In her mind’s eye she saw green-gold fields. She saw her sisters twirling through the high grass, her aunts lounging beneath the date trees, and her mother standing at the front door with a plate of luqaimat and calling everyone inside for dessert.
And then she saw everything—the fields, the house, the bodies—burned to cinders.
“What a foolish thing to say.” The words were soft when they left her lips, as faded as her visions. “Not all killers choose to wield a blade. Some of us do it out of necessity.”
The prince looked taken aback. “I thought Omar’s thieves sought him out because they wanted to kill jinn?”
Perhaps she ought to have been annoyed that the prince was probing for information, but it had been a long time since someone asked about her life before Omar, and she found she wanted to talk about it. Her past had never been a secret; maybe that was why no one found it valuable enough to steal from her.
“Perhaps.” She shrugged. “But it’s not as if I grew up desiring to wield a blade. I lived on a farm in Sameesh; the only sharp thing I was meant to handle was a sickle. But expectations change when your village is slaughtered by jinn. Farming tools didn’t keep me alive; a blade did.”
The prince looked at her dolefully. “I’m sorry,” he murmured.
She looked away, unnerved at seeing such honest sympathy on Omar’s face. “I don’t need your apologies. If there’s one thing I’ve learned since picking up a sword, it’s that empathy is weakness.”
“You speak like…”
“Like a killer? You’ll get used to it.”
She fell back against his bed and closed her eyes. Her cloak flared open with the motion, and she deduced by the prince’s silence that he was looking at her scars. “It’s rude to stare,” she said without opening her eyes.
“I was just looking—”
“At my scars? Are they really so fascinating?” She sighed. “Some people hide their scars; I prefer to wear mine like badges. They remind me of everything I survived, and of who it is I must seek revenge against.”
Beneath the darkness of her lids she saw Sameesh again: bright, burning, dying. And she saw the smoky creatures standing amidst the destruction, eyes burning with hatred. The jinn travelers they had welcomed into their home—repaying hospitality with violence.
The prince’s voice was faint. “The jinn from Sameesh—”
“They are gone, but my bloodlust is not. That is why I am here, Prince.” She pried open an eye. “Don’t you have better things to do than gawk at me?”
The prince stood so abruptly he bumped into the table and nearly knocked over the satchel. His gaze darted to the window, to the sky now glowing with stars. “I forgot something in Ahmed’s residence,” he muttered. “I’d like to retrieve it before his meeting starts.” He walked off but hesitated at the door. “Aisha?” He glanced over his shoulder, eyes glimmering with… hope? “Thank you for opening up to me. I appreciate your honesty.”
Laughter burst from Aisha before she could help it. How amusing, that this prince thought her sharing her past with him—a past that was so clearly written on her skin—meant anything. She was still chuckling to herself long after the prince’s footsteps faded down the corridor. When she reached for his satchel and, out of habit, searched inside for the relic.
The laughter died in her throat when her fingers brushed against nothing.
29
MAZEN
He had forgotten the relic in Ahmed’s diwan.
The weight of his guilt was so heavy it nearly knocked him off his feet as he burst out of the inn. It was all he could do to keep himself from sprinting outright toward the wali’s manor. Maybe if he moved quickly enough, he could retrieve it before Aisha realized it was missing. He did not want her to think him more incompetent than he already was.
Ahmed is fine. He’s a hunter; there’s no way he’d fall under a jinn’s spell.
Aisha had picked up the collar in the ruins without flinching, after all. When Mazen had asked if the jinn tried to manipulate her, she’d scoffed and said, “I am not gullible like you.”
Still, the closer he drew to Ahmed’s residence, the more fearful he became. His dread became an anchor, pulling him back down into the dark waters of paranoia he’d been trying to surface from ever since his encounter with the shadow jinn.
As he hurried through Dhyme’s labyrinth-like streets, he became aware of the darkness twisting on the walls. Of the shadows with red eyes wrapped around palm trees and draped across lantern-lit pathways. Gullible, Aisha had called him. But how could his naivete be the cause of such morbid visions? Everywhere he turned he saw darkness encroaching. Inconsequential, it murmured in his ears.