And he should really inform his mother, but then…maybe not. Shahrazad was too good of a model to ignore. The time to buck his land’s traditions was upon him. “I can’t agree until the Princess Shahrazad agrees,” he said finally.
The Raj looked at the winged mare again. “Can it understand us?” he asked, tugging on the stirrup of her exquisite saddle. She pinned her ears back in response.
“She can.”
“Do you agree to this? Will you let him service you?” the Raj asked her. “I’ve no right to ask anything of you, but I assume you’ve been groomed to rule behind the throne-room door. Will you let Prince Tahir impregnate you tonight in my stead?”
The princess simply looked at him, her expression too equine to read, and Tahir’s palms grew unaccountably damp.
“You can start now and yield to me in this,” the Raj said to her.
Tahir looked at her, sympathy for her running through him. She could only answer yes or no as she had no voice. And she’d been trained since birth to yield in all things.
But the pegaz, her dark eyes shining in the torchlight, bobbed her head, keeping her nose near her knees. Only a quick swish of her tail indicated irritation. Was the Raj horseman enough to recognize the signal?
Was he man enough to care?
The Raj patted her shoulder as if she were a dog and tucked the stirrup leather into the iron so it wouldn’t hit her side when she walked. “Good,” he said to her. “We’ll rule together. I should say, we’ll rule well together.”
And those words sent a pang of jealousy through Tahir, sharp as a spear. He might get to lay with the woman of his dreams, tumble her until she thought of no man but him—but he’d never get to rule with her at his side, forget this behind-the-throne-room-door nonsense.
The Raj strode out the magenta door with all the confidence of a man certain of his future, leaving Tahir alone in a chamber with a half-dead demon and an enchanted princess. When would he get it through his head that he was nothing but the stud horse in the stable?
14
Come to us… The plea echoed in her mind in a hateful way. She shook her head and snorted, her bejeweled reins falling to her feet. From Tahir’s hand, the shitani looked at her with its orange eyes and cackled. I’ll have you, it said.
Shahrazad turned away from the demon. She might be trapped in horse form, but she knew what needed to be done, even if Prince Tahir seemed stricken. They needed the magician—but not for Shahrazad’s sake. As long as the Raj and the Sultan made their alliance, did it matter if she shifted into pegaz form by day?
Tahir on the other hand needed the loathsome thaumaturge. If she and Tahir saved his sister from the magician, maybe they could stop the shitani from invading the Land of the Sun—without serving in her stead.
After watching the magician’s seductions and machinations, Shahrazad would never follow in her path. The shitani needed to be quelled, without a doubt, but not by destroying people, not by reducing them to their worst. She thought of the Raj and his pathetic love for a person who didn’t exist. Shahrazad would not sacrifice her soul to rule the shitani, not if another way existed.
Be our queen. The words hissed in her head. Be our Dark Queen and we’ll love you…. Come to me…Come to us. We love you. We adore you. The demon in Tahir’s hand cackled.
She ignored the voices as she would a madman, and she stuck her nose in Tahir’s pocket, seeking comfort. Oh, he smelled so good to her. Cleaned of the shitani spit, he smelled delicious.
“I can sense her, but I can’t place her,” Tahir said, perhaps thinking she was looking for the magician. “We need to find her.”
She sniffed. The morning wind held a faint perfume that might belong to the magician. Could she smell as far as the Cavern of the Sixty Thieves?
“God’s eyes,” Tahir said as the magician’s odor rolled through her nose and into her brain. She was too caught up in the sensation of the fragrance to see what had Tahir’s attention. The odor was just so odd.
What a strange flavor the man—no, the woman—had. Yes, she smelled male essence. She smelled that clearly. But then that female scent wafted through it, too. And the perfume was more than just female scent—the magician had been ovulating. Or maybe just finished ovulating.
“Princess Shahrazad,” Tahir said, interrupting her. “Do you see that?” Tahir asked. In the long shadows of the early morning light, her equine eyes had difficulty finding recognizable patterns. Dawn sunlight drenched the sand.
