Exquisite Captive

by Heather Demetrios

  “Hala mashinita, hala mashinita!” Nalia cried out to the gods to save her, but they were silent. She was on her own—no gods, no Ghan Aisouri, no Raif. Once again, abandoned and left for dead. A thought crystallized into sudden certainty. Nalia understood what Raif had meant in the rose garden, just a few nights ago when they’d first met: freedom is power. In order to be free—truly free—she had to take ownership of the skin and bones and breath and blood that were Nalia Aisouri’Taifyeh. She needed to lay claim to herself in order for the bottle’s hold on her to be broken.

  Nalia closed her eyes. Pose 621: Avenger. She crouched, centering herself as the bottle swayed from side to side like a storm-tossed boat. She found the rhythm and became one with it.

  Then Nalia opened her eyes to the darkness.

  Becoming free was the searing agony of cut flesh, as though she’d been physically attached to Malek and the chiaan was a knife that hacked its way through her body. Being free was a ripping, tearing, shredding of who she had become since joining the ranks of the dark caravan. She should have been slick with blood, something to show for the raging flames of magic burning through her, but there was nothing but the cloud of chiaan that held her in its furious clasp. The bottle began to spin, faster and faster, but Nalia stood her ground, her body fluid with the motion.

  And then she felt it: the final cut.

  Memories of the past three years flooded her mind: the first time she saw Malek, the countless clients, those terrifying stints in the bottle, Malek’s lips, hot on her own. The despair and fear of those years, the powerlessness, the grief—each moment stacked up inside her until she could hardly breathe with the horror of it all. Nalia’s shackles burst, showering her in a golden dust just as her fists crashed against the bottle’s walls. The prison fell away as Nalia’s body evanesced. Moments later, she lay in the center of the sacred circle, pieces of gold and jewels at her feet.

  Power surged through her, familiar and wondrously strange. Her chiaan pushed Nalia to her feet, so much of it and so fast that she felt as though she were about to explode. The pain of the unbinding withdrew, leaving behind an overwhelming euphoria. She flung her chiaan into the sky, reverse falling stars that exploded in the air like fireworks.

  “Nalia!”

  She looked at Raif, her own relief and joy mirrored in his face. She stumbled toward him and he caught her in his arms.

  “Gods, I thought I was going to lose you again,” he whispered.

  She wanted to sob and dance and scream and she pressed her lips against Raif’s, filling him with all of it, all of her. He spun her around and Nalia threw back her head, laughing at the stars.

  When she was back on her feet, she leaned in for one more kiss. “Thank you,” she said.

  He smiled. “Thank me when we get out of here alive.”

  “Good point.”

  They both turned to Zanari, the smiles on their faces freezing when they saw who was in her place.

  “I have to hand it to you, hayati, you really know how to play dirty.”

  Nalia slipped out of Raif’s arms and stared at the edge of the clearing, stunned. Malek stood a few feet away, casually pointing a gun in their direction. He held a cigarette with his other hand, filling the air with the scent of vanilla and cloves.

  “Malek, don’t. Please, don’t,” Nalia whispered. This couldn’t be happening, not when they were so close.

  He smiled, the old cruel one, and took a long drag of his cigarette. “I do so love it when you beg, Nalia.” He glanced at Raif for a moment. “What was it last time?” Malek rubbed his chin, as though he were deep in thought. “Oh, right. Don’t leave, that’s what you said, wasn’t it? The other night, when I came into your room.”

  She was standing close enough to Raif that she could feel his entire body tense, waiting to spring.

  Nalia swallowed. She’d never seen Malek so calmly furious. How had he found her so quickly? How was he even awake?

  “My sister.” Raif suddenly said, his voice panicked.

  Nalia looked behind Malek, but the circle of earth Zanari had been sitting inside was empty.

  “Oh, is that who that charming little jinni was?” Malek shrugged, taking another puff of his cigarette, unconcerned. “Well, I’m sure there are many places she could be. It’s a big city.”

  Raif stepped forward, but Nalia put a hand on his arm. “Raif, don’t,” she whispered softly.

