Kamran froze.
No, he could not believe it. Had he conjured the girl to life with his own thoughts? He felt a moment of triumph, quickly chased by trepidation.
Something was wrong.
Her movements were frantic, unrehearsed. She ran through the rain as if she were afraid, as if she were being chased. Kamran followed swiftly, homing in on her before panning out again, surveying the area for her aggressor. He saw a fresh blur of movement, a form heavily obscured by the torrential downpour. The figure sharpened into focus by degrees; Kamran could only make out the true shape of him when he reached out, grabbing the girl by the arm.
She screamed.
Kamran did not think before he reacted. It was instinct that propelled him forward, instinct that bade him grab the man and throw him bodily against the pavement. Kamran drew his sword as he approached the fallen figure, but just as he lifted his blade, the cretin disappeared.
Jinn.
The unnatural act was enough to sentence the lout to death—and yet, how could you kill a man you could not catch?
Kamran muttered an oath as he sheathed his sword.
When he spun around, he spotted the girl only paces away, her clothes sagging with rainwater. The skies had not ceased their torment, and Kamran watched as she struggled to run; she appeared to be balancing packages in one arm, stopping at intervals to pull the wet snoda away from her face. Kamran could hardly see three feet in front of him; he could not imagine how she saw anything at all with a sheet of wet fabric obscuring her eyes.
“Miss, I mean you no harm,” he called out to her. “But you must remove your snoda. For your safety.”
She froze at that, at the sound of his voice.
Kamran was heartened by this and dared to approach her, overcome not only by concern for the girl, but by an impassioned curiosity that grew only stronger by the moment. It occurred to him, as he dared to close the gap between their bodies, that the wrong move might spook her—might send her running blindly through the streets—so he moved with painstaking carefulness.
It was no good.
He’d taken but two steps toward her and she went flying into the night; in her haste she slipped, landing hard on cobblestone, scattering her packages in the process.
Kamran ran to her.
Her snoda had slipped an inch, the wet netting sealing around her nose, suffocating her. In a single motion she tore the mask from her face, gasping for air. Kamran hooked his arms under hers and dragged her to her feet.
“My—my packages,” she gasped, raindrops pelting her closed eyes, her nose, her mouth. She licked the rainwater from her lips and caught her breath, keeping her eyes shut, refusing to meet his gaze. Her cheeks were flush with color—with cold—her sooty lashes the same shade as her sable curls, wet tendrils spiraling away from her face, some plastered to her neck.
Kamran could hardly believe his fate.
Her reluctance to open her eyes provided him the rare opportunity to study her at length, without fear of self-consciousness. All this time he’d been wondering about the girl and now here she was, in his arms, her face mere inches from his own and—devils above, he could not look away from her.
Her features were both precise and soft, balanced in every quadrant as if by a master. She was finely designed, loveliness rendered in its truest sense. This discovery was surreal to him to the point of distraction, all the more so because Kamran’s calculations had been wrong. He’d suspected she might be beautiful, yes—but this girl was not merely beautiful.
She was stunning.
“Hang the packages,” he said softly. “Are you hurt?”
“No, no—” She pushed against him like she might be blind, still refusing to open her eyes. “Please, I need my packages—”
Try as he might, Kamran could not understand.
He knew she was not blind, and yet she pretended at it now, for reasons he could not fathom. At every turn this girl had baffled him, and just as he was beginning to digest this, she threw herself to the ground, sparing Kamran only seconds to catch the girl before her knees connected with stone. She pulled away from him, paying him no mind even as her skirts sank into the old slush of the filthy street, her hands fumbling in the wet for sign of her wares. She moved suddenly into a stroke of gaslight, the flame bracing her in its glow.
It was then that Kamran noticed the bandages.
Her hands were wrapped almost to the point of immobility; she could hardly bend a finger. It was no wonder she struggled to hold on to her things.
He quickly scooped up the scattered items, depositing them into his satchel. He didn’t want to scare her by shouting over the rain, so he bent low and said close to her ear: “I’ve got your packages, miss. You may be easy now.”