The creature standing beside Omar was a silhouette of smoke, features undefined except for its eyes, which were a turquoise blue that glittered like diamonds. Its body was made up of undulating storm clouds, and the fire pulsing beneath its skin flashed like lightning.
Aisha dared a glance at the others. The merchant and the prince both looked spellbound, staring at the ifrit with their mouths hanging open.
Tawil was in a similar state of shock. “The Shapeshifter,” he murmured.
The title made Aisha’s skin prickle; she recognized it.
Omar turned to Qadir, who had risen to his feet and was pulling Tawil’s arrows from his skin. Silver blood gushed from his wounds as they began to heal. “Rijah,” he said softly.
Rijah. The Resurrectionist’s voice was a sad echo, her grief a hole in Aisha’s heart.
The mass of smoke shuddered at the name.
“Jinn of the lamp,” Omar said. “I command you to kill the jinn king before me.”
Without preamble, the creature of smoke pounced, transforming into a panther that knocked Qadir to the ground. Qadir grabbed the panther’s jaws as it lunged for his throat, but his hands were quivering, his face blanched with terror.
The merchant stumbled to her feet and rushed toward him. Unthinkingly, Aisha gave chase. It was easier to act than to think. Easier to follow the plan than to question it.
The Resurrectionist’s voice brushed through her empty mind. And here I thought you had returned to life to carve your own path.
“My path, not yours,” Aisha snapped. She gained on the merchant until she was close enough to tackle her from behind. She pressed a sword to her throat. Loulie struggled, but to no avail. Together, they watched Qadir battle the ifrit. When he conjured a wall of flame, the ifrit pushed past it in the form of a great, flaming bird and rushed at his face with its talons, shrieking as Qadir held out a hand and threw a gust of wind at it.
“Give it up, merchant.” She heard Tawil’s voice behind her. “Sit back and enjoy the show. The Shapeshifter is sure to give us a good one.”
Shapeshifter. There was that title again. It had been in Qadir’s story about the seven ifrit.
The jinn version.
She shuddered as Tawil approached. She remembered his nervous laughter when she’d touched his burning skin. The way he had shrunk away from her when she gripped his arm.
Finally, the Resurrectionist said. You see clearly.
Tawil approached. He stepped closer, dragging Mazen behind him. Closer. Closer.
Aisha’s surprise flared into indignation. She whirled, pulling her sword away from the merchant’s throat and slashing it at Tawil. Tawil gasped and grabbed at the wound on his arm, but not quickly enough to conceal the silver blood oozing through his fingers.
Aisha gripped the hilt of her sword. “I knew it.”
Tawil paled. “I can explain—”
But she didn’t need an explanation, not when the realization had already dawned on her. Without flinching, she grabbed a knife from her belt and stabbed Tawil in the throat. Silver gushed from his lips as he crumpled to the ground.
He deserved that. The ifrit’s pleasure was an undercurrent to Aisha’s own anger.
Mazen sidestepped the thief’s body, face ashen. The merchant’s wide eyes flicked between her and the corpse. There was a tense pause as they watched Tawil bleed out. Then they all faced Omar, who had not moved. Aisha glared at him.
“I was going to tell you after this was all over,” he said, voice eerily calm.
After he had finished using you, the Resurrectionist said.
Aisha glanced at the silver blood pooling on the ground. She thought of the recollection in Junaid’s eyes when she had brought up the collar’s existence to him. The strange injury on Samar’s arm, healed far too soon.
“How many of us are jinn?”
Omar regarded her stoically. “More than half.”
She was baffled. She’d become one of the forty thieves to kill jinn. How was it that so many of her comrades were jinn? That they were killing other jinn?
Omar approached. “The jinn who flee into the human lands are criminals in their world. Is it so strange I would work with jinn who want to exterminate them? Our goals align.” He paused, dared a smile. “You are different, Aisha. I did not make a deal with you. I chose you.”
I chose you. How long had she clung to those words, believing them to be the truth? She had always believed the reason Omar recruited her was because he’d seen a kindred spirit in her. She had never considered him a friend, but she had trusted him.
And he’d used that trust against her. He had used her, even knowing her hatred of jinn.
Omar ventured a step closer. Aisha responded by throwing a dagger at his face. She was irritated when it went right through him.
“An illusion?” Mazen murmured.
“Ifrit magic,” Aisha said. She had always thought Omar’s stealth was unnatural but had never questioned it. But now she could not stop looking at the earring—at the relic on his ear that made that stealth possible. How many other illusions had he crafted with that magic? In all the years they’d hunted together, Aisha had never seen him bleed black blood. Had even that been a trick? An elaborate deception created by his mother’s earring?
The last piece of the puzzle slid into place.
Let us show them the truth, the Resurrectionist said.
Aisha set her hands on Mazen’s and Loulie’s shoulders. “Look,” she said, and the cursed magic running through her veins enveloped all their senses, allowing them to see the phantom behind Omar. The similarities between them were striking; they had the same-shaped face. The same thin nose.
The merchant inhaled sharply. “An ifrit?”
The Resurrectionist spoke through Aisha: “Here, you know her as the sultan’s first wife. But in our world, she is a powerful illusionist. In our world, she is an ifrit: Aliyah the Mystic.”
Once, Aliyah might have been Aisha’s target. But Aisha did not seek out the dead.
She had never believed in chasing the past, but the present—there lay a vengeance she could claim with her blade.
The ifrit’s voice brushed through her mind. And with my magic, if you choose to wield it.
Aisha could feel that magic beating in sync with her heart. So far, it had remained an extra, unwanted sense—a way for her to hear and speak to the dead. But now it was being proffered to her as a weapon.
She hesitated. Magic had destroyed her life. But perhaps when sharpened into a weapon of her making, magic could help her reclaim control of it. Aisha nodded mutely.
Together, then. She could hear the triumphant grin in the ifrit’s words as her power scorched through Aisha’s veins. The heat of it was exhilarating. Overwhelming.
Aisha breathed in deeply to relax her thudding heart and trembling limbs. She thought of Samar, who had promised to sing her praises when she returned to Madinne, and Junaid, who had proposed a toast to her loyalty. What a shame that she would have to disappoint them both.
Aisha looked at Omar and made a new vow.
I promise I will kill you, she thought.
She always kept her promises.
68
MAZEN
Aliyah the Forgotten. That was what the citizens of Madinne called the sultan’s first wife behind closed doors. To Mazen, she had always been a specter, a story his father never told. She was from a time before the wife killings, a memory inaccessible to all of them, even Omar. At least, that had been his belief.
But now, all the disparate pieces clicked together. Aliyah, an ifrit. The sultan, a jinn killer. Finally, Mazen understood why Omar’s blood was black. Why he hated the sultan. But—
“Why? Why would you kill jinn if your mother is one?”
Omar sighed. “As always, you ask the wrong questions, Mazen.” He slid a knife from his sleeve and angled it toward them. Mazen tensed, poised to flee—and then he heard Omar’s voice coming from behind. When he turned, his brother was close enough to stab him. The merchant shot forward with her knife, but the strike only broke Omar’s body into smoke.