  “Raif?” Malek said. He looked down at Nalia’s hand on Raif’s arm and she let it drop. “I was wondering how to address him. I thought of a few names to call him by, of course, but we’ll stick to Raif for now.”

  Nalia only saw the misery in Malek’s eyes because she’d spent so much time trying to read his moods.

  He pointed the gun at Raif’s chest. “Well, Raif, I strongly advise you to step away from my jinni. Touch her again and my face will be the last thing you see on Earth, do you understand me?”

  “She’s not your jinni anymore,” Raif said.

  Malek cocked his head to the side. “Oh, I don’t know about that. We always seem to work out our differences. I have all kinds of ways of persuading her.” He smiled at Nalia. “Don’t I, hayati?”

  Zanari.

  “Malek, what did you do with her?” Nalia said. He must have hypersuaded Zanari during the unbinding.

  “Well, it’s really more of a question of what she did with herself,” Malek said. “Last I saw, your friend was walking down the Pacific Coast Highway into oncoming traffic. Bit dangerous, don’t you think? It’s a dark road with lots of twists and turns. I doubt the drivers will see her in time.”

  Raif’s eyes shot to Nalia’s, a look of horror flashing across his face.

  “Who will it be, Raif?” Malek asked, not bothering to disguise the malice in his voice. “I’d hurry, if I were you. Time waits for no man.”

  Raif held Nalia’s eyes. They begged her to understand: she did.

  “Go,” she said to Raif, under her breath. He hesitated for another moment and she pushed him away. “She’ll die, Raif. Go.”

  I love you, he mouthed, his back to Malek. Raif’s body twisted and in seconds he’d evanesced from the clearing.

  “Alone at last,” Malek said, now pointing the gun at Nalia. He took one more drag of his cigarette, then stubbed it out with his toe, frowning. “Though, I’ll be honest, this is a far cry from the plans I had for us tonight.”

  Nalia said nothing. She watched Malek, thinking. They both knew a bullet from his gun would work faster than any magic she could conjure. There was only one way out of this problem that Nalia could see: Malek wanted something. She just needed to figure out what it was before Raif and Zanari returned. She prayed Raif got to his sister in time.

  There was no emotion in Malek’s face, but as he moved closer to her, his eyes changed to a steady, glowing red. “I’m a little confused, Nalia. One minute we’re in bed and the next, Delson is waking me up, saying that he thinks you’ve run away again. I can barely keep my eyes open: obviously I’d been drugged, but it’s more than that. My bottle is gone. Luckily I have a tracking device in it—you can never be too careful with your investments.”

  That was how Malek had found her so quickly when she’d stolen the bottle the first time. Human technology always seemed to be her downfall.

  “I get here,” Malek continued, “and then I see you with him and I’m about to command you to return to me when I suddenly feel like someone is carving up my insides with a butter knife. You disappear into the bottle and then somehow break it. Care to explain?”

  If Malek had still had the bottle around his neck, she would have begged, pleaded, got down on her knees. But for the first time, the only power he had over her was the gun in his hand; she was tired of men pointing them at her.

  “Sure,” she said, “I’ll explain.” She took a step forward, daring Malek to shoot. “I am the last member of the jinn royal family and the rightful heir to the throne. I survived a coup that killed my entire race. I wa
tched as the Ifrit whipped my brother until I could hardly recognize him, then dragged him off to a work camp where he’s dying right now. I am an empress who has been sold like cattle to a pardjinn with a massive chip on his shoulder, who gets off on controlling people and thinks love is something that can be bought with a fancy car and a few dresses from Rodeo Drive.”

  “Stop,” he whispered.

  Freedom is power.

  “Do you want to know what it feels like, Malek, to be stuffed into a bottle your master wears around his neck, to be alone in the dark for months, with no air, iron poisoning your lungs, in a place where the only company you have is the memory of your mother saying the prayer for the dead as machine guns rip into her?”

  She drew closer, her eyes never once leaving his. Malek stared at her, transfixed, the gun lowering to his side.

  “You thought, what?” she whispered. “That I could love you? That we were going to live some happy life together because you’d suddenly decided you wanted me in your bed?”

