek could wake up, the Ifrit are coming—please.”

  The moon went behind a cloud and Raif found her eyes in the darkness. He rested his forehead against hers. “I love you, Nalia.”

  The words dropped into her heart, one by one, like precious jewels placed gently in a velvet pouch. It was nothing like hearing them from Malek’s lips.

  Nalia took a shuddering breath. After everything that had happened—the coup, captivity, Haran—it was hard to believe that there was this. This. Her heart full of fear and a strange, inexplicable joy, she brought her lips to Raif’s ear and whispered the three words she had only ever said to Bashil. All the shadows fled his face, as if the sun had suddenly slipped into the night sky and thrown a golden beam across him.

  Nalia stepped back. “Now make me free.”

  31

  AFTER EVERYTHING THAT HAD HAPPENED, ALL NALIA had been through, in the end he’d have to hurt her. A pain so bad Raif only remembered his own experience of the unbinding as a white-hot poker tearing through his heart.

  “I’ll do my best to make it quick,” he said, “but you have to be strong.”

  “I trust you,” she said.

  “You’re never afraid, are you?”

  She grinned. “I’m afraid all the time. I just hide it really well.”

  Raif leaned in and brushed his lips against hers. He had to hurry.

  “Whatever happens, don’t let go of my hand,” he said.

  Nalia nodded and Raif closed his eyes, searching for the ribbons of chiaan inside him. His magic was rushing through him, a river with eddies he had to push through and falls that tumbled out of his heart and made a path through his ribs. This particular piece of magic was second nature to him, a spell he’d performed on many of his tavrai, but this, Raif knew, would be his most difficult attempt. Nalia was the most powerful jinni he had ever known, and therefore the bind to her master was ironclad, even stronger because it was reinforced by the complicated ties of Malek’s feelings for her. And the bottle was something he had never dealt with before. The Shaitan overlords of Arjinna had no need of such devices—their own magical abilities so outweighed those of their slaves that bottles were unnecessary for summoning or magically imprisoning their property. The bonds between jinni masters and their serfs tended to be weaker than the bonds between masters and slaves on the dark caravan, because a jinni overlord might have hundreds of serfs, whereas a human master usually only had one jinni.

  Every time he performed this ritual, Raif remembered his father, holding his hand just before his own unbinding. Be brave, little one, Dthar Djan’Urbi had said. The pain had been excruciating, severing the connection to his master overlord that Raif had had since he was born. Since then, he’d been stabbed, shot, beaten, and burned. It all paled in comparison to those few minutes being unbound.

  Now he had to do the same to Nalia. Raif had never understood how hard it must have been for his father to unbind his family until this moment. Knowing what he was about to put her through, just two days after she had nearly died. . . .

  He felt the strong grip of Nalia’s fingers, her chiaan melding with his. Raif squeezed her hand, then began whispering the words his father had taught him, so many summers ago. He could feel the bind that held Nalia in its grip—a firm, invisible tentacle that had wrapped itself around her body. He knew that Malek was on the other end of the bind, that Nalia’s master would feel the severed connection, like a knife shoved deep in his stomach. This was some consolation, that Malek would hurt as well.

  Raif directed his chiaan to the bindings, drawing upon the power of the earth all around him. He felt it rise up from his bare feet that rested on the grass, felt the trees and rocks respond to his call. He heard Nalia gasp, and his arm pulled down as she fell to her knees. Raif opened his eyes and knelt next to her, chanting the words, faster and faster. The wall he usually came up against when he worked magic moved further away as he went deeper into the spell, unraveling the binds that tied Nalia to Malek. He pushed beyond the boundaries of his body so that it seemed he was outside it, expanding into the earth, one with the chiaan it offered up to him. Sweat stood out on his forehead and he felt lightheaded, but the power filled him as chiaan swirled around their bodies, gold and green, Nalia’s gold turning to purple as she lost the ability to hold on to her glamour.

