Somehow, I am still here.
It takes me a moment to find myself, to determine that I am standing in the doorway, in both worlds and neither. I turn around and see flames behind me. I myself am smokeless fire that burns red and blue, indistinguishable from the blaze that separates the mortal world from the immortal.
Turning back to the human world, I see Nardukha look down at Aladdin, who stares in disbelief at the doorway, unable to see me amid the flames, believing, no doubt, that I am dead. He doesn’t even struggle when Nardukha wraps a hand about his throat and lifts him into the air. But his eyes begin to widen, and he gasps with pain.
At once I step through the doorway, a girl of fire and fury, taking human form in a gown of black smoke that curls and trails behind me. Never have I burned so hot. Never have I felt so powerful, not even when granting the most incredible wishes. A new power rages through me now, something completely wild and untrammeled, and I realize what is missing: the invisible tether that bound me to my lamp. The bond has been broken.
Whether it was really you I saw, Habiba, or a ghost conjured by my mind, I know the words you spoke were true: In sacrificing my own life for Aladdin, I unwittingly triggered the Forbidden Wish. The bond between lamp and jinni is severed.
I am alive.
And I am free.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“STOP,” I SAY.
Nardukha drops Aladdin, who crumples to the ground. I run toward the thief, dropping to my knees at his side. He groans and blinks.
“Who are you?” he whispers.
“It’s me,” I reply. “Lie still. You’re hurt.”
“Zahra?” He seems bewildered, and suddenly I understand why. I put my hands to my face and suck in a breath, for it is not the face of Roshana I wear.
It is the face of a young Gheddan queen. My face. It is rounder and softer, my hair thick with brown curls and my skin a shade darker. How strange it is to wear it again, after so many years disguising myself in other forms.
“You,” Nardukha rumbles, and I whirl to face him. There is a wariness in him that I have never seen before.
I realize I have lost something else in my strange journey through the Eye and back: my fear of him. For four thousand years even the thought of him made my soul tremble. Now I look at him, and it’s as if I see him for the first time and find him . . . lacking. What did I fear in him before? By what power did he enthrall me? Whatever it was, it is gone now, and I will never cower before him again.
“All this time,” I say, rising to my feet to stand between him and Aladdin, “you’ve been so desperate to keep me—to keep any of your jinn—from loving a human. You knew what could happen if a jinni ever loved a human, loved one enough to die for them. That’s why you went to war with Roshana—not because Roshana sought to make peace with the jinn, but because I loved her enough that I would have died for her. You couldn’t let that happen because you knew what I would become. You knew the Forbidden Wish could work both ways.”
“What you are,” he breathes, “is an abomination. A jinni without a master, without ties to Ambadya or the gods. The order exists for a reason. I do not love chaos for chaos’s sake. All things are held in balance, and you are a loose thread in the fabric of the universe. One wrong move and you could unravel everything.”
“I have seen the threads of the universe, and they are stronger than you know.”
Squaring his shoulders, his eyes flaring red, Nardukha exhales streams of black smoke. “It is called the Forbidden Wish for a reason, girl. I was not the one who named it so—creatures like you have been forbidden since the dawn of time.”
Wings flare from his shoulders, spreading the length of the alomb. Claws sprout from his fingers and fangs from his lips. His skin shifts to smoke, his clothes to flames. He is shadow wrapped in fire, and he leaps forward, set on destroying me.
I meet the Shaitan in midair, drawing conjured blades. I raise my swords, clashing with his claws in a shower of sparks.
“You can’t defeat me,” he hisses, all trace of human form gone. He thrusts his head over my crossed blades, fangs snapping.
I roll aside, clear of his teeth. This fight is not going to be determined by swords and stances. Nardukha’s attacks are primal and powerful, not to be overcome by human tactics.
I draw him away from Aladdin, who is struggling to his feet amid a crowd of creeping, hissing jinn. He draws a short knife from his boot and holds it up, a paltry defense against the claws of a ghul or the teeth of an ifreet.
“Leave him,” the Shaitan snarls, and the jinn back away.
Then he pauses a moment, his eyes intent on me. Once, I would have cowered to be the center of his terrible attention. Now, I want only to finish this. Live or die, this is a fight I cannot abandon.
I draw a deep breath and relax, my conjured blades evaporating.
I reach for my magic.