“Don’t you dare insult my father.”
“Your father,” says Aladdin, smiling and swimming closer, “is a self-important, conniving bag of pus.”
Darian turns red. “My father is the bravest man in Parthenia. While the king wasted away over a simmon pipe, my father has held the jinn at bay.”
“Your father,” Aladdin continues, “murders the innocent. He beheads anyone who disagrees with him. Tell me, Prince, how did the king really die? I wonder if he wasn’t pushed into the godlands.”
With a snarl, Darian lunges forward, tackling Aladdin and thrusting him under the water. Aladdin thrashes, plunging upward again and gasping in air, but the other boys join in, grabbing his shoulders and head and pushing him under. He struggles, legs kicking, making the bath froth and overspill. Darian’s face is grim, his lips curled in a tight smile, and he doesn’t flinch.
I shift into wind and gust across the room, forcefully blowing open the door behind which the still-loyal guards are stationed. They look in, see the struggle, and shout out. Darian looks up, his face twisting with rage, and he and his cohorts scramble out and grab their clothes. They run from the room, pursued by the guards.
In the corridor outside, I shift to a girl and run into the baths, jumping into the pool and grabbing Aladdin, who has sunk to the bottom. I drag him up and onto the tile, the lamp clanging on the floor.
“He’s not breathing!” I cry, but there is no one to hear. The guards have chased Darian and the others and are too far away. I begin pumping Aladdin’s chest with my palms.
“Come on, come on,” I say. I should have done something sooner. I was too worried they would find the lamp. I should have changed into a lion and devoured them all.
Aladdin coughs, water spilling from his mouth. I lift him up and turn him on his side so he can empty his lungs.
His eyes, wide and panicked, find me, and he tries to speak.
“Shush,” I say. “You’re fine. You’re fine. Just breathe.”
He gasps in and out, a raspy, watery sound, and coughs up more water. His hand pushes the lamp beneath him, hiding it from view. The guards return now, looking stricken. I toss Aladdin’s shirt over the lamp.
“Did you catch him?” I ask.
They shake their heads.
I turn back to Aladdin, who is beginning to breathe more evenly. He covers the lamp further with his arm, hiding it from the guards’ view.
“I could have taken them,” he says hoarsely. “I was getting around to it.”
I long to hold his head to my chest, so relieved am I that he is alive. But I can’t, not with the guards looking on. So I let him go and stand up, then hand him his clothes. He refuses help from the guards and rises to his feet, taking care to cover the lamp, but doesn’t argue when they insist on returning to his rooms. Two of the guards want to tell Captain Pasha and Caspida what happened, but Aladdin convinces them to let it lie.
“We can deal with him later,” he says. “He isn’t worth hunting down.”
When we are alone again, Aladdin is quiet, and I can tell he’s holding back his anger at being attacked.
I, however, let mine run freely, and I rage around the room in the form of a tiger, snarling and clawing at the floor, my hackles raised.
“Would you stop that?” he says sharply. “You’re setting me on edge.”
“You’re not already on edge?” I growl. “He tried to kill you!”
“He’s done it before,” says Aladdin. “And I have a way of staying alive.”
“Because I’m there to save your skin!”
“Exactly!” He grins sunnily. “Which is why I can’t lose you. Who else will watch my back?”
With a snarl I shift into human, my gown patterned with tiger stripes. “Aladdin, you promised.”
His smile drops. “I know, I know.”
“You promised.”
“What do you want me to do? Swear on my mother’s soul? Cut my hand open and sign my name in blood?”
“It wouldn’t hurt,” I mutter.
Aladdin sighs and starts to reply, but a knock at the door interrupts. I open it to find a tailor and his two apprentices standing there with bolts of cloth and sewing boxes.
“We’re here to fit the prince for his wedding clothes,” says the tailor. He’s a small, clean-shaven man with a turban wound high to make up for his height.
I tell him to return in five minutes, which gives Aladdin time to hide the lamp in his room. I reluctantly return to it, loath to leave him unguarded for even an hour. I reach out with my sixth sense throughout the fitting, wary as a caged cat, but all goes smoothly, and once the tailor and his assistants are gone, Aladdin quickly releases me again. There follows an endless procession of servants knocking at the door, bearing food, wine, gifts from Caspida—all the traditional items that should have been parceled out over a series of days, now crammed into the few hours left.
It is well after midnight when Aladdin, exhausted, tumbles into bed. I sit in the midst of his gifts: daggers and gold, clothing and carved chests, mirrors and candlesticks. It reminds me of your first betrothed, Habiba: handsome and bold Elikum of Miniivos, and of the elaborate preparations we made for your wedding. Of course, your wedding week ended with the groom being poisoned by a traitor on the eve of the ceremony. We held a funeral instead, and you did not weep until three weeks later. You always claimed you did not love him, but I never believed you.
I can only hope this wedding will end on a better note. To be sure, I stay on watch all night, guarding Aladdin’s door as if the whole host of Ambadya might try to storm in.
• • •
Two hours before dawn, I wake him with a soft knock. He stumbles out, his eyes red from lack of sleep.
“Already?” he groans.
“You should go change,” I say. “You’re to be wed in less than an hour, and you can’t meet your bride looking like you just rolled out of bed.”
He draws a breath as if about to speak, but then sighs wearily and returns to his chamber.
I change my garments, swirling and rearranging them into festive blue and gold silk, my hair loose and long. I watch as artful brown curlicues and flowers coil down my arms and over the backs of my hands. The henna is meant for a bride, not a jinni, and with a sigh I let it fade away.
Aladdin emerges minutes later. He wears the rich set of clothes the tailor made for him the night before: a close-fitting coat of muted gold and beige that opens in a split in the front and back, over loose red leggings, and a red cape that hangs over his right shoulder and brushes the floor in front and behind.