They led her through the streets to the sultan’s palace, which, at this time of night, glowed with a wraithlike quality, the red roses winding up the walls resembling bloody wounds. The courtyard inside was just as beautiful and terrible. Loulie felt ill as she gazed upon the unnatural white roses and the trees heavy with fruit, knowing they had been born of jinn blood. Everywhere she looked she saw excessive finery: sconces shaped like sunflowers, a fountain of twirling glass dancers, a garden hedged in by towering topiaries.
She was filled with disgust. How many jinn were killed to make this immortal garden?
They led her to a set of elaborate double doors, where a dozen soldiers crowded the corridor, yelling at each other while a bearded man in a turban—no doubt the qaid—barked orders. “What are you, cowards? We do not need the prince’s thieves. Get in there!”
“The jinn will kill us before we even raise our swords!”
“What of Prince Mazen!”
Loulie stared at the doors, perplexed. A jinn? No…
The raid leader strode ahead and demanded an explanation. Apparently, Prince Mazen had been possessed by a jinn and was wreaking havoc in the diwan. None of the guests could escape, and every soldier who entered had yet to return.
Loulie’s mind whirled with speculation. Was it the shadow jinn? Was the hunter the jinn had been searching for here? Was it Omar?
She cleared her throat. “Excuse me.”
The qaid and the raid leader paused to look at her. “Midnight Merchant,” the qaid said coolly. He glanced at the soldier beside her, at the bag of infinite space he carried. The moment he reached for it, Loulie instinctively stepped in front of him.
“Keep your hands off my bag. If you use my relics without paying for them”—she glowered at him—“you will be cursed to a slow and painful death.”
The qaid unceremoniously shoved her out of the way.
Loulie whirled to face him as the guards grabbed her from behind. “Try it, why don’t you? I’m the only one who knows how to use the magic in that bag. I alone can use those relics to save your sultan and his sons.”
She cringed when the qaid gave her a hard look. She was a damned fool! The sultan had nearly burned down a market to capture her, and now she was going to help him? But—Madinne would collapse without him. And Madinne was still home.
Besides, this would force the sultan into her debt.
The qaid relented, but the guards kept their weapons out and in sight as they unbound her hands. She reached into her bag to withdraw the orb, which she would need to navigate the darkness, then slid Qadir’s knife from her pocket and headed for the doors. The night had gone deadly quiet, and the only sound was the tapping of her pointed slippers on the floor.
At the doors, she faltered, wondering if she could do this without Qadir. Last time, she had nearly suffocated to death. She shook the thought from her head.
This time, things will be different. This time, I’m ready.
She gripped her knife and stepped into the dark.
11
LOULIE
The first thing Loulie saw when she entered the diwan was… nothing. The darkness was so complete it swallowed even the swaths of moonlight that ought to have illuminated the chamber. She was seized by the sudden urge to flee, even if it meant rushing back into the arms of her captors. She wasn’t a hero. She was simply a merchant with a knife and a glowing orb. What chance did she stand against a jinn who wielded shadows as a weapon?
But the doors slammed shut before she could retreat. She had just a few moments to panic before some invisible weight pushed down on her shoulders and forced her to the ground. Then her panic gave way to desperation, and she reacted on instinct, pressing her hands to the orb until it was bright enough to bring to light the invisible force.
She saw shadows. Strange, limb-like things that withdrew with a shriek when the light touched them. She stumbled to her feet as they shrank back, revealing the room that had been hidden moments before. Men and women squinted against the light and stared at her as if in a trance. The closer she drew to them, the more aware of their surroundings they seemed to become, until their eyes lit up with fear.
“Look out!” a man cried, and Loulie barely managed to turn in time to face the shadow shooting toward her. The moment it reached the light, it shivered and retreated. All around her, the darkness rippled and whispered.
When she turned toward the man who had warned her, she saw nothing. The darkness had again engulfed everything and everyone.
“Jinn!” Loulie held the orb up. The darkness barely pulled back. “Where are you, jinn?”
A laugh echoed behind her. A man’s laugh. “You did not learn your lesson the first time, human girl?” He stepped into the darkness. Though Loulie had never seen him in person, she knew immediately that it had to be Prince Mazen, for he was dressed in fine, rich clothing.
He shifted on his feet, and the shadows beneath him slowly stretched toward her, bleeding into the light. She stepped back. Once, twice, until she was walking backward, trying to put as much distance between herself and the possessed prince as possible. “Have you come again to ‘convince’ me?” The prince held out his arms, and the shadows surged forward, nipping at her heels. “You have no power here.”
She took another step back. Another and another—until she felt the cold press of the wall against her back. Prince Mazen drew close enough for her to make out his features. She saw his eyes—and stopped. She knew those eyes. The last time she’d seen them, they had been filled with innocent wonder.
“Yousef?”
The prince stopped in front of her. She thought she saw something pass over his face—fear or regret—before he smiled and said, “Yousef no more.”
“He’s not the one you want,” Loulie said with forced calm. Her hand was shaking, and it made the light quiver on the walls. “I told you before: he’s not a hunter.”
“No,” the jinn wearing the prince’s skin said. “He is not. He is, in fact, inconsequential.”
Inconsequential. The word was a strike of flint against her dark memories.
Loulie remembered her father, starry-eyed and full of laughter. Her mother, with her sly smiles and warm hugs. She remembered a knife against her throat, a man with a serpentine smile. You are all inconsequential, he had said.
Loulie breathed out softly. She forced herself to look into the prince’s eyes. “No life is inconsequential.” She didn’t know whom she was speaking to anymore. She only hoped that whoever it was would see the truth in her words.
“Oh?” the prince said dryly.
A strange thing happened then. The darkness in the room abated, giving way to a dusky gray. Loulie heard the shouts of an audience that had moments ago been trapped in the dark. She saw the prince quiver like a leaf in the wind, then collapse to his knees with a gasp.
His shadow rose up from the ground. It sharpened itself into a blade.
The world suddenly seemed too fast, and she, too slow. She cried out a warning, but the prince’s movements were sluggish. He looked up. Recognition flashed through his eyes.
And then the shadow stabbed him through the chest, and his eyes went wide with pain.
He collapsed silently to the ground as the shadow pulled back. Crimson pooled on the floor beneath him, and it seemed to Loulie that it was the only color in the room.
“I told you.” The jinn’s voice was everywhere and nowhere. “He is inconsequential.”
Loulie could feel the jinn watching her from the shadows, but she could not stop staring at the prince, willing him to move.
He did not.
Loulie heard screaming, but the sound seemed to come from a great distance. She did not realize the source of it until the sultan rushed to his son’s side and collapsed to his knees. He yelled Mazen’s name as he took his limp body into his arms.
Loulie could only stare on numbly. Is this… my fault?
The jinn lunged at her from the shadows as an angry stream of smoke. She filled Loulie’s sight, appearing before her as a crimson-eyed wraith. Loulie swept the blade through the smoky shape, but her knife hissed through empty air.