The light wasn’t death, I realised. It was the sun, shining through the well into the palace vaults. And I wasn’t dust in the desert. I was exactly where I had died. My hands were still sticky with my own blood, my face stained with tears. This was a whole lot more ordinary than death. I was alive.
And then my eyes focused on the single thing that had changed. The room wasn’t empty any more. My father was there.
Bahadur was crouched across from me, watching me with those unreadable blue eyes that matched mine perfectly. Like we were one person. Like I really belonged to him. He waited patiently as I found my footing back in the world of the living. Like I’d seen other parents watch their children take their first steps.
‘I’m not dead,’ I said, and I felt the words slip out like only the truth could.
‘No,’ Bahadur agreed. ‘Not any more.’
There was a sort of quiet then, as he let me settle into that notion. As he let me take another breath, realising that for a few moments, at least, my lungs had stayed still. That my frantic heartbeat had slowed to a stop. And for a moment I’d been gone.
We’d both been gone.
‘Jin.’ My eyes slid sideways frantically, looking for him. His figure was still slumped in a puddle of blood. Not moving. Not sitting up. I scrambled over to him, fumbling to push up his shirt, sticky with blood.
But as I ran my hand across his skin, I could tell already that it was unbroken under the swathe of blood. It was only then that I noticed my side didn’t hurt any more. I touched it, looking for the wound, but it wasn’t there. More than that, the skin felt smooth. The scar. The one from when Rahim had shot me in Iliaz, where the last piece of metal had been pulled from, where the pain radiated from every time I used my power – it was gone, too.
I rested one hand on Jin’s chest. It rose and fell under my palm. Just slightly, but enough. Enough for me to know that he was not dead.
‘He’ll wake shortly,’ my father said from behind me. I twisted around so I could see him over my shoulder. He was still crouched. If I hadn’t known better, he’d have looked like any desert man by a fire. Except he was too still. Like his muscles didn’t feel any strain from sitting like that. He was not flesh and blood. Not human. ‘He needs a little longer than you. He’s not made quite the same as you are.’ I wasn’t entirely human either.
I turned so that I was facing him fully, one leg sprawled in front of me, the other tucked under. One hand still on Jin’s heart, like I had to hold on to him so he didn’t disappear. ‘You saved us,’ I said. How? Only that was a stupid question. My father was among those who had made us. Created humanity out of desert dust and fire. I had watched Zaahir lift Noorsham’s soul from his very body. It wouldn’t take a whole lot to pull some torn pieces of humanity together – like stitching a tear in a ragdoll. ‘Why?’ I asked instead.
He rubbed his hands together. It was the closest thing to a human gesture I’d ever seen from a Djinni. A small tic, a moment to buy time to think. ‘You asked me once if I remembered your mother. You seemed to believe I wouldn’t. That I wouldn’t care enough to. But you were wrong. I remember everything. I remember the day I tasted fear as I saw hundreds of Djinn fall to the Destroyer of Worlds. And I remember the first woman I loved, who gave me my first child. And I remember watching that child die on the walls of Saramotai. And I remember that your mother had a small scar just above her lip that pulled when she smiled.’ He touched his mouth, the exact place where it had been. I remembered that scar. Even though I didn’t remember her smiling much. ‘I remember everything, daughter of mine. Sometimes I think we feel things more deeply than mortals ever do.’
I felt Jin’s chest rise and fall below my hand. ‘You don’t know what I feel,’ I said.
He smiled. ‘No,’ he granted, bowing his head gently, ‘I don’t. But I do feel as well.’ We were silent for a moment, as he let that hang there. I had only lived seventeen years, and sometimes I didn’t believe that I could contain everything I’d seen and lived and thought. No one ought to be made to contain an eternity. ‘I also remember the wish your mother made for you. What she asked for when I told her that she could have one thing she wanted for you.’
‘What was it?’ I couldn’t help it. I had been wondering what my mother had asked for since that day in the prisons with Shira. I had feared knowing since Hala had told me of her own mother’s selfish wish, and since Noorsham had left his body.
‘I had hundreds of children before you, Amani. Their mothers wished for many things for them. For glory and wealth and joy. But your mother wished for none of that. Though she was desperate to get out of a town that would kill her one day, she never thought to ask for an escape, or for great riches to pave her way out with gold. Her wish was simple: that you should live.’ He smiled then, sadly. ‘That you should live like she hadn’t.’
That I should live. It seemed such a small wish. When she could have asked for riches or power or a great destiny for me. But with my heart still beating when it had no right to, I understood it wasn’t small at all.
‘It was a wish I hadn’t heard for centuries. Not since my first daughter.’
He meant Princess Hawa. My sister. We were separated by centuries, but she was my sister all the same. Daughter of another mother who wished for nothing but life for her daughter in the middle of a difficult war. ‘But Hawa died.’
‘Yes.’ He dropped his head. ‘She did the same thing you did. Fell in love with someone who stood too close to death.’ Bahadur’s eyes flicked to Jin, and for a second I felt like an ordinary daughter whose father didn’t approve of the boy she’d chosen to marry. ‘She tied her life to his, because she knew I would have to protect him. That if he died, she would die. And I did. I protected him in battle a hundred times over. In the end, it was her I wasn’t watching. My eyes were on him instead of her, when an arrow strayed from the battlefield. It was through her heart before I could do anything.’ He paused. ‘I saved her a hundred times, but I couldn’t save her the last one.’
‘But you saved me.’ I suddenly understood why he’d been the one to wield the knife. An arrow through the heart had killed Hawa on the spot. A wound to the stomach, though – that was slower. Slow enough for him to save me without anyone noticing. ‘You didn’t have to.’ It came out more ungrateful than I meant it to. ‘I mean –’ I stumbled to catch up to my words – ‘my mother asked for me to live …’ Djinn thrived on technicalities. On gaps in wishes that they could wriggle through, obeying to the letter but no more. ‘That promise was kept when I drew my first breath. You could’ve let me die any time after that if you’d wanted to.’
‘If I’d wanted to,’ Bahadur repeated knowingly. ‘Fathers will always do what they can to protect their children. I can do a great deal when I need to.’