Forty-one

The djinn who stood before me smiled, his teeth straight and white, like small chips of diamonds in an ageless face.

He looked human like me, just older. Or younger. I couldn't quite tell. And he stared as if he knew me, which I found much more troubling.

I didn't want to be known by a djinn.

"You are different from the last human I bargained with. She had a black vengeance in her soul that could not be contained. But Vahid had the same hunger as you."

His ageless voice shot through me, cold and impersonal. Then his hold on me lessened, and my frozen limbs thawed until my sword dropped. Words stuck in my mouth like cold ghee, but I pushed past my fear. Noor was still captured, and I didn't have much time to help her.

"You are the djinn that gave Vahid his power?"

The djinn smiled again, as if he took delight in my question—no, as if he took pride in it.

"Vahid was a simple farmer then, raging about the injustices of the kingdoms." The djinn chuckled, though his face barely moved. "He rambled about how the children in his village died from starvation, and that he would make the king pay for creating the famine. He had such hatred manifesting inside him." The djinn sounded gleeful. "I warned him that if he wanted my power he would have to accept the cost as well. I warned him, but you see, he didn't listen." The djinn's eyes were ravenous.

I inhaled sharply, a word he used burning my insides like acid.

"The cost ?" My voice was a whisper, and I wasn't sure if I was more scared of my question or his answer.

The djinn leaned forward, his eyes gleaming. "Surely you feel it? Hmm? The leaching of yourself. The darkness that is eating away at you the more you consume. Some take years to feel it. But humans that use as much as you do, that feel as much as you do, they experience it almost immediately."

My mind whirled. That voice I kept hearing. Those instances of deep anger that made me feel like I was going out of my mind. The moments where it felt like the rage had blackened my vision. It had nearly taken over when I'd been with Mazin, egging me on to get revenge, but my own small voice had fought back. I clutched the hilt of my sword tight, my fingers unsteady, despite knowing my blade would do little good against the creature before me.

"Why are you here now?" I desperately wished my voice didn't shake, and that I could stand firm on my feet, instead of edging away from him like my skin wanted to leave more than I did.

He smiled again, that haunting, intense stare. "To offer you the same bargain I offered Vahid—a piece of my power. A piece of djinn magic that will give you your vengeance."

I inhaled, my breath catching in my throat, my chest feeling like it would explode.

But there was something bitter at the back of my throat, and I turned one word over in my mouth.

Bargain .

This was not a gift. It would always have a cost.

"I already have access to your power, djinn. I don't need to bargain for it."

"You have access to a grain of sand compared to what I can give you. If you want to save your friend, I can give you everything you need to do it."

I exhaled, knowing he spoke the truth. I had no chance of saving Noor with the power I had now. If he gave me something I could destroy Thohfsa with, I could take Vahid down…

But what if this magic was more than I could afford?

"And in return?" I backed up another step. "What is the price I would pay for such power?"

The djinn's eyes lit up like the fire inside him was stoked. "The price would be the use of your body."

I reared back, stumbling on a step before I could stop myself. I opened my mouth to say something but the words didn't come out. Fear bubbled in my stomach, turning my skin to ice, cooling the sweat on my brow and making my skin clammy.

And yet… and yet .

"I would possess you, inhabit your skin, and fully live in your realm," he continued.

"You're in my realm now," I pointed out, gesturing to the courtyard around us, to the night sky lit up with stars. "And you have power here. My servants aren't moving. My guards are frozen stiff. You stopped my sword without touching it. What more could you want?"

"These are tricks," he hissed, taking a step closer. "I am limited by what I can do here. But in a human body, I would not be. I could channel my power through you, much like your precious zoraat that you consume."

"And why would I give you use of my body, when I already have a portion of your power?"

"Because I can give you everything you've wanted. Everything you dream about in the darkest parts of yourself."

"What is it that you think I want? I'm not like Vahid. I don't do this for power."

"Don't you? Haven't you always wanted the power to destroy your enemies? You practiced with a sword until your hands were bloody. You built a wall around yourself so you would be untouchable. But yes, you want more than power, I will grant you that. You want something far more interesting. Retribution. Revenge. That I understand very well. I can give you the power to destroy an empire. To eviscerate a man and take from him all that he loves. That is what you crave, is it not?"

I pursed my lips together. I wanted my revenge, but I didn't want to become Vahid for it. But Noor was still being held by Thohfsa. If I didn't do something, she'd be dead. Maybe I could accept death if it was just me, but Noor deserved to live, to be free.

A sound from the garden turned my head, soft footsteps echoing through the courtyard. One of the guards walked toward me, as if he hadn't just been a statue for the past few minutes. He came closer, and I blinked, seeing the man clearly for the first time.

Out of the darkness came a man that wasn't a guard at all. My heart lodged in my throat, my breath stuttering.

