by Sara King
The magus’s breaths were slow and unsteady, the rise and fall of her naked, blistered back coming once every few minutes. She was obviously in too much pain to work her magus tricks, and, unlike a full wolf or an untouched Handmaiden, she healed slowly. Much faster and much more completely than a human, of course, but slowly, no longer powered by the demonic entity from the Third Realm that she had conquered, for in conquering it, she had freed herself of its crazed cycle, and thus its healing.
But she still carried the wolf’s magic in her veins, violating the Pact of Realms—however unwillingly—and thus his magus had therefore forfeited the healing power of her true nature, as well. Forever, because he certainly wasn’t going to remove the Third Lander’s curse. ‘Aqrab might have done it two millennia ago, had she done something other than lift her perfect chin in cold imperiousness and try to demand it, but now, after she had poisoned him for helping her, ‘Aqrab would rather hack off his legs at the knee than give her that satisfaction. After this, carting around a bag of bones for eternity was looking a more and more likely compromise.
At least the gods’ laughter fell on both of them. Him, a djinni bound to an ice-queen who could never know passion, and her, a Fury trapped for centuries as a lowly wolf, unable to kill the one who sullied her at every opportunity. And he did sully her at every opportunity. Bound to her as he was, cursed with a djinni’s passion and penchant for risk, it was a temptation ‘Aqrab could not resist. And every time he’d kissed her hand or gently traced her graceful curves, she’d drowned him in shadow for the effort. He supposed that, over the course of the last three millennia, he had harbored the hope that the great Fury would come to realize that the touch of a man was not unclean, that someday her icy façade would crack and allow him to show her the true pleasures of life. Yet it was a hope that, over three thousand years of haughtiness and disdain, had gradually begun to fade.
Now, after saving her life only to be rewarded with shadow, it had finally flickered out. She would not change. The Furies were just that. Angels of vengeance, devoid of love or emotion, unable to see anything beyond cold, impassionate logic. And he was trapped with her, forced to do her bidding until one of them finally folded.
Yes, this definitely reeked of the gods. ‘Aqrab had long ago learned to recognize that particular stench, though he hadn’t the slightest clue what the great ones would want with a simple djinni. That he was being punished for Ji’fah seemed so utterly ridiculous to him that he was close to swearing a blood-oath against the Lord of War himself. He had saved millions, yet he was tethered to a woman who tortured him for touching her. It was a cruelty beyond comprehension.
A few feet away, he heard the magus shift again, then whimper.
That she had the audacity to whimper, after what she had just done to him, left ‘Aqrab’s age-old rage bubbling up from within. Carefully, ‘Aqrab rolled onto his other side, until he was facing her, fury powering him, now. The magus stiffened at his movement, her tiny body going stark still in the moonlight, the beauty of her icy flesh now marred by horrendous boils and skin that had sloughed off to the muscle beneath. He felt a wave of satisfaction, seeing that. Her perfect body, that she had used to taunt him for three thousand years, was no more a weapon to her now than was the moss and melted clothing clinging to her wounds.
‘Aqrab pushed his senses outwards as he sat up. Over the hours he’d lain there, helpless, his tendrils to the firelands had slowly regained their feeling, and now he was ready to twist back, forever. He would take the arrogant little monster with him, and he would never have to feel her scorn or her poison again. Finally, he had reached his limit. Finally, after so many years of undeserved contempt and spite, he had felt something break under the strain. He was a poet, never having taken a soul in his life, but she had finally pushed him too far. He would endeavor to make it fast, bring her to a quick end, but it was finally time for him to find a way to reclaim the life that had been wrenched away from him three millennia ago.
He inched closer to her, knowing he would have to make it fast, before she realized what he was doing…
The magus turned her head just far enough to look up at him, wrinkling the crisped skin along her neck. And, in that moment, ‘Aqrab saw something he’d never seen before in the magus’s liquid brown eyes.
Fear.
Fear, and hopelessness. And a longing for death.
It so mirrored his own internal agonies that he stayed his hand for a moment, shock pulsing like icy waves through him as he met her eyes.