“She wants us to find her,” he said. “She’s probably in the Cavern of Sixty Thieves.”
She nodded, making her forelock float through the air.
“Should we go?” he asked. She turned her face out the window, closed her eyes, and inhaled. She could smell the magician—and she was closer than the demons. She reared up so her hooves balanced on the brick sill and looked at Tahir, who needed no second invitation. He gathered the reins and mounted.
For a heartbeat, she looked out the window and doubted. What if she simply plummeted to the ground? But then she leaped…and soared. The momentary pleasure of the cool morning air beneath her wings permeated her every thought.
Her wings whispered through the morning air as they flew. “This may be a trap,” he said.
Shahrazad huffed, wishing she could speak. If this were a trap—and it probably was—they could do no less than to go. They could do no less than let her marriage to the Raj continue. No matter what their fate was, she could no more lie down and let this terrible play roll out than she could spread her legs for the shitani.
The demon in his hand cackled. We will have you, Princess Shahrazad. You will love us.
Shahrazad tossed her head to clear the voices, but it didn’t help. As they flew closer to the Amr Mountains, their voices grew louder and more insistent.
Come home to us, the shitani cackled in her head. Come home now.
“We’re almost there.” Tahir stroked her neck. “We’re very close if she’s in the cavern.”
And he didn’t need to say more, because the magician’s scent filled the air around her, beckoning her. Almost without thought she tilted her wings, and the ground grew closer.
And in an instant, what she smelled changed dramatically.
For a moment she thought Tahir’s scent had wrapped around the magician’s—the fragrance smelled so much like his own. But then she realized that the scent truly resembled Tahir’s, save it was feminine. How could his scent be in two places at once?
At first she thought the magician’s evil thaumaturgy caused the juxtaposition, but then she realized the scent belonged to his sister. His sister was below.
“Do you see that?” Tahir asked, pointing toward a rocky outcrop. In the long shadows of the morning light, her equine eyes had difficulty finding recognizable patterns. She saw several spiny cacti through the dawn light. Likewise, the isolated rocks made sense. But were those shadows simply caused by the edges of the boulders, or was something crawling over them?
She snorted in consternation.
“Can you see who it is?” Tahir asked, his voice thick with emotion.
She swooped toward the puzzling shadows—and smelled shitani, several of them. They were gathered around the woman—and it was a woman. And the thick gardenia scent told her they were licking their victim.
Plumes of sand poured into the morning air as she landed. Within two strides, she stood next to the captive, and the sight horrified her.
She was naked, her arms tied to stakes above her head and the legs spread, her ankles tied to more stakes. The magician’s fragrance swirled around her, diffuse as the rare summer cloud. The captive’s hair and skin were dark, but Shahrazad couldn’t identify the colors with her equine eyes. She could smell desire, though—and gardenias. She looked closer.
One shitani licked the woman’s bare toes, making them invisible, while a second demon lovingly ran its disgusting tongue over the woman’s delicate wrist. Her hand was already gone, vanished in the coa
t of saliva.
Submit, our queen. We will love you. You are more lovely than this one. You are so fertile and ripe. The demon at the woman’s wrist looked up at Shahrazad as the words floated through her mind. Its orange eyes glittered. We will delight and cherish you. Look how pleased this queen is.
Without thought, Shahrazad dove toward the closest shitani and lashed at it with her hooves. Her foot hit bone, and she heard a crunching noise, smelled blood. The thud it gave as it slammed against a boulder sent a surge of glad power through her veins. She leaped toward the second shitani, planning to slaughter it, to smash its blood into the powdery sand, but Tahir touched the reins for the first time.
“Stop,” Tahir called, pulling her back but just slightly. “Princess, stop.”
The unscathed demon skittered toward the shadows as she chased it—but she didn’t pummel it, not yet. She’d been trained to obey, and obey she would.
“I know this work,” Tahir growled from her back. “That woman is no innocent victim. She’s not my sister—no matter what she looks like. The magician did this.”
She wanted to ask how he knew this, but he leaped from her back and picked up a small jar sitting near the captive’s wrists. He left a small scraper sitting in the sand. “Badra,” he spat. “She’s harvesting invisibility.”