  He flinched, as though she’d slapped him, but she kept going.

  “You tortured me. For years. I was a child and you took me away from my homeland. You made me grovel and beg for mercy when I wasn’t your perfect little slave. You treated me like a fucking dog, and I’m supposed to love you because of this?”

  Nalia tore the lapis lazuli necklace from her throat, her lips now inches from his.

  “I will never love you.”

  She threw the necklace at his feet and Malek stared at it for a moment, silent. Nalia had expected to feel pleasure watching his heart break; all she felt when she saw the pain in his eyes was a dull throb.

  “So you felt nothing for me?” he said quietly.

  Dawn was stretching her fingers across the city as she awakened; Nalia stared at the dark ridge of the canyon set against the lightening sky.

  “Nothing,” she whispered.

  Malek reached out a hand and turned her face to his. She resisted, but his touch was firm, though gentle. “Not even when you had that nightmare? When I held you,” he whispered, his face inching toward hers, “and you clung to me?”

  She stared at him, her cheeks warming.

  The corner of Malek’s mouth turned up. “That’s what I thought.” He stepped away from her and raised the gun once again.

  “Come on out, Zanari,” he called over his shoulder.

  Nalia stared as Raif’s sister entered the clearing from the dense brush behind Malek. She had the glazed eyes of the hypersuaded, and when she reached his side he smiled benevolently at her and handed Zanari the gun.

  “Put this against your head, my dear,” he said.

  “No. Zanari. Don’t. Don’t.”

  It was as if the other girl couldn’t hear Nalia at all. It was terrifying, seeing Zanari incapable of thinking for herself. She seemed perfectly happy holding a gun to her temple.

  One word from Malek and she would shoot herself in the head.

  “What do you want, Malek?” Nalia said.

  “Well, that’s a loaded question, isn’t it?”

  “Let her go and I’ll do anything you want.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Anything? Now that is an interesting proposition. Wonder what Raif would think about that. Do you do ‘anything’ for him?”

  “Malek—”

  “I will let her go if you grant me my third wish. Deal?”

  “Deal,” she said immediately. Whatever it was, even if he wished for her to start granting on his behalf again, she would do it. For Zanari, for Raif. She couldn’t have any more blood on her hands.

  “Look at me,” he said to Zanari. He grabbed her by the chin and roughly forced her to meet his eyes. “Go back to the car and sit in it until I release you.”

  He took the gun out of her hand and pointed it once again at Nalia as Zanari began to walk away.

  “You’ve made your point, Malek. You win. What’s your wish?”

  Malek looked at her, only his eyes betraying the emotion that hid underneath his now impassive face. “I was in Beirut to visit a seer whom I consult on a regular basis. There is something I have been searching for—something I thought I wanted more than anything else. Having it in my possession would have given me enormous power—in both my land and yours. So you can imagine what a difficult decision I was faced with when the seer said, ‘She whom you love can take you to that which you seek.’”

  A memory: Malek’s face above her own, tense and happy and hopeful. I love you . . . more than anything else in the world.

  Nalia forced her voice to remain calm. “And what is it that you seek?”

  Dread grew and a knowing formed within her. Of course, she thought.

  Malek’s eyes closed, then opened again as he fought against the exhaustion the drugged wine was still forcing on him. He smiled, a bitter slash across his face.

  “It’s funny,” he said. “I’ve wanted the damned thing for as long as I can remember. My jinni father had told my mother about it, and she told me. I’ve searched and searched—archeological records, ancient texts. I’ve visited seers, mages—human and jinn—and now someone was telling me I could finally have it.” He shook his head. “But I didn’t want to give you up. I believed if I could just keep you close to me, you’d . . .” He looked down, and when he spoke again, his voice was soft. “I was willing to let it go, because my third wish—my true third wish—was that you would someday love me.” His eyes found hers, held them. “I knew it wasn’t a wish you could grant, but I was hoping you might give it to me, anyway. It was all I wanted. All I needed. Of course, I still could have asked you to give me what I was looking for. Grant that third wish. Then I could have it all, right?” He shook his head. “But the seer said it would come between us. So I decided to give it up.”