She knows, ‘Aqrab realized, horrified. She knows what I’m about to do, and she welcomes it. He stared at her, so utterly shocked he forgot to breathe. For so long, he had seen nothing but coldness and disdain in the Sword Maiden’s eyes. He had come to think that fear, like its counterpart of trust and passion, were emotions that a Fury simply could not feel, a physical impossibility built into her very nature, like a sightless vole trying to picture the sun.
Yet here he was seeing fear. He was sure of it. Something within her icy façade had cracked. She lay exposed before him, naked in more ways than one.
For long heartbeats, neither of them moved. On her belly, the wolf trembled, shuddering with every breath as she looked up at him. “Do it,” she whispered, her voice a rasp against dried, withered lips. “End it, ‘Aqrab. I tire.”
It was her words that made his decision for him. So haughty before, now they were bare and pitiful, barely alive. Pleading.
“Make your wish,” ‘Aqrab reluctantly muttered. “I can heal your wounds.”
She let out a low, wretched moan and looked away, but not before ‘Aqrab saw tears. Again, he was taken aback. Never before had he seen the Fury brought so low. Even cursed, even without her wings and her ability to kill, she had always acted as if he were perpetually kneeling before her at that oasis, her sword about to sever his spine. She had spent three thousand years refusing to so much as let him catch her if she stumbled, shunning him outright, doing her best to pretend he didn’t exist. He had always assumed it was because she thought of him as she did all men—a lesser being, unclean by virtue of the flesh that hung at his groin. Yet seeing her façade stripped bare, he wondered if it was because she resented their condition as much as he did. He wondered if all she really wanted was for it to end.
“Mon Dhi’b,” ‘Aqrab said softly, “I swear to you. The oath of a djinni. I will not monkeypaw. I will not twist your words. Speak your third wish, and it shall be granted, and we can end this.”
Her face buried in the mosses, the magus’s body shook with a sob and she let out a sound that stung his heart.
Kaashifah lay facedown in the mosses, waiting for the djinni to wrench her back into the Fourth Lands. She had seen it in his face and had known her time had come.
But then he’d hesitated. And he’d said that. Just make her wish. As if she could trust him to make that final wish, after he had twisted the words of her first two into incomprehensible tatters of her original request. If she gave him that last wish, it would free him. It would sever that cord between them and she would no longer be able to defend herself with shadow. She couldn’t free him. Not when he had every reason to stay behind and take that which made her a Fury.
Kaashifah sucked in a breath, enduring the burning in her lungs, and let it out in long, hopeless sound, the sound of an animal too long in a trap.
He touched her, then, his big, unclean hand on her shoulder, evoking within her both a disgust at the contact and wracking waves of pain from her ruined skin. Closing her eyes against the shame, Kaashifah waited for him to take her home with him, welcoming her death.
But beneath his hot palm came a wash of cold, a balm against the pain. As Kaashifah was trying to comprehend that, he rumbled, “Someday, little wolf, you will allow me to free us from this.” And then, like a mirage, he slipped away, leaving her skin feeling cool and blessedly whole in his passage.
Kaashifah drew a hesitant breath. Her lungs still ached, but the searing fire was g
one. He’d healed her, as much as the Fourthlander Law allowed without use of a wish. She sat up slowly, marveling at that. “‘Aqrab?” she asked softly. Her words were still a tight rasp in her throat, but at least her breath no longer tasted like ashes. “Are you there?”
The djinni did not show himself.
Kaashifah felt an old rush of panic, not knowing whether the djinni was simply back in his homeland and therefore out of ear-shot, or spying on her from the half-realm, ignoring her summons completely. “‘Aqrab!” she cried.
She received no response. Of course not. Why would he, when it set her off-balance to wonder?
Gingerly, Kaashifah got to her feet. Her body still throbbed where her skin had been crisp and smoking before, but at least it was no longer weeping like a broiled roast. She reached up and touched her Lord’s talisman—the silver pendant of a winged sword, the symbol of her Lord’s Chosen—and closed her eyes as she worked her magics.
