The Forbidden Wish(86)

“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.