The Forbidden Wish(89)

“I have seen the threads of the universe, and they are stronger than you know.”

Squaring his shoulders, his eyes flaring red, Nardukha exhales streams of black smoke. “It is called the Forbidden Wish for a reason, girl. I was not the one who named it so—creatures like you have been forbidden since the dawn of time.”

Wings flare from his shoulders, spreading the length of the alomb. Claws sprout from his fingers and fangs from his lips. His skin shifts to smoke, his clothes to flames. He is shadow wrapped in fire, and he leaps forward, set on destroying me.

I meet the Shaitan in midair, drawing conjured blades. I raise my swords, clashing with his claws in a shower of sparks.

“You can’t defeat me,” he hisses, all trace of human form gone. He thrusts his head over my crossed blades, fangs snapping.

I roll aside, clear of his teeth. This fight is not going to be determined by swords and stances. Nardukha’s attacks are primal and powerful, not to be overcome by human tactics.

I draw him away from Aladdin, who is struggling to his feet amid a crowd of creeping, hissing jinn. He draws a short knife from his boot and holds it up, a paltry defense against the claws of a ghul or the teeth of an ifreet.

“Leave him,” the Shaitan snarls, and the jinn back away.

Then he pauses a moment, his eyes intent on me. Once, I would have cowered to be the center of his terrible attention. Now, I want only to finish this. Live or die, this is a fight I cannot abandon.

I draw a deep breath and relax, my conjured blades evaporating.

I reach for my magic.

And for the first time in my long, strange life, it answers my call.

With a gasp, I sway and nearly topple, but gritting my teeth, I stand my ground and let it swell. Always the magic has come from a human, siphoned off them and into me.

This time, the power is born at my center. It is an entirely different feeling. It’s dizzying and terrifying and wholly exhilarating. It spreads like white fire through my body, filling my limbs, my head, even my hair.

I can do anything. The Shaitan formed me into the most powerful of his jinn, and now I truly know what that means.

Nardukha acts first. He sends a funnel of fire shooting toward me. The blast of heat hits me first, blowing my hair back. I react instinctively, throwing up a wall of smoke to break the flames. By then he is already on me, striking me hard in my stomach and flinging me through the alomb. I let the momentum of his blow carry me out into the open, over the side of the mountain, where I shift to smoke from the waist down and hover in midair.

The Shaitan doesn’t immediately follow. Instead, he stands at the edge of the alomb and waves a hand. The clouds around the summit part, affording a view of Parthenia below. He looks at me, then at the city, and the moment I catch on, I throw myself at him.

“No!”

But he sends me reeling with a shake of his arm. Before I can recover, he directs a finger toward the summit, and the ground splinters with a succession of deafening cracks, which begin to glow red with swelling lava. The shaking of the ground knocks Aladdin to his knees, and he retreats farther into the alomb as the mountain rumbles.

“Aladdin!” I shout. “Stay down!”

Horrified, I try to dive past Nardukha to help, but he grabs me and hurls me outward. Without pausing, he issues a command to the jinn, and they rise and begin winging toward Parthenia.

“This is the price of your treachery!” he spits out. “This is the cost of your pride!”

He will destroy Parthenia, just as he destroyed Neruby and Ghedda, all to punish me.

But this time, I can fight back.

I fly away from the mountain, which begins to spew black smoke from the cracks opening in its sides. Nardukha follows, his enormous wings of shadow fully unfurled. He rolls onto his back and brushes a hand through the air, causing the stones of the mountain to break apart and rise up, igniting one by one. These he sends arcing toward me like comets.

I dodge his flaming stones while flying farther out. The sky is filled with falling fire and trails of black smoke. I blaze through them, then turn and fling my hands wide, sending a powerful wind gusting toward him. At my thought, the wind hardens into icy fangs that whistle as they speed through the air.

Nardukha crosses his arms in front of himself, breaking the icicles. I am already moving, heady from the power that pours through me in boundless amounts. Usually there is a limit to my magic, proportionate to my master’s wish, and I must wield it judiciously. Now with a mere thought I release floodgates inside, fueled by my desires, hampered only by the limits of my own imagination. And after four thousand years of granting wishes, my imagination is the most powerful muscle I possess.

I conjure at a rate that dazzles even me. Fire, wind, water, stone: All the elements bend themselves to my command. I send glittering eagles of flame screaming toward Nardukha. They claw at his eyes until he dashes them into a shower of sparks.

With a snap of my fingers, a pair of dragons appear in the sky above him, one of ice, one of fire. They roar and dive, spiraling around one another, their jaws gaping to swallow Nardukha. He turns and catches each by its muzzle, and with a growl, he reduces them to tiny harmless sparrows.

Enraged now, he goes on the offensive, slinging fire and rock in a crude but effective barrage. I dissolve into smoke and race through the air, flying over Parthenia, streaking toward the cliffs. Below me, the city is in chaos, as the people catch sight of the mountain erupting above them. The fighting around the palace begins to die down as they realize a greater threat is upon them. The earth beneath the city cracks and splinters, and when the walls begin to break apart, the wards protecting the people are broken. Jinn pour into the city. My spirit aches, longing to fly down and defend them, but I can barely hold off Nardukha.