Healing the body was much like controlling a moon-kissed’s shift. It required concentration and focus, neither of which a magus had in ready supply when she was laying in a puddle of her own body-juices, her skin bubbled and peeling like a spitted haunch of goat. Tapping into the massive lines of energy moving through the earth beneath her feet with a tendril of her mind, she began drawing the necessary energy for her healing. The rearranging and repairing of her body’s cells only took a moment to complete. The djinni, strange as his gesture had been, had done most of the work.
Since when did ‘Aqrab give her anything without a catch?
Kaashifah was still worrying over that when an icy September breeze raised goosebumps along her chest and legs. She was, she noticed for the first time, naked. Aside from her Lord’s pendant, the entire backside of her clothes had disintegrated under the heat of the Fourth Lander sun.
Again, Kaashifah felt that ancient humiliation, the knowledge that she had lost her power the same day she’d allowed a man to touch her. A sword-maiden. Married to war. Angel of vengeance. Fury of Greek and Roman lore. And a man had taken it away in an instant, with a single touch. It had not been a coincidence, she was sure.
May you never kill.
In that one, horrible moment of failure, her god had forsaken her. Perhaps it was the djinni curse, spoken in a panicked babble. Perhaps it was his touch, light and fast and desperate. Either way, she would never be whole again, because both of them knew he would never rescind his deathbed wish.
And the bastard loved to remind her of it. He relished touching her with his eyes, corrupting her further whenever he got the opportunity. He was probably there now, watching from the half-realm, enjoying her body while he caressed himself, taking pleasure in knowing he had spoiled one of his enemies’ greatest warriors forever.
Yet naked was the least of her problems.
“‘Aqrab!” she snapped, glancing out at the looming forest around her. “Our friends need help. Where did you leave me?”
The djinni did not respond.
Kaashifah caught herself on the peeling white trunk of a birch tree and tried to get her bearings. The moon had come and gone, leaving the light of dawn on the horizon. Frost crisped the ground under her toes. Kaashifah shivered, goosebumps prickling her still-sensitive skin. She tentatively sniffed the air, but after locking the wolf into a cage in the back of her mind, she did not have the adeptness at it that one in the full throes of the Third-Lander possession had. All she could tell, from the scents of the air, was that she was in the forest. Deep in the forest. “‘Aqrab, please!”
The djinni wasn’t going to appear, she realized, unless she summoned him. And, at this point, she would rather pretend he was back in his homerealm, not have him there, looming over her, that hardness at his groin, that hateful sneer on his face, that knowledge that he had been one of the only men to ever spoil a Priestess of Horus. Out of millions, he had done it. And all it had taken was his touch. Such power, whisked away by the touch of a man. He reveled in that fact, and now he knew. He knew how much it scared her. Gods be merciful, he’d finally seen.
And then, instead of doing her the favor of letting her die, he’d touched her again and renewed the torture. Damn him. Touched by a man. Not once, but countless times, over three millennia.
She knew of the djinni passions. Their kind were famous for it. It was part of their very natures, the very creative fires that fueled their magics flowed through their bodies like water through a river. Over the years, the djinni had found excuses, here and there, to touch her. She’d punished him each time, but it hadn’t stopped him. He had continued corrupting her, trying to wear her down, to leave her too tainted to regain her wings, should both her Third Lander curse and his deathbed wish ever be lifted.
That fact left her trembling, and she closed her eyes against the unbidden tears. Filthy and unclean were only two of the feelings rushing through her, as she stood with her body exposed to him, naked as a slave on the block, with no way to cover herself.
Kaashifah reached up again and grasped the silver pendant at her throat. It had been so worn by her fingers over the years that its original form of a winged sword was now hard to decipher through the polish of many years of use.
Lord of war, she thought, trembling, please release me from this. I fought, I failed. Please let me die, or let him fall, or free us both. But please. I can’t go on like this any longer.
She felt a brush of wind that rattled the treetops above, but if her master heard her, he remained a ringing silence in her ears.
