He moves in front of me, his eyes wild. “I know so little about you, and it eats at me night and day. Who are you? Why do you infect my mind?”
“Aladdin, stop. Please.” My voice shaking, I finally jolt into motion, stepping forward and holding up my hands. “Don’t do this. Not now.” Not when I’m so close to my freedom. I came here ready to part with him forever, but he played his opening move first, and now I find myself on the defensive, parrying and blocking the assault of his words. But too many blows strike home.
I’ve always been able to sense my masters, but with Aladdin it’s different. When I close my eyes, he’s there, grinning, laughing, daring me with those copper-brown eyes.
For the first time I think about what comes after I win my freedom. For so long that’s been my single goal, but what happens next? Do I return to Ambadya, where they hate me? Do I stay in the human world, where they would destroy me if they knew what I was? I have nowhere to go to and no one to spend my freedom with, and for the first time I begin to wonder if that’s really freedom at all, or if I’m exchanging one prison for another.
“I’m not for you,” I say desperately. “We are so different. Our lives are a thousand and one worlds apart. It wouldn’t work. And it’s dangerous.”
But his face only brightens. “Then you do feel the same.”
“We are not the same—and that is the whole point! I am not human, Aladdin. Everything that was once human in me was destroyed, and I was forged into something entirely different. I’m not here to help you—I was never here to help you, or any of my masters.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t believe that.”
“It doesn’t matter what you believe,” I say bitterly. “It is what it is, and it has nothing to do with what you want.”
He walks around me, forcing me to face him. “You helped me get away from Darian in the desert. You got me into the palace when you could have let them find out who I really was. You taught me to dance, for sky’s sake! You’ve had a hundred opportunities to trick me and betray me, but you don’t. You’ve helped me when I didn’t wish for it.”
“A chicken doesn’t fly like other birds, but it is still a bird.”
“Zahra!” He spreads his hands, the wind ruffling his hair. “You do care. I see it when you think I’m not looking.”
“Stop! I’m not what you think I am, Aladdin! I will betray you, and I will hurt you, because that is what I am. Why do you think Nardukha rips souls from the living and creates jinnis? Why do you think he sends us into the world? To make your miserable dreams come true? To bring you happiness?” I laugh sourly. “He gives you the thing you want most and uses it to destroy you. Look at yourself. You’re a prince. You have money, power, privilege. The chance to avenge your parents. And you’re miserable.”
Aladdin stares at me, and in his eyes is pity. “I’ve been making myself miserable my whole life,” he says softly. “I convinced myself long ago that if I could get revenge on Sulifer, I could finally move on. That I could erase the memory of the day my parents died, when I held their severed heads and watched their blood run in the gutters. But as you say, here I am, a step away from that vengeance—and it has soured on my tongue. I don’t want it anymore.”
He sighs and looks up at the sky, as if searching for words among the stars. “You don’t make me miserable, Zahra. I do that to myself, because I’m too weak, too afraid to admit that it isn’t Sulifer I’m angry at—it’s me. My parents were killed because of me. The day before they were executed, I was caught by the guards for stealing an earring, and when they found out who I was, Sulifer had me whipped until I told him where my parents were. And after they were dead, he gave me back the earring as payment for turning my mother and father over to him.” Lowering his gaze to meet mine, he brushes his fingers over the ring in his ear. “I’ve worn it every day since, to remind myself that nothing—nothing—is worth betraying someone you love.”
Love?
The word hangs between us like forbidden fruit, ripe and sweet and oh, so deadly. I stare at him in dismay.
“Please,” I whisper. “Stop.”
“Zahra—”
“Don’t you understand? It’s forbidden, Aladdin! We jinn must abide by many rules, but first among them, most important of all, we must never fall in love with a human!”
He catches his breath, swallowing hard. “And do you always follow the rules?”
“I—” Casting my gaze skyward, I draw a deep breath, searching for words among the stars. “It’s not about that. Do you know what kind of destruction we would cause? Have you not heard the story of your own people, how their city was destroyed, how thousands died? It was not hate that sparked the war between your people and mine, Aladdin. It was love. I held hands with Roshana the Wise and called her sister, and those words set our world on fire!”