The Forbidden Wish(87)

Zhian still stands by the Eye, holding my lamp with one finger curled through the handle, dangling at his side.

Not trusting myself to think it through, not daring to take another precious fraction of a second, I shoot the lightning from my hands—toward Zhian. The jinn prince dodges, but not fast enough. The searing energy strikes him in the chest, doing little harm but throwing him off balance. He may hold the lamp, but he is jinn and cannot command me, so its power doesn’t protect him from my attack. Before he can recover, I am upon him, driving toward him in a funnel of smoke. My arms wrap around him, and I propel us both forward, toward the great Eye of Jaal and the fiery tunnel within. As we cross the threshold, Zhian cries out and lets go of the lamp, but too late.

Time rushes forward.

The clouds overhead coil and burst with lightning.

Zhian is sucked away into the tunnel and lost to sight, screaming in fury. I begin to pour into my lamp as it hurtles toward the hungry flames. Nardukha reacts, reaching—but not fast enough.

The lamp falls

falls

falls

falls into Ambadyan fire, the only force in this world or the next capable of destroying it.

I have time only to smile, my face momentarily forming through the smoke, and to whisper to Aladdin before the bronze walls close in on me and start to melt in the flames.

“I love you.”





Chapter Twenty-Eight


FORMLESS, I DRIFT.

Where do jinn go when they die? Humans are said to be destined for the godlands, where they will either dwell in ease or toil for the gods, depending on their deeds in life.

But jinn are cursed, and many believe they have no souls at all. When they die, they simply cease.

But I am still here—wherever here is.

Slowly I come to, my consciousness reluctant to wake. I am smoke, airy and thin, spread wide across a dark sky.

With much effort, I am able to assemble myself, finding that I am all in one piece. Instinctively I reach for my lamp, but I cannot sense it. Then I remember—it is gone. I saw it melt in the fires of Ambadya, felt the searing flames on my own skin.

My fate is tied to the lamp.

But I’m not dead.

The thought sends a jolt through me, and I take stock of my surroundings. The sky above is dark, but there are no stars, no moon, and no clouds to obscure it. Below I see only sand, sweeping toward every black horizon.

I sink and take my human form, turning a full circle. And then I see it: the only thing to be seen for leagues about.

A door, half sunk in sand.

A door I know at once.

I open it, because I know that is what I’m meant to do. Certainty settles in that I am not in Ambadya, nor the godlands, nor the human world. Where I am, I cannot say, though my best guess is that I am still burning with my lamp, and this is some fevered hallucination. All I can do is follow the path before me.

The steps behind the door are not broken and covered in sand, as they were when Aladdin set foot here—or in the real version of here. Despite being sunken beneath the desert, the room looks the same it did the day I first created it, when you said you wished for a garden that would never fade, Habiba, more beautiful than any in the world.

The jeweled trees refract the light of the glowing diamonds above, scattering red, green, and blue flecks of light like dancing fireflies. Water babbles through the brook lined with rocks of silver and gold. A wind from nowhere softly shakes the emerald grass, filling the air with a musical tinkling.

I walk through the garden, feeling unattached to my own body. Ahead, I can see where I’m meant to go. The lamp sits on the throne, waiting for me. It’s as if my mind is rewriting the day Aladdin and I met.

When I reach the throne, I stare at the lamp for a long moment, my eyes tracing the familiar contours with a blend of hatred and love. I’ve been bound to it for so long, despising it, cursing it, but it has been the only constant in my long, lonely life. It is, in a twisted way, home.

I reach out and have the strange sensation of being inside the lamp at the same time, looking out at myself, feeling myself getting closer.

But before my hands can touch it, the bronze melts, bubbling and oozing, dripping onto the floor. I jump back, my stomach wrenching, as I imagine what it would be like to be inside it when that happened. Did happen. May still be happening.

“What is going on?” I murmur. “What is this place? And why am I not dead?”

“Of course, you already know.”

I spin and suck in a breath.

You stand before me, Habiba, dressed in the same armor and leather you wore the day you died. Your hair is long and loose, with little braids behind your ears. You shine like a goddess, but your flesh bears wounds and bruises from battle.

“A life as sacrifice,” you intone, “will set you free. And isn’t that what the Shaitan fears most? A jinni with the power to grant her own wishes?”

“I can’t grant my own wishes.”

“What do you do best but turn wishes into reality? You wished to die that the boy might live, and you made that wish come true. You opened a door to a magic long lost, far more powerful than any the Shaitan wields. A sacrifice for freedom—that is the Forbidden Wish. You made the sacrifice, now accept the consequence. Freedom bears great responsibility.”

I stare at you, my mind a flurry of questions, but I can articulate none of them. With a smile, you step closer and press your lips to my forehead.