Rebel of the Sands (Rebel of the Sands, #1)(62)

He meant at the Drunk Djinni, by the gutted-out mines of Sazi, when I was just the girl with the gun who could hold her drink and he was just a foreigner who couldn’t hold the drugs I slipped in his. Instead of a Demdji and a prince. When I was still so certain of everything and he started lying to me.

“Then again,” Jin said, taking another swig, “that girl didn’t walk away from stories halfway through either.”

In that moment, I did turn to fire. My hand sent the bottle flying to the ground, the sand guzzling the spilled liquor as it rolled. I realized I’d been expecting him to stop me, catch my arm before I could hit him.

“Stories and lies.” I found my voice and swallowed whatever else was snaking up my throat lest it come through as tears. “I’m not so fond of them as I used to be. But you know by now, all your lies to get me here were wasted. Haven’t you heard what they’re saying? That I’m the only Demdji in the world without powers?” He struggled through his drunken haze to focus on me. “Did you ever think about telling me what I was?”

All at once Jin filled my senses, the smell of liquor and heat and the sight of the distant planes of his face, of the tattoos just visible through his shirt.

“You want to talk about this? Now?”

“Why not?” I spread my arms wide, daring him. “Why don’t you tell me what the plan was? If things had been different in Dassama, were you going to truss me up like a prisoner and drag me here? Or did you have different lies all ready?”

“I didn’t make you come here.” Jin’s eyes bored into mine, but I wasn’t backing down. He said I had traitor eyes. Let him see the betrayal there. Let him drown in it. “I didn’t trick you and I didn’t ask you to.”

“What else was I meant to do? Leave you to die?”

“You might’ve.”

“I wouldn’t have.”

“The truth is I had no idea what I was doing when it came to you, Amani. I tried to leave you in Dustwalk because I didn’t want to drag you into my brother's war. I came back for you because I didn’t want to see you die at the hands of my other brother. But either way, I was bound to wind up doing one or the other. Just depended on which one.” His hand came up like he was going to reach for me but dropped to his side instead. “I was glad in Sazi when I saw you’d gone because it meant you’d escaped on your own path, and I was glad when you took the compass because it gave me a reason to go after you. And yes, I lied to keep you out of Izman because I was afraid someone would know what you were and you’d get snapped up and sold to the Sultan. And I steered you toward Dassama figuring there was a chance I might be able to deliver you to the sea and get you out of this country before it killed you.” His face was so close now. I remembered what he said once, crossing the desert, that the sea was the color of my eyes.

“You don’t have any right to decide that for me.” I shoved him away from me, trying to tear him out of my space, out of my head.

“But he does?” Jin shouted, the moment breaking. “My brother says you’re a Demdji and you think that will make your life matter, more than being the Blue-Eyed Bandit?”

I rounded on him, my hair catching in the air as it came loose from its braid. “You can’t judge me for wanting to be more than just another worthless grain in this desert. Not when you were born so much more than this. Not when you were born powerful and important.”

“Really?” Two of Jin’s quick steps carried him across the sands so fast, it was almost violent. “I was born the same year as ten brothers and a dozen sisters. Being born doesn’t make a single soul important. But you were important when I met you, that girl who dressed as a boy, who taught herself to shoot true, who dreamed and saved and wanted so badly. That girl was someone who had made herself matter. She was someone I liked. What the hell has happened since you came here that she is so worthless to you? What’s happened that only my brother’s approval and some power you never needed before can make you important? That’s why I didn’t want to bring you into this revolution, Amani. Because I didn’t want to watch the Blue-Eyed Bandit get unmade by a prince without a kingdom.”

I wanted so badly to tell him he was wrong, but my tongue turned to iron just at the thought. But that didn’t mean he was in the right either. “And what are you doing fighting for this country if it’s not for him? This country you don’t understand and you resent for taking your family—”

“You’re right.” He cut me off. “I never understood this country. I never understood why he chose to leave everything else behind and stay for this. Not until I met you.”

I felt like he’d pushed me, like I was falling and I needed him to reel those words back in to keep me standing straight.

“You are this country, Amani.” He spoke more quietly now. “More alive than anything ought to be in this place. All fire and gunpowder, with one finger always on the trigger.”

We stood close, anger pulsing between us. My heart was beating fast—or maybe that was his. We were breathing each other.

Just him and me.

There was more fire in me than I’d felt since I was told I was a Demdji. I opened and closed my hands, wanting to reach for him.

“Jin.” Bahi’s voice broke the moment. His face was graver than I’d ever seen it. “Ahmed is looking for you. There’s news of Naguib’s weapon.”