Rebel of the Sands (Rebel of the Sands #1)(52)

“What’s a Demdji?” I asked, figuring a second too late I ought to have said thank you.

“You’ve never heard of Demdji?” She let the trunk fall shut.

“I was born a long way from you.” Somewhere where princes and shape-shifting women lived only in stories told round campfires.

“Children born of Djinn and mortal women.” Shazad sat herself on the trunk. “There are a dozen or so in camp. Ahmed practically collects them now.”

“Can they all change their shape?” The wound in my arm twinged at the memory of the Skinwalker in the canyon. I pulled off my blood-soaked shirt.

“No, it depends,” Shazad explained. “Djinn are things of the desert, naturals at illusion and manipulation. So that’s what their children inherit: illusions, deceit, power from desert heat and winds. Delila can create images that look real but are empty to the touch, all air. Imin can change her—or his, depending on the day—shape to look like anyone. There’s a pair of twins who change shape, too, only instead of changing into people, they become animals. Another one crawls inside your mind and twists until you see what she wants you to, like sun madness. In the holy texts they call it the Djinni’s gift. Some say it’s a protection to balance out the Djinni’s mark.”

“The mark?” I felt ignorant as she talked on about all these things like I should understand them.

“Imin’s golden eyes, Delila’s purple hair.” Shazad scraped her own dark hair off her face. “Some of them can get away as human in the great wide world. When we were still in Izman, Delila used to hide her hair with dark henna, or she’d cast an illusion over it. But then there are the ones who can’t hide.” The ones who got bullets to the heads. “The Gallan will kill them because they think all First Beings are against their invented god.”

I remembered the girl from the Gallan camp. I’d thought it was blood in her hair. It might’ve just been that it was red. The Djinni’s mark.

“Half of Miraji would go after them to get something from them. Like a finger, for it’s supposed healing powers. Ask Bahi if you want theology. Most folks would call it—”

“Desert magic.” So this really was where the stories came to life. Heroes and monsters come to fight and die for the Rebel Prince.

Jin and I had talked about those stories. About the Rebel Prince. And then Jin had lied to me until I was just some silly girl barging into something I couldn’t begin to be prepared for.

? ? ?

SHAZAD WAS ABOUT my size. Except a lifetime of eating proper meals made her more filled out in all the areas that helped me look like a boy when I needed to. I tugged at the clothes she’d loaned me uncomfortably as I crossed the camp, trying to retrace my steps from that morning.

I met Bahi just outside the tent with the canopy of stars where I’d woken up. He was ducking out. He caught me tugging at the chest of the shirt, wet hair dripping down my back, making it stick to me. Shazad had showed me where I could wash, a small pool shielded from view of the camp, before leaving me to do . . . whatever it was she did here. I had nowhere else to go and nothing else I was meant to be doing.

“Why’re you wearing Shazad’s clothes?” Bahi asked, looking me over.

“Why do you know Shazad’s clothes on sight?” I countered without thinking.

Bahi scratched the back of his neck, pulling a face. He looked like a kid caught doing something wrong. “She’s sort of hard not to look at,” he admitted. “Don’t tell her I said that. I’m fairly sure she knows about five different ways to kill me without actually having to touch me. And if I’m dead there’ll be no one to take care of your prince.”

“He’s not mine,” I said defensively. And then, because I couldn’t help it, “How is he?”

“You got him here in time.” Bahi ran the hand with the tattoo on it through his hair. “Now we just have to wait.”

“Can I see him?”

“I don’t see why not.” Bahi shrugged, gesturing behind himself.

The heat hit me like a wall as soon as I pulled back the tent flap. Jin was lying as I’d left him, still as the dead.

Only his brother sat next to him. Prince Ahmed’s shirt was loose at the collar, and I could see the echo of Jin’s sun tattooed on his own chest in the dim light from the lamp. He looked up at the sound of the tent flap falling shut behind me. “Your Majesty.” The words tripped out, unnatural. “I’m sorry, I should—”

“No, please, stay.” I stopped my retreat. I wasn’t sure how to refuse a prince. I sat down across from Ahmed on the other side.

I stilled. Ahmed brought the present rushing back in. Jin wasn’t just some foreign boy with a traitor smile; he was the Sultan’s son and I was far out of my place sitting with this pair of prodigal princes.

“Is Jin even his real name?” I asked when the silence had stretched too long.

“Yes,” Ahmed said. “But it’s not his full name. Our father named him Ajinahd Al’Oman Bin Izman. Lien, his mother, was the one who nicknamed him Jin.”

Nearly two months and he hadn’t even told me his real name.

Ahmed was watching me. “You think he doesn’t trust you. But that’s not true.”

I scoffed.