“You are too softhearted for your own good,” the jinn said softly. “How will you seek revenge on the assassins in black with such a fragile heart?”
Loulie swung the blade wildly through the air. With every motion, she became aware of a familiar burning sensation in her lungs. She did not care. She kept slicing and screaming until her body was shaking with fatigue. Memories of blood and stars and corpses flashed before her eyes. I am not fragile, she thought. I am not fragile. I am not fragile.
But the shadows were persistent. They grabbed her arms and legs and threw her to the ground. There was a loud crack, and the light from the orb blinked and died. The room went a nightmare pitch black. Loulie scratched at the ground. Grasped her knife with numb fingers. She wouldn’t die here; she refused to die here—
GET UP. A deep voice, familiar as her own heartbeat, thudded through her mind.
Loulie gasped and opened her eyes. She saw Qadir’s knife lying beside her, blazing with blue fire. Red eyes blinked at her from the blade’s surface.
I found you, Qadir said.
The flames on the blade snapped gently at her fingers, urging her into action. Loulie drew slowly to her feet. She spared a glance at the orb, which lay shattered on the floor, then faced the jinn, who stared at her with wide eyes.
“Impossible.” The jinn stepped back. “That blade—how did you get that blade?”
Move, Qadir said, and though he was not in the room with her, his magic—his presence—gave her the confidence to act. Loulie tore at the darkness until she cleared a path, and then she fell on the shadow jinn with her blade.
The jinn caught her strike against a wall of solidified shadow. Loulie gritted her teeth against the shock of the impact. She tightened her grip on the knife and threw her weight into the stab. The fire coating the blade’s edge flared, and the obstacle peeled away like burning parchment.
But the jinn had already fled.
Behind you, Qadir snapped.
Loulie whirled just in time to catch the edge of a razor-sharp darkness against her knife. The jinn’s glowing eyes flashed with surprise. It was enough of an opening for Loulie to change her deflection into a parry and throw her opponent off balance. The jinn withdrew, breathing heavily. She wasn’t a warrior, Loulie realized. Just a puppeteer trying to command wild magic.
Good. The fire on her blade cackled, as if with amusement. That makes two of us.
They fought—fire against shadows, dark barriers against flaming dagger—until the flaming knife charred away the jinn’s magic bit by bit and the room’s color returned. The shadow jinn fell back, her body flickering in and out like a dying flame.
But though she was fading, Loulie could tell she was not wounded. The fire could make her disappear, but it could not kill her. The jinn, reduced to nothing but a faint shape in the moonlight, began to disappear into the walls. It was exactly like what had happened in the place of worship. Loulie hesitated. The blade grew warm in her hands.
But before she could decide whether to pursue, she was distracted by a wink of silver in the dark. A sharp, glimmering object that shot past her head and caught the jinn in the chest. She released an agonized, bloodcurdling scream that made the air tremble.
Loulie spun to search for the attacker. She froze when she saw Omar bin Malik striding out of the gloom. He flashed a smile as he brushed past her toward the vanishing jinn, who had solidified into a beautiful woman with rivers of darkness streaming down her back. Blood dribbled down her lips when she coughed. “You…” She gasped when Omar pulled out the knife. “Impossible.” The jinn staggered away. “You—I killed you!”
Omar’s grin was a feral flash of teeth. “You, kill the King of the Forty Thieves? What a conceited notion.”
Loulie glanced at him. At the strange black knife. He made her tangible. But how?
The shadow jinn attempted to flee, but she was too slow.
Omar stabbed her. Again and again and again. Until her screams faded and died.
Loulie turned away and closed her eyes. She knew, even without looking, that the jinn’s body would crumble to dust and her blood would seep into the tiles and coax nature into being where there had been none before.
“Get out!” Her eyes shot open at the sultan’s command. “All of you, out!”
Both guests and guards fled the room, stumbling toward the doors as if they’d just woken from a dream. Loulie remained. Now that everyone had left, she could see the sultan again. He and a young man with hazel eyes leaned over a bloodied Prince Mazen.
The fire in her blade disappeared as she ventured a step forward.
“Omar!” The sultan didn’t even see her. “What are you doing, boy? The blood!”
Prince Omar turned stiffly toward the dead jinn. Loulie watched as he sliced off one of his sleeves and soaked it in jinn blood. Understanding flared within her as he crouched beside Prince Mazen and squeezed the fabric over his brother’s fatal wound. When Prince Mazen began to struggle, the sultan and the hazel-eyed man held him down. This process was repeated until the prince’s wound was sealed and he lay limp on the floor. Unconscious, but not dead.
The Elixir of Revival, the masses called it. The miracle of jinn blood, Loulie thought. Her stomach twisted with revulsion. And relief.
The sultan pressed his forehead to his son’s. The hazel-eyed man—Hakim, the bastard prince, Loulie realized—clasped his shaking hands together in prayer. But Omar was not looking at Mazen or the rest of his family. He was looking at her. He never looked away, not even when he called the qaid to remove her from the room. Outside, she reflected that it was not his gaze that had been disarming, but the anger darkening his eyes.
12
MAZEN
Mazen dreamed he was being stabbed to death by his brother. He was in the palace diwan, and the room was empty of people save for Omar, who stalked toward him with a black knife. Mazen held up his hands. He begged. He screamed. But there was no compassion in Omar’s eyes, just a terrible, all-encompassing hatred. He stabbed Mazen in the throat. In the chest. Again and again and again and…
Mazen woke in a panic, heart tight and body trembling. The minute he opened his eyes, sunlight assaulted his senses. He shrank back with a groan. There was a voice and footsteps and then hands leaning him back against his pillows.
“Shh, sayyidi. You are safe.”
It was a voice Mazen recognized. Karima? Sure enough, when he looked up, his personal servant stood over him. Her thick brown hair was tied into a bun, and there was a wan smile on her face. “Welcome back to the world of the living, sayyidi.”
Mazen balked at the tears in her brown eyes. “Karima, why are you crying?”
“Because you are alive.”
Alive? He glanced down at his uncovered chest and froze when he saw the huge gash marring the skin above his heart. “Karima.” His voice was faint. “When did that get there?”
Even when Karima filled him in on what had happened, he could not piece together the memory of the incident. He remembered wanting revenge on his brother for a reason he could no longer recall. He remembered darkness and pain. He remembered the Midnight Merchant standing in a doorway and holding up what looked like a bloated star. And he remembered a word—inconsequential—and the sensation of falling into his own body.
How could he not remember almost dying? According to Karima, the only ones who’d been there to witness his revival were the sultan, his brothers, and—
“The Midnight Merchant.” He sat up abruptly. A sharp ache shot through his chest, making his vision go spotty. Mazen exhaled through clenched teeth as his room became a blur of colors. Karima tutted and tried to get him to lie back down, but he waved her away. “What has the sultan done with the merchant?”
He could still remember the spark of recognition when he’d seen her face in the darkness. Loulie al-Nazari and Layla, the girl from the souk, were one and the same.