A blast of pain cuts through me, and suddenly Aladdin and I are ripped apart and thrown wide by a burst of angry power from the Shaitan. He steps between us, bristling, and hauls me upright with a hand around my throat.
“Enough,” he growls, his honeyed voice turning to stone. “Before I rip you apart, I will in my mercy allow you to repent. You will show me your allegiance, and you will beg for forgiveness.”
His words begin to swell with power as he draws magic to himself, leaching it from stone and sky, from fire and flesh. Energy streams from the world and coils about him, and I tremble as he releases me, my hand going to my aching throat. I know what comes next. I have seen him draw in power like this before. I know what words he will speak even before he says them, but still they strike like a battle-axe, relentless and final.
“Kill the boy.”
With the words he unleashes the power he has knitted around himself, and the force of it washes over me in a wave. I sway on my feet, gasping out, “No.”
“Kill. Him.” Each word is a hammer against my temple, pounding me into submission, compelling me to obey. The compulsion is stronger even than a wish, for it is a different kind of magic, pulling on the bond between jinni and maker.
I whirl to Aladdin, eyes wide, my heart of smoke bursting into sharp fragments. Nardukha’s command drags at my every fiber. It whispers through my thoughts, muddling my mind.
Kill him.
Yes, that is what I want.
No! It’s not! You love him!
But I want to kill him.
No, you don’t! Get control of yourself, Zahra!
My name isn’t Zahra. I am Smoke-on-the-Wind, Curl-of-the-Tiger’s-Tail, Girl-Who-Gives-the-Stars-Away.
He loves you!
He is just a mortal. Just a boy, a moment in time that will soon pass.
His name is Aladdin.
I have known a thousand and one like him. I will know a thousand and one more. He is nothing.
He is everything.
“Zahra?”
My legs shift to smoke. My eyes turn to fire. I rise, hands held out, fingers crackling with lightning. It sizzles up my arms, singeing my false skin. I am no human. I am jinni, the most powerful of all Nardukha’s children, exalted above all the hosts of Ambadya.
“Tremble, mortal,” I intone in a thousand and one voices. “I am the Slave of the Lamp.”
“No!” The boy’s hair whips around his face as the wind of my breath swirls around him. “Your name is Zahra!”
Above the alomb, clouds roll and multiply, flashing with lightning. A hot, sticky wind howls through the columns, and in the wind are the jinn, and the jinn are laughing.
“Zahra!” The boy holds up a hand, trying to block the sand that stings his eyes. “I know you can hear me! Stop this! You’re stronger than this!”
I shift my eyes to my master, who stands glorious and shining as a god. He smiles at me, and I bask in his approval.
Kill him.
“I love you,” whispers the boy, his words reaching me improbably through the howling wind and the crackling fire. “I love you. Do you hear me? I love you. No matter what.”
Kill him.
I stretch my hands toward him, preparing to launch the lightning that sizzles across my fingers, biting me like a thousand and one angry snakes.
KILL HIM.
I draw a breath, and my palms burn white, blindingly white, as the lightning bunches and readies.
Then something glints on my hand, drawing my eye, just for a moment.
A ring.
The ring I forged for the thief to give to the princess, which he gave to me instead, and with it, his heart. The symbols I myself pressed into the gold seem to shine at me: love, undying, infinite, unity. Symbols of power, symbols of truth. They burn into my ears, sear themselves into my soul.
Time slows.
The clouds overhead roll backward.
My thoughts stumble and reverse.
Kill him.
Kill him?
But I love him.
The moment is but a heartbeat. There is no time. With the next breath Nardukha’s command will overwhelm my heart. I will kill him. I don’t have a choice. I never had a choice.
No.
I do have a choice.
What was it Aladdin said to me, so long ago? You can’t choose what happens to you, but you can choose who you become because of it. I can’t stop Nardukha from killing us both, but I can choose to not be the monster he wants.
Zhian still stands by the Eye, holding my lamp with one finger curled through the handle, dangling at his side.
Not trusting myself to think it through, not daring to take another precious fraction of a second, I shoot the lightning from my hands—toward Zhian. The jinn prince dodges, but not fast enough. The searing energy strikes him in the chest, doing little harm but throwing him off balance. He may hold the lamp, but he is jinn and cannot command me, so its power doesn’t protect him from my attack. Before he can recover, I am upon him, driving toward him in a funnel of smoke. My arms wrap around him, and I propel us both forward, toward the great Eye of Jaal and the fiery tunnel within. As we cross the threshold, Zhian cries out and lets go of the lamp, but too late.
Time rushes forward.
The clouds overhead coil and burst with lightning.
Zhian is sucked away into the tunnel and lost to sight, screaming in fury. I begin to pour into my lamp as it hurtles toward the hungry flames. Nardukha reacts, reaching—but not fast enough.
The lamp falls
falls
falls
falls into Ambadyan fire, the only force in this world or the next capable of destroying it.
I have time only to smile, my face momentarily forming through the smoke, and to whisper to Aladdin before the bronze walls close in on me and start to melt in the flames.
“I love you.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
FORMLESS, I DRIFT.
Where do jinn go when they die? Humans are said to be destined for the godlands, where they will either dwell in ease or toil for the gods, depending on their deeds in life.
But jinn are cursed, and many believe they have no souls at all. When they die, they simply cease.
But I am still here—wherever here is.
Slowly I come to, my consciousness reluctant to wake. I am smoke, airy and thin, spread wide across a dark sky.
With much effort, I am able to assemble myself, finding that I am all in one piece. Instinctively I reach for my lamp, but I cannot sense it. Then I remember—it is gone. I saw it melt in the fires of Ambadya, felt the searing flames on my own skin.