Tears burning her eyes, Kaashifah lowered her hand from her throat, releasing the lump of metal and dropping her forehead to the trunk of the northlander tree. Sometimes, just sometimes, she almost thought she could hear her master after a prayer. This time, however, she got nothing but the wind sliding through the branches overhead.
How could her Lord have allowed this to happen? Three thousand years of bondage to a beast. It was beyond her ability to understand. Had she somehow mistaken a command? Had she shamed him somehow? What reason did he have to leave her trussed thus?
She knew she must have done something wrong, to be punished so. And now that the djinni knew her secret… He had seen her fear. Her final card had been played, and he had retreated to his homeland to plan his next move.
A move, she knew, that would be so humiliating for her that it would be a blessing to die now, rather than to face it. Kaashifah didn’t think she could stand to see that leering mockery in his eyes. That pity. That smirk. She knew, deep in her soul, that he was going to touch her again. Whether it came in the next minute or the next year, the djinni had found her weakness. Her terror. And, now that he could wield that last weapon against her, she wasn’t sure she would be able to stop it. Fear, when uncaged, was a magus’s unmaking.
And he’d seen what she’d successfully kept hidden for three millennia. Damn him to Anubis’s filthy blade, the djinni had finally won their duel. What had started three thousand years before had ended tonight, when her pain had scraped away the protective layer of her façade, leaving the insides of her soul exposed for his pleasure. Now it was merely a game for him, a means to pass the time until she finally folded, too exhausted to fight him any longer.
She knew what he would take from her, too. The last thing she had left. The only thing that remained of the once-great Maiden of the Sword.
Once she’d regained a semblance of control over herself, Kaashifah lifted her head from the tree and considered her surroundings through the hazy glint of tears. She had all the time in the world to agonize over the djinni and his torments. Right now, she needed to get back to the Sleeping Lady before it was too late.
Chapter 3: A Djinni’s Dangerous Game
‘Aqrab watched the magus from the relative safety of the half-realm, analyzing what he was seeing in this new light.
Fear. It had only been for a moment, only a brief flash in her eyes, but it had shattered everything he’d thought he’d known about the nature of a Fury. He now knew, without a doubt,
that they could feel emotion. And, irritatingly, it had renewed his hope all over again. Even the wisest djinni could not resist taking a risk, and this had given him a whole new game upon which to throw his dice. Even now, his heart ached at the idea of melting a hole in that icy façade, digging back down to the humanity beneath and teaching this merchant of death the joys of life.
Again, that rational part of him gave warning, told him that he would have better luck taking a viper to bed with him than a Fury, but he was beyond curious, now. He needed to gain her trust. That single flicker of emotion had left him awash in possibilities, risks, and wagers that he could not ignore.
She called for him, but eventually gave up when he stayed out of sight, hoping she’d take it to mean he had returned to his home. As he watched, his little mistress once again reached up to that pendant she so loved and closed her eyes in prayer. He saw her luscious lips move, saw her delicate brow knot with concentration.
Then, after a long minute, she dropped her hand and lowered her head to the tree, obviously fighting the very same despair that ‘Aqrab himself felt, no longer bothering to hide it from him.
A Fury could feel emotion. With this new piece to the puzzle, so many things were unlocking for him, all the ages of hardship suddenly taking on a new meaning. His first impulse was to use it, to harness her despair and force her to make that last wish, then twist it back on her and disappear.
But ‘Aqrab’s second impulse was much more interesting. The djinni were a passionate clan. The power of creation flowed through their veins, and carnal desires were woven deep within their souls, a part of their very being. The idea of taming this little vixen suddenly made him so hard he throbbed. After all, Fury law clearly stated that an angel of vengeance must remain pure in order to keep her sword, and he was certain she’d rather cut off his head than allow his own sword to pierce her. But while the Handmaidens of Ares were figures made of myth and legend, so was a djinni, and he had myths and legends of his own. And in those myths, there spoke of a way to conquer a particularly fiery soul in such a way that they could be brought to the Fourth Lands unharmed.