The Conjurer (The Vine Witch #3)(71)
“What are you doing?” Confused, Yanis extended his good leg.
“Your other one,” she said, kneeling beside him.
The sorcerer gripped his wooden leg at the place where it strapped onto his knee and pulled up. Sidra rested the leg on her knee and tapped on the wood with her knuckle.
“You didn’t.” Elena gawked.
With permission, Sidra unscrewed the peg from the bottom of the false leg. From the hollow center inside, she slid out a curved silver dagger with a black hilt. On the pommel end was a round sigil that showed a sunrise on one side of a median line and a sunset on the other.
“Circumstances forced me to hide the dagger where I knew it would be safest,” she said. “With one who had the heart and skill to protect such an object from those who would abuse it.”
Yanis, so accustomed to threats and derision from Sidra, pressed his palms together and bowed his head. “I am honored to have earned your trust.”
“It’s not in my power to give you a new leg,” she said in return, “but we can make a false one that won’t cause you any more pain.”
She met Hariq’s eyes, and he nodded at her with the admiration of one who knows the long journey she’d taken to see Yanis for who he was.
“And I cannot take away the heartache my deception cost you,” Hariq said, reaching for Sidra’s hand. “But I hope, in time, you will also see that it wasn’t done to hurt you, my beloved. That there was always a plan to find you, to reunite, so that we may spend the rest of our lives together without ever having to look over our shoulders again.”
How many times had she said to herself if only Hariq were alive again, she would forgive him anything? She didn’t know the words would stick so hard in her throat when, at last, it happened. Chaos and order rested on two sides of a sharp edge, but so did pain and pleasure. Harmony and discord. There was not one without the other. Always the dance of tension. One could choose which side to lean into if or when the blade tipped off-center.
“I am pleased to see you alive, habibi,” she said, knowing her heart had always leaned toward forgiveness.
Hariq gazed at her, as if she were the only star worth seeing in a spiraling galaxy, and there, in his eyes, she chose to chart her future once more.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
The physical damage had been easy enough to repair. A bit of broken glass. A door off its hinges. A few dented streetlamps that required reshaping. The sand was the worst. The haboob had blown grains of sand into every street and open window in the village. Flowerpots sat coated with dirt, awnings sagged from the weight of the grit, and the mortals who’d been put to sleep by the lavender potion needed to have their clothes and hair swept clean. But between the jinn and the queen of the Fée, the cleanup took little more time and effort than was needed to sweep the cobblestones from one end of the loggia to the other. The villagers woke groggy and confused, and perhaps a few found sand in their ears if they dug deep enough, but otherwise the day resumed as any other. Titania, while still in her moonlighting guise, had made certain the people’s dreams bore the blame for the peculiar ennui they felt upon rising.
The train north was scheduled to depart on time. Hariq had taken special care to set the cars upright and clean the sand out of the boiler so that it steamed properly while awaiting departure. The funicular, too, had required righting, but it was a trinket compared to the train’s locomotive. Elena and Jean-Paul walked out of the depot, tickets in hand for the return trip. They stood on the platform only a little worse for wear, she in her muddy sabots and he still slightly trembly from the effects of his fever and overexertion. But their mood was bright as they were met by friends at the station to say their goodbyes.
Hariq and Sidra made a stunning couple. He still wore his long black jacket and wide smile and she’d conjured a fine new robe and jangling gold bracelets. The scents of jasmine, burnt citrus, and woodsmoke mingled in the air between them.
Behind the couple the old jinni, his body hunched over as he leaned on a walking stick, shuffled forward. Yanis stood at his side with an ornately carved wooden box on a leather strap secured over his shoulder. Elena knew it was a decoy. The real dagger was hidden back inside his polished wooden leg with the generous new padding, where it would be kept safe for the journey ahead. For he and the old one, with the protection of Hariq and Sidra, were also embarking on a journey. All had agreed with Yanis that the dagger must be returned to the care of the Order of the Seven Stars so that it might remain protected and in balance for centuries to come.
“As-salaam-alaykum,” Sidra said to Elena and Jean-Paul as they met on the platform.
Elena reached out to shake the jinni’s hand. “You know, I don’t think we’ve ever had a proper hello or goodbye, you and I.”
“No, but perhaps we’ve had everything in between,” Sidra said and squeezed Elena’s hand.
Hariq shook hands with Jean-Paul, remarking on how he’d admired the vineyard when he’d been there. “I hope one day to sample the fine vintage it produces.”
Jean-Paul did a double take before remembering he was speaking with the dog he’d seen lurking in the vines. “Of course,” he said. “You’re welcome to visit the cellar anytime after les vendanges. It would be our pleasure.”
Elena noted how her husband took such things like entertaining jinn at the vineyard in stride now. How far they’d come since his first encounter with the gargoyle perched among the grape clusters. He no longer ran from the supernatural, and she no longer resisted the pull of his mortal faith in that which could be proven. Tawazun, as Sidra would say.