Jinni's Wish (Kingdom, #4)

Danika toyed with the edge of her fingernail. “Why you hate me. Why you direct such venom at me when I never asked to take you.” She paused for a moment, as if waiting for him to speak, say something. But there’d be no words from him.

What could he say anymore? Though the memories were fresh and sometimes painful, it’d happened so long ago that it seemed pointless to care. Most days, he didn’t.

She shrugged. “I asked Betty,” she supplied, “and I’m fairly certain she’s got you dead to rights, as my Alice would say.”

Scoffing, Jinni laughed. “Betty? Gerard’s woman? Gerard has the mental capacity of vermin, what could she possibly--”

Danika narrowed her eyes, a terrible blue glow infused the depths of her cobalt orbs and her lips set into a tight grimace. “Mind your tongue,” she hissed, “I’ll not hear a foul word uttered against the girl. And aye, she did have some most insightful thoughts as to our,” she stressed, “current state of affairs.”

“Then by all means,” he genuflected, “do share, starflower.”

Refusing to rise to the bait, she ignored him. “You’re not mad at me. You’re mad at yourself. Mad at what you did. What you allowed to happen.”

Each uttered phrase was worse than a blow to his heart. Jinni couldn’t help but flinch, nostrils flaring as the horrible truth clawed at his skull. He did not know Betty. How could she have such insight into his psyche? Just who were these women Danika had found for them?

Who was Paz?

His soul thumped as if it were the fluttering beat of a skipping heart.

Danika nodded. “Your silence is answer enough. She is correct.”

Jinni turned his face aside as the memories, those awful, hated memories, tried to break free of the darkness he’d stuffed them in the night he’d been banished from his Eastern realms.

A cool ripple of power brushed against his cheek. He turned to look at Danika, allowing his plea, his pain, his grief, but mostly his fear, to reflect in his gaze.

“Betty is a doctor of the mind. Feelings.”

It was hard for him to refrain from snorting, but Gerard’s Belle had exposed him. Somehow, she’d exposed him without ever meeting him.

“She said you have to let the girl in.”

He closed his eyes. The girl. Paz. The dark-haired, dark-skinned beauty who shimmered with a pearlescent splendor. How was it that being in her presence could bring him such fear and excitement?

In centuries he hadn’t felt much of anything. Then he saw her, a strange woman in a strange land, and something terrible inside him quaked. A demon he thought he’d buried long ago.

“How can you say that to me?” he whispered. “You, who knows why I was ousted. I cannot trust again, Danika. I cannot allow her close. The last one cost me everything,” the last tailed off in a whisper so low he wasn’t sure he’d spoken it aloud.

He felt raw, like a jagged exposed nerve. Part of him wanted to rail and roar, demand his way. But another part, a shameful one, wanted to roll up into a ball in the corner and die. Jerking out of her reach, he once again paced the length of his cavernous chamber. If he continued to look her in the eye, continued to see the sorrow in her bright blue gaze, he’d do one or both.

“I will not go back to her. I will not go down this path again.”

Danika flitted in front of him, halting him with her hand. He didn’t have to stop. He could phase right through her now.

“You must. She is dying, Jinni.”

“Why? Tell me why? I am not a good man, Danika. You know my past. You know why I am here. Why subject her to me? Let her die. There is peace in death. I only envy that she can feel it so quickly.”

Her eyes were like cleavers, ripping through his words and exposing them for the wicked lie they were. To think of Paz dead, to think of that beautiful smile forever gone, made his insides hurt. He didn’t know her, but already he felt something. Curiosity, pleasure…

“A mortal ghost is like a delicate bloom. They need a tether, a reason for being, or else they vanish. I cannot bring her back if she does, your only hope for salvation and for meaning in this life is through her.”

“A woman cannot give me meaning.” The words were hollow and bitter, dripping with scorn.

He’d believed like Danika once. Believed he’d found his purpose within the arms of a doe-eyed temptress whose seductive ways had blinded him to her ruthless thirst for power and greedy ambition. He’d betrayed all he’d ever been, all he’d known for passion, only to discover in the end that her honeyed tongue had spun nothing but a silken web of lies.

Though his words spoke scorn, in his head he chanted for Danika to save him. To show him truth, purpose, life, to give him hope. He bit his lip, ache filling his throat with quiet despair.

She sighed. “She is your soul mate, of that I have no doubt. She will bring you back, but the choice is yours. She fades quickly, Jinni. Time is short, so you must choose.”

“Why is that golem there?” he asked before she could fade.