Shahrazad couldn’t smell the magician any longer, not exactly. Delicate plumes of her perfume occasionally wafted toward her from the south, but she wasn’t here. The fragrance that had been so thick moments ago was gone. With difficulty, Shahrazad focused her equine gaze on the woman. Her eyes were rolled back in pleasure, and she didn’t seem to realize that Shahrazad herself had incapacitated one of the demons.
In fact, the free shitani crept back toward the woman’s wrist, its tongue extended like a man dying of thirst in the desert. A strange cackling noise came from it as it approached the woman, its orange eyes locked on Shahrazad’s.
We love you, Princess, it said. Become one with us.
Quick as a snake, Tahir lashed his fist out and caught the thing. Now he held two living demons in his fist. The shitani near the boulder chose that moment to start squirming, and Tahir retrieved that one as well.
Save us, beloved queen, she heard in her head. All three shitani in Tahir’s hand pleaded with her. Save us!
She wanted to crush the awful things beneath her hooves, felt certain Tahir would feel the same if he knew what they said to her. But he was ignorant of the havoc they wreaked in her mind. Instead, he started shaking his sister’s shoulder with his booted toe.
“Badra,” he snarled to the bound woman. “Badra! Get up now, and quit the act.”
Shahrazad finally understood that he thought the woman at their feet was the magician. That’s why he didn’t want to kill the demons. Maybe he thought she deserved them. Or that she still controlled them.
But her nose knew the truth—the magician wasn’t near here. This woman was his sister.
As Tahir shook his sister more violently, Shahrazad gently took his shirt between her equine teeth and tugged.
We love you, she heard, her face so close to the demons she could smell their flowered breath. Set us free and be our queen. Rule us! Bear our king!
Without meaning to, she pulled too hard and Tahir flew toward her, his shirt ripping. “God’s eyes,” he said, anger thickening his voice. “Stop it. Whatever you think, that is not my sister—that’s the magician. I’ve seen her do this trick before.” He turned toward her, fury darkening his face. “In fact, that’s how I met you.”
Shahrazad couldn’t say a word, and although she willed understanding into his head, he couldn’t hear it. With his expression intent on his sister, he kicked the ropes that held her ankles. The bristly ties scraped across her bared flesh. The woman moaned again, although Shahrazad doubted it was in pleasure.
Closing her eyes against the demons’ gaze, Shahrazad grabbed the fabric between Tahir’s shoulders and pulled him away from the woman.
“That’s not my sister,” Tahir snapped, shoving her equine shoulder.
She wasn’t big in pegaz form, but she was bigger than he was. Despite the vehemence of his push, she merely stumbled a few steps in the sand, but she was shocked at his loss of control.
However, it wasn’t her dismay that brought him to his senses. He did that on his own. With a horrified expression on his face, he said, “I beg your pardon, Princess Shahrazad. I—” The demon in his hand cackled, and it sounded just like laughter.
But the woman on the ground started to moan again, her pleasure obvious as a shitani lapped her breast, curving lovingly around a nipple. The warm scent of gardenias floated through the air, incongruously pretty given the ugliness of the shitani and what they were doing to Kalila.
But then Shahrazad realized that these were additional demons. Where had the shitani come from? How many more lurked in the shadows?
“Let it lick her,” Tahir snarled at her. “We’ll collect the saliva, use it ourselves.”
Save us, our queen, the shitani in his hands beseeched her. Save us!
And suddenly, Shahrazad was tired of being told what to do. She didn’t want to save the demons; she didn’t want to wait and collect spit. This woman wasn’t the magician, no matter how much Tahir protested otherwise, and she didn’t deserve the punishment she was taking.
We’ll make you so happy, our queen, the voices cackled. We love you. We love all queens.
“Stay away from her,” Tahir warned her, perhaps sensing a change in her body language. “She’s dangerous.”
But she’d had enough. With an earsplitting equine shriek, she snaked her head toward Tahir and crushed a demon’s skull between her powerful teeth. Brains and goo erupted over Tahir’s hand, and its blood rushed over her tongue, making her want to gag—but she wasn’t finished.