  Her eyes, now violet, burned, her whole body writhing inside a beautiful inferno. Nalia’s shackles blazed, the gold of them so bright he had to close his eyes against the glare. The power between them built, her chiaan fighting its way out of the bind, like a dragon caught in a net. Still, the shackles stayed around her wrists and the bottle remained whole, not shattering into a million pieces as he’d expected it to. There were no more words he could say, no further he could go. Raif felt his body begin to sag under the weight of the bind.

  It won’t break, he thought. A wild despair stabbed at him and Raif held on to Nalia because it was the only thing left for him to do. He had failed her once again.

  There was Raif, on his knees, cradling Nalia’s head in his lap as the magic tore through her, cutting away the binds that linked her to Malek. She could see the defeat in his face, but she didn’t have the strength to tell him it was working, that Malek’s hold on her was unraveling, thread by painful thread. She closed her eyes to focus her chiaan, every ounce of her intention devoted to maintaining the process Raif had started in her with his spell.

  Weightlessness.

  It stole over Nalia, horrible and familiar and No!

  Violet smoke surrounded her, an amber cloud of evanescence. Her body shifted, readying itself to enter the bottle.

  Nalia thrashed under the bottle’s power, but it was like trying to swim out of a whirlpool.

  This wasn’t Malek’s doing—it was the bottle itself, rejecting her claim to sovereignty. The magic in it was unlike any Nalia had experienced: she could feel it resisting her effort to sever her connection to it, as though it were a conscious, living entity. A parasite that needed her to stay alive. It fed on Nalia, on the bind the slave trader had created the first time she was imprisoned within its iron walls. Like Haran, it wanted to consume her.

  Raif shouted her name, crushing Nalia to him, but she could feel herself dissolving in his arms as the bottle refused to give up its claim on her. She held on tight, until her evanescence took over, pulling her away from the safety of his embrace. Her hands clawed at the earth beneath her, the sky above her. Raif cried out as his fingers slid through her smoke. Nalia swirled, a tornado, spinning, spinning—nothing but atoms and chiaan twirling around around around, dizzy— />
  Stars.

  Trees.

  Dirt.

  Moon.

  The mouth of the bottle—

  Golden—

  Gaping—

  Hungry—

  Darkness.

  Black: impenetrable.

  Iron. Heat. Silence.

  Nalia raised her head. The darkness was so thick she couldn’t see her hand in front of her face.

  She screamed.

  Her fury echoed off the walls, but the only answer was the sound of her own despair. She crumpled to the ground, heaving. Panic took over and her breaths became short, labored spasms. Nalia fought to gain control, imagined the gryphons with their wooden sticks. She was a royal knight, an empress, and this was not how her story was going to end.

  “Enough,” she said. To herself. To the bottle.

  She would be free or die trying.

  The bottle was too small to stand in, so she remained on her knees. A black sea surged around Nalia as the bottle fought against the magic she’d brought into it, and she tumbled forward, reaching out to balance on one of the walls. The iron burned and she yanked her hand away.

  Nalia took a breath. Her chiaan still blazed within her, strong and certain. Though the connection with Raif had been broken, she could feel the magic still working to release the binds. Nalia knew she wouldn’t be able to do any magic herself—the bottle had always forbidden it. But maybe because the unbinding had begun before Nalia evanesced, the bottle’s usual rules were suspended: for some reason, Raif’s magic was able to continue its journey through her body. Nalia ignored the no air, no space, no hope of the bottle and concentrated her whole being on those chains that had kept her on Earth for so long.

  Then: light. Just a little at first, but then searing, brilliant—her shackles. Nalia raised her hands as Raif’s spell battled against the bottle’s suffocating magic. Heat billowed off the walls in waves as the iron began to melt, thick murdering globs of it sliding down the walls. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t breathe, iron dripping from above into her eyes, her nose, her mouth—she was drowning in boiling poison.