Wicked Like a Wildfire (Hibiscus Daughter #1)(87)
Unseen but unmistakably there, the true holder of the stakes, the one who would claim one of us.
Death. The way she looked up at it was almost fond, like they were friends who’d kept each other company through the endless years.
Then she turned back to us.
“Azareen,” she boomed. “You who were born first to Faisali, who is lost to us. Rise and begin.”
For the first time, I shifted enough that I could look at Malina. Her eyes were closed, her face nearly serene and almost alien with the swooping patterns drawn with kohl winging away from her lids, her lips glittering and cheeks vivid with blush. Even just the cameo perfection of her profile nearly broke my heart.
She took her time raising her chin, and when her eyes finally opened it was with languor, slow blinks like an invitation—as if she had all the time in the world, and was preparing to invite someone to share it with her. She lifted one knee and then the other, rising to her feet with weightless grace, and when she spread her arms as if through water I remembered that she’d had something I’d never had—Naisha’s tutelage, years of being invisibly nudged toward beauty.
Then she began to sing, a slow, sweet summoning, with the underpinning power of that tremendous, angelic chorus she’d found within herself. Come find me, it said. I’m worth it. I was born for you.
As her voices crested and rolled in multitude, she moved along with the song; not dancing, exactly, but simply following its currents, stepping gracefully along the path of its flow, the metal feathers shimmering around her, the tops of her breasts and her fine shoulders glowing like silvered snow above the black bodice.
I’d heard my sister sing of true love, of Niko, but it hadn’t been like this.
This song was pure passion, and a kind of aloof sensuousness I’d never known Malina even possessed. It made me think of enchantment, of being mesmerized by a sylph. Of following her through a forest as she leaped ahead like a doe, wearing something wispy and trailing with lace and ribbons, glancing coyly back over her shoulder above the froth of her hair. It made me think of her resting in a stream with her arms above her head and her back against smooth stones, water soaking through her wedding nightgown until it clung to her skin, near sheer.
Her cherry lips glistening and parted as if she’d drunk fresh from the sweet stream. As if her mouth would taste of it.
Come get me, the song called out. Come claim me, lover, and have me for your own.
It was so sensual it made me want to squirm out of my skin, that something like it should come from my sister, but it didn’t. Because right now, she was someone else. Not Malina, but truly Azareen. Someone distant as a star, as far from me as other galaxies, and infinitely more beautiful than the sky in the clearest night.
Where are you, Dunja? I thought desperately. We need you.
Because if she didn’t come for us in time, I was going to lose my sister. Because how could I ever compare to this.
Malina finally completed her slow circuit of the hall, and with a final parting trill of song—like the sweet, guileless thrill of fingertips pressed to lips, a kiss blown toward a lover to be borne along the wind—she settled back next to me on her knees with a heavy head, dropping her chin. Now that she was near me again, I could see the toll the song had taken. Her chest still heaved with labored breaths, and the hollow of her throat had pooled with sweat. Single tracks of tears silvered her cheeks, and I thought how much this must have cost her, betraying her real love like this. It had been far from effortless, and the sight of it made a sinkhole of fear gape in my belly. She’d given everything she had, because she thought this might be real. That Dunja wasn’t coming.
Mara made a pleased, humming sound, like a queen bee glutted and secure in the confines of her hive.
“Lisarah of Faisali,” she purred at me. “Born second, but no less bold for it. Rise, and begin.”
I came to my feet, not bothering with feigning grace. It wasn’t built into my limbs, and I didn’t think now was the time to try plying artifice. For a moment I just stood with my eyes closed, letting myself breathe; feeling the gossamer folds of leaves and ivy draped around me, the thorns that circled my skin, even the thick black around my lids. Thinking of the way my pale eyes would flash when I finally opened them.
I wasn’t some elusive maiden-sprite flitting, mesmerizing, through a copse of trees. Nor was I cool, trickling streams, or lips parted expectantly for a kiss. So what was I? What could I be to save her, to win us this?
“Lisarah,” Mara began, a stratum of something like uncertainty glinting through the ancient, limestone layers of her voices. “Will you—”
Without answer, I snapped my head up, and shattered the sky.
The constellation of chandeliers and baubles dangling from the ceiling may as well have been designed to fractal. I let loose all the gleam at once, splitting and multiplying them without mercy—glass and metal into endless, massive rows of domes and spires, the trapped butterflies and iridescent beetles bursting into a shimmering, winged army that looked like it might conquer us like a locust plague. The entirety of the ceiling grew like stalactites striving in fast-forward, into a celestial city built of crystals, like a heaven of my own making.
As I pulled at it with all I had, it came rushing down the atrium toward us, as if this crystalline new world might crash-land onto ours.
To meet it, I turned my gaze to the ring of flames around Mara’s dais, and began blooming them one by one. Tongues of fire swirled around one another like blazing prayer wheels, and as they overlapped they formed a scorching, spitting wall of orange, red, and gold, a hellfire that rose to meet the heaven I’d built from above. Within the flames, those diamond-sparks I’d seen before magnified into a blinding shimmer, until the entire inferno glittered like a hellscape contained inside a ruby. Together, ceiling and floor obscured Mara entirely, trapping her behind the fire and glass.