  This couldn’t be happening. Not now. Not when she was so close.

  “Malek, please don’t—”

  “But I’m clearly better at business than matters of the heart.” He stepped away from her. “I want you to take me to Solomon’s sigil. That is my third wish.”

  Epilogue

  WAVES OF HEAT ROSE FROM THE TARMAC AND THE AIR shimmered, an iridescent mirage. Nalia stopped her pacing and shaded her eyes against the late-morning sun that glinted off the wings of Malek’s private jet. Planes took off and landed all around her, their lion roars inexplicably calming. She just might make it out of LA before the Ifrit caught up to her.

  Nalia’s former master stood beside the Gulfstream, giving last-minute instructions to his harried pilot. Malek had fully recovered from the drugs and was once again impeccable in an expensive suit and a pair of aviators, his hair slicked back. The only evidence of the violence the broken bond had done to his body was an unconscious motion he occasionally made against his heart. Zanari had been inside the plane since they’d arrived at the airport, sitting in a meditative pose as she homed in on the location of the Ifrit troops who’d come through the portal at dawn. Nalia checked her watch. Raif should have been back by now—worry gnawed at her as she thought of him alone in a city crawling with Ifrit.

  Not only was Raif drained from the unbinding and the hour he’d wasted looking for Zanari on the Pacific Coast Highway, he’d also spent half the morning in the Sahara. They’d be traveling as humans since Malek couldn’t evanesce, and he’d had to scout out the cave’s location in order to determine what country it was in, a journey that had required several hours in the desert. After returning to LA, Raif had then insisted on using the time Malek was spending organizing their trip to Morocco to get the word out about Jordif. They couldn’t leave without the other jinn knowing what the owner of Habibi was up to. But there was no punishment that could make up for what Jordif had done to Nalia and so many other jinn: he’d stolen years of her life and that of countless others. Nothing could erase the past.

  Nalia hadn’t known what it would be like to have her freedom back, but she hadn’t expected to feel worse. She’d been a free jinni for just over seven hours, yet she
felt as bound as ever by her vows and obligations. Malek’s wish was already exerting its power over her. Not unlike the summons, it controlled her body. If she took too long to grant the wish, it would begin punishing her. How, she didn’t know. Didn’t want to find out.

  “I don’t understand,” Raif had said, when she’d told him what Malek’s third wish was. “How can you honor our vow and his wish?”

  They hadn’t worded the vow right, she said. All Nalia had promised was to take Raif to the location of the ring, since it was impossible for her to give it to him. It wasn’t hers to give. Had they worded the vow properly—said Raif would be the only person she would take to the sigil—Malek would have had no choice but to come up with another wish.

  “How was I to know that anyone else was looking for the sigil—and Malek, of all people?” she’d said.

  Nalia had forgotten about human psychics who’d gotten their powers from jinn, either as wishes or favors. True seers were so few and far between, and yet they were out there. Of course Malek was consulting one. Why wouldn’t he? A man of his power and stature would have access to the very best services money could buy.

  I should have known. All those hours he’d spent in his study, researching maps and reading huge tomes written in long-dead languages. How could she have been so blind?

  Raif had closed his eyes, then taken her in his arms. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “He’s only a pardjinn. I might not be able to hurt him because of that damn amulet, but there’s no way he’ll get that sigil.”

  But traveling with Malek was already beyond complicated. Nalia had insisted on checking all his luggage and the plane itself for guns, which he, of course, had not been happy about. She’d gotten rid of the weapons he’d stashed, but Nalia didn’t trust her former master not to hurt the Djan’Urbis in some other way. It was hard enough already: Raif and Zanari couldn’t look in Malek’s eyes for fear he would hypersuade them, which made even the simplest communication difficult. Nalia was safe from his summons or commands, of course, but she didn’t have protection against all the psychological and emotional weapons at his disposal. Nalia and Malek had had three years to learn precisely how to push each other’s buttons, and they were both far too good at it. To say they were still adjusting to the new power dynamic in their relationship would be a vast understatement.