Ignoring Tahir’s shouts and the pleas in her head from the demons, she reared onto her hind legs. Pointing her hooves like daggers, she pounced onto the shitani near the woman. It died instantly, crushed into a mound of bloody pulp in the sand. Overlong fingers twitched and quivered as the last of their life drained from them.
No! Our queen, no! The demons pleaded for mercy, but her heart was cold. Two more demons remained, throttled in Tahir’s hand, and she lunged for them. She’d kill them!
But an earsplitting shriek from the woman at her feet stopped her.
Pulling herself up short, Shahrazad stopped, her hooves churning the sand. The shitani had dropped their thrall over Tahir’s sister, and it looked like the woman thought Shahrazad was going to smash her.
Shahrazad stepped back, trying to alleviate the captive’s fears, but as the woman continued to scream incoherently, Shahrazad saw that a large portion of the woman’s body was now invisible. She writhed so much that her wrists began to bleed against the ties, the blood visible where the flesh was not.
“Badra,” Tahir said to her, kicking the ropes again. “Stop. We’re not fooled.”
The sheer panic on the woman’s face was more than Shahrazad could bear. No one should have to be as afraid as this woman.
She leaped behind Tahir and shoved him hard with her shoulder, right into his sister. Maybe he’d recognize her smell, even with his human nose.
His feet tangled in the ropes, and his face landed in the sand, a hand’s breadth from the woman’s. The demons in his hand screeched as their heads knocked together with an audible thump.
“What is wrong with you?” he demanded, and Shahrazad couldn’t tell if he spoke to her or his sister.
God’s eyes! What could she do to tell this man that this was most certainly his sister? She couldn’t bear it any longer. The heartbeat she found that magician, she’d make her—
Dark Mother, she heard.
Damn them all, she thought. She threw herself into the air and bucked like a wildcat rode her back. She couldn’t bear the saddle anymore. She belonged to no one. Not Tahir. Not Badra. Not her father. She bucked again and twisted. The saddle flew off, hitti
ng a boulder with a thud.
We love you! Be ours! Rule us!
“Shahrazad!” Tahir called, finally leaving his sister’s side. “What are you doing? Stop that.”
But she wasn’t finished. She wasn’t going to be bound by one more rule, not a saddle, not a bridal. She’d let no man’s hand rule her again.
With an angry squeal, she threw her head between her knees and rubbed the headstall off from behind her ears. It slithered to the sand like a dead snake.
As the bit fell from her mouth, the erotic tingling she associated with the change began. Her hooves went numb, and her legs vibrated with odd energy. She blinked and the world shifted from black and white. The deep brown of the surrounding boulders contrasted against the aching blue of the midmorning sky, and the overripe cacti blossoms climbing over their verdant flesh shocked her eyes.
“Prince Tahir,” she said, anger making her voice quiver. “That is without a doubt your sister, and if you do one more hurtful thing to her, I will—”
“You’re not a pegaz,” he said, amazement etched on his features. “How’d you break the spell?”
“A fit of rage?” She had no patience for this. “I have no idea. Now help that woman stand and get her cleaned. This is not right. What you’re doing to her is not right.”
She watched him look down at his sister, his shocked expression giving way to something more giving.
“Tahirdro,” Kalila said, her eyes locked on his. Shahrazad watched her try to lower her arms, but the cruel ropes held them in place. “Tahirdro, is that you? Really?”
He jumped back as if he’d seen a snake. “Badra,” he snarled, falling to his knees, “this is beneath even you.”
“Don’t be a fool, Tahir,” Shahrazad said. “My pegaz nose doesn’t lie. You smell exactly like each other. She is your sister.”
“It’s dark magic,” he said. “Badra concocted the smell to trick you. Just like she concocted the words in those books. The magician spins nothing but lies.”
“Fool—”
In that heartbeat, another shitani leaped off a boulder onto the woman’s chest with its unearthly cackle. When its orange eyes met the woman’s, she acquiesced, falling again into its hypnotic thrall.
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