It was someone altogether impossible.

"I never thought I would see you again." His soft voice called to me, deep and steady, the one who always calmed me when I needed guidance.

"Baba?" His name was pulled from me, drawn out as if I didn't know my own language.

I whipped my head back to the djinn beside me, who watched with firelit eyes. "What have you done?"

"Tricks again." He shrugged, the gesture as unnatural as his presence. "But effective. Humans are so controlled by their past. It dictates everything you do."

I forced breath through my nostrils, my hands clenching my sword hilt so hard I thought it would crack in half.

As the illusion drew closer, I even smelled my father—soft smoke and flame, earthy hot iron mixed with the slightly acrid scent of molten steel. Memories flooded me—sitting in a chair at the end of the smith as my father stoked the fire, the sound of his knife scraping against camel bone as he carved in the evening, the pride I felt in my stomach when he laughed at a joke I told him over a plate of hot dal kachoris.

And now that same man was standing before me, the gray in his beard shining in the torchlight, the deep wrinkles on his brown face I had mapped like the constellations of stars above us.

Except my father was dead.

My stomach fell like an iron weight, and I closed my eyes to block out the sight of him.

"Take him away." I forced the words through my set teeth. "I don't want to see him anymore."

"But you do," said the djinn in my ear, with a low, self-satisfied whisper, suddenly so close I could touch him. "You want to see him so badly you would cut out your own tongue. I can feel it, the longing. The agony. The anger. I'm almost drunk from it." His cold breath brushed my neck. "It's why I'm here." The djinn waved his hand over me. "Because of you. Because of the rawness of your need for vengeance. Because of who you've lost, and what you plan to do about it."

"He was taken from me. This is not my father."

"Your father was murdered, you were betrayed, and since then you've only had one purpose. Tell me, what would you do if you had unlimited power? If you could do anything you wanted to the people who stole your life? Would you make them pay the cost?"

I stared into my father's dark eyes, crinkled at the corners from laughter. His mouth lifted and he gave me the same grin I'd always known. The one he gave before tousling my hair affectionately and correcting me on the right way to hold a dagger.

My father cocked his head. "What are you looking for, beti?"

I exhaled, searching for something that made him unnatural, unfamiliar. But he felt as real as the sword in my hand. "The answer, Baba."

My father leaned forward, his hand reaching out to touch me. My lungs contracted in my chest.

"Don't," I whispered, my voice cracking. His hands paused in midair, a question in his gaze. When my mother had died, my father picked up the pieces of our life. My nanu had been broken, inconsolable, and I was left with the loss of both of them. But my father was the one constant in my life, the one who loved me no matter what happened.

Finding out about his death caused my heart to crack open, the blackness spilling inside, hardening my insides with more rage than I thought imaginable. I hadn't had him to comfort me then, when I'd most needed it.

If I felt his hand on my shoulder now, I would fall apart.

And I couldn't fall.

Not now, not when it wasn't just my revenge in the balance but Noor's life as well. What if my only living friend died because of me?

The cost of my body was something I'd pay a thousand times if I knew I could get my father back. But that wasn't what the djinn offered.

No one could bring back the dead, not even the djinn.

But if I could save someone else. If I could save Noor. What would I give for that? What would I do?

I looked up at the djinn, wrenching my gaze away from my father, as much as it pained me to do so.

I had the answer, I'd always had it, I just didn't know if I had the strength to see it through.

"I accept the cost," I said, my voice causing an odd vibration across the garden, like a ripple in a pond. I kept speaking before I lost the nerve, before my legs gave out and I crumpled to a heap on the ground. "But I want more than what I have." I tightened my hands on the hilt of my sword, remembering the other lives Vahid had taken, destroyed, starved. The protestors burned in the street. Mazin's parents, slaughtered in their village. He had systematically destroyed the kingdoms with his own greed. Now I would take them back.

"I want the power to free Noor and burn this empire to the ground. I want the emperor dead. And…" I paused, remembering a set of dark eyes I'd sworn to forget, the touch of someone I thought loved me until I knew better. "I want Mazin to watch it. All of it. I want him to know that I was the one who took it all away, before I kill him. That is my bargain, djinn."

I dropped my sword on the ground and held out my hands, studying the lines, the scars, the bumps and ridges that made them me. On top of those scars the black spidery veins crawled up my arms from the center of my palms, like slick oil bleeding into my skin.

But my hands were still mine. Every cut and mark was mine .

And I was about to give them to a djinn.

My stomach was a dark pit eating away at me. Everything in my body rebelled against this decision. This would give me what I wanted but take away everything I had left.

I looked back at my father, but it wasn't his warm smile I saw anymore. It was the djinn's, those icy teeth glittering, now razor blades in the moonlight.

"Done."