The Forbidden Wish Page 27

  “Zahra is mine, boy,” Nardukha says. “I created her. And in my benevolence, I allow you dismal creatures to borrow her. But as always, you grow greedy.”

  “She doesn’t belong to you,” Aladdin declares, rising to his feet, his temple bleeding. “She belongs to no one.”

  “You think you love her? You can’t even comprehend her.” Nardukha’s voice turns me cold. He eyes me, snakelike, his hand searing my skin. I dread the calculation in his black stare. Looking at him, I realize how futile any struggle is. He will win. He will always win. Against him, I have nothing more to wield than empty defiance. I will die today, and Aladdin will die with me. I have loved him to his death, just as I did you, Habiba. This has been the great lesson of my long life: To love is to destroy.

  With a look of disgust, the Shaitan throws me down, and I land hard on my knees. I can tell Nardukha is growing bored. He is not one for long conversations. His punishment is always swift and absolute. I turn to Aladdin, my body going numb, my chest emptier than ever.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper.

  He takes my face in his hands. “I’m not. I’m not sorry I met you. I’m not sorry I fell in love with you. I have no regrets, Zahra, and neither should you. I love you.”

  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.

  My fate is tied to the lamp.

  But I’m not dead.

  The thought sends a jolt through me, and I take stock of my surroundings. The sky above is dark, but there are no stars, no moon, and no clouds to obscure it. Below I see only sand, sweeping toward every black horizon.

  I sink and take my human form, turning a full circle. And then I see it: the only thing to be seen for leagues about.

  A door, half sunk in sand.

  A door I know at once.

  I open it, because I know that is what I’m meant to do. Certainty settles in that I am not in Ambadya, nor the godlands, nor the human world. Where I am, I cannot say, though my best guess is that I am still burning with my lamp, and this is some fevered hallucination. All I can do is follow the path before me.

  The steps behind the door are not broken and covered in sand, as they were when Aladdin set foot here—or in the real version of here. Despite being sunken beneath the desert, the room looks the same it did the day I first created it, when you said you wished for a garden that would never fade, Habiba, more beautiful than any in the world.

  The jeweled trees refract the light of the glowing diamonds above, scattering red, green, and blue flecks of light like dancing fireflies. Water babbles through the brook lined with rocks of silver and gold. A wind from nowhere softly shakes the emerald grass, filling the air with a musical tinkling.

  I walk through the garden, feeling unattached to my own body. Ahead, I can see where I’m meant to go. The lamp sits on the throne, waiting for me. It’s as if my mind is rewriting the day Aladdin and I met.

  When I reach the throne, I stare at the lamp for a long moment, my eyes tracing the familiar contours with a blend of hatred and love. I’ve been bound to it for so long, despising it, cursing it, but it has been the only constant in my long, lonely life. It is, in a twisted way, home.

  I reach out and have the strange sensation of being inside the lamp at the same time, looking out at myself, feeling myself getting closer.

  But before my hands can touch it, the bronze melts, bubbling and oozing, dripping onto the floor. I jump back, my stomach wrenching, as I imagine what it would be like to be inside it when that happened. Did happen. May still be happening.

  “What is going on?” I murmur. “What is this place? And why am I not dead?”

  “Of course, you already know.”

  I spin and suck in a breath.

  You stand before me, Habiba, dressed in the same armor and leather you wore the day you died. Your hair is long and loose, with little braids behind your ears. You shine like a goddess, but your flesh bears wounds and bruises from battle.

  “A life as sacrifice,” you intone, “will set you free. And isn’t that what the Shaitan fears most? A jinni with the power to grant her own wishes?”

  “I can’t grant my own wishes.”

  “What do you do best but turn wishes into reality? You wished to die that the boy might live, and you made that wish come true. You opened a door to a magic long lost, far more powerful than any the Shaitan wields. A sacrifice for freedom—that is the Forbidden Wish. You made the sacrifice, now accept the consequence. Freedom bears great responsibility.”

  I stare at you, my mind a flurry of questions, but I can articulate none of them. With a smile, you step closer and press your lips to my forehead.

  “Live, my old friend,” you say. “And remember: Time is the strongest magic.”

  You vanish as the room begins to shake, just as it did the day Aladdin stole me away. I break into a sprint, dodging chunks of stone that fall from the ceiling. Sand pours in waterfalls all around, burying the glinting jewels. I reach the stairs and bound up them, throwing open the door—to find not a desert but a void.

  The universe spins around me, stars glaring bright, galaxies pulsing bursts of color. Looking back, I see the garden collapsing into itself, getting smaller and smaller. Flame rushes toward me, and without another thought, I jump.

  I fall backward and upward, feel the wind rush around me, and I lose all sense of weight and direction.

  The universe unfolds around me in a dazzling dance of light and color, opening circle by circle, each curling into elaborate patterns: sun and rose, starfish and pupil, tiger’s mouth and elephant’s ear. I fall through their center.

  Stars are born, grow old, and burst apart into new stars. Galaxies blossom like flowers, shooting out tendrils of light, teeming with life. Spinning planets circle a million bright suns, and I see it all.

  I have spun out of time. I stand on the edge of eternity, looking in at all the brilliant worlds. They are strung on invisible threads in a vast tapestry, each pulling the others, everything connected by the finest of lines. As I watch, the threads quiver and hum. The universe sings a deep, eternal song, sound in waves, in deep sighs, in whispers, in swirling chords and rising, falling tones. The music of the worlds, weaving in a pattern that is both chaos and order, both beauty and terror, without beginning, without end. Tears run down my face, and I dare not blink.

  I lift my eyes, above it all, and see the one weaving the stars. Imohel, the God of Gods. He smiles and pauses briefly to touch a finger to the center of my forehead, and at his touch, I fall.

  Fall through the stars.

  Through time.

  Through light and wind and fire.

  Through smoke and a sky gray like ashes.

  • • •

  Nardukha stands in the same spot, staring furiously at the fiery doorway. Less than a moment has passed since I threw myself into the fire, determined that I would not repeat the past, would not strike down Aladdin as I struck you down, Habiba. Determined that this, at the end, would be my choice. And somehow, it worked.

  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.