CHAPTER ONE
The perfume was long gone, the last drop dabbed against her skin years ago, yet the sweet scent from the jasmine lingered inside the bottle. The essence of a broken promise. All the tomorrows that would never be made to swirl in the mind by a single inhale. Close the eyes, breathe deep the sorrow of loss, and remember the dream of what might have been.
Sidra shifted inside the bottle, swirling languidly as she curled up at the bottom like a snake made of smoke and mournful regret. She could recline there for a thousand years, lost in memories of things past without a soul to disturb her. Safely shut up, she was free of her pursuers, free of the troubles of the world, free of obligation and pain.
A fingernail tapped against the glass. The noise disturbed the quiet like a clanging bell of a clock tower. She swore she would turn the girl to ash for breaking her hard-found peace.
Yvette wiggled the stopper loose. “Out,” she said.
The girl stepped away so that Sidra could no longer see her pale eye peering down at her through the neck of the bottle. The scent of Yvette’s cigarette smoke, however, wafted over the opening, stale and pungent. Sidra shrank away, refusing to acknowledge the interruption.
Another tap, only this time Yvette gave the bottle a shake too. Sidra’s anger flared. Her melancholia dissolved as her ire churned, her heart and mind spinning, ready to spring forward. She shot out of the bottle, a creature born of fire and air, a funnel of roiling energy, soaring on unseen currents that yielded to her command. Willing herself visible, her spirit, mind, flesh, and bone coalesced in the open air until the weight of gravity anchored her animated body to the earth. Or wherever this light-filled realm was that she’d smuggled herself into.
“I thought you jinn had to obey whoever opened your bottle.”
“And I thought you were forbidden to smoke in the home of your ancestors.” Sidra advanced on Yvette to puncture her self-assuredness, but the girl no longer retreated. Not now that she’d stepped into the river of her free-flowing Fée powers.
“Guess we’re breaking all the rules today.” Yvette glowed softly as she stubbed her cigarette out in a golden chalice. “Grand-Père found out you’re here. He’s requested a ‘chat’ by the stream.”
Curse that Oberon. She’d conjured a way to escape the stinking city of infidels despite the magic bond imprisoning her there, and now this fairy king could ruin everything with his meddling. But this, too, was partially foretold by the fire.
Sidra waited for Yvette to gather her cigarettes and lighter from her vanity and stuff them deep in her pockets, then followed the spritely girl outside her grotto and through the forest. The path stretched out beneath a canopy of trees festooned with moss and lichen that smelled of fresh green growth. Bulbous red-and-white mushrooms sprouted in the soil at their feet while tiny frogs croaked in the undergrowth. Bluebells tinkled a subtle tune in the wake of their passing.
Sidra despised every step through the damp air. She craved the searing heat and brittle-bone dryness of the desert sirocco. She yearned for the company of lizards with their beaded skin as they skimmed over grains of sand to find shelter from the midday sun. A ransom she would pay to sit cross-legged once more beneath the palm trees with their sparse leaves worn as a crown. Now those were trees that made you appreciate life, not these water-fat monstrosities that dropped their shiny green leaves in one’s path like cheap souvenirs for the taking.
“They said to look for him by the standing stones.” Yvette levitated off the ground a mere foot to see over the top of a flowering bush, her shining and glittering nothing but an added boast. The girl had recently learned how to use her powers to rise in the air and showed off her skill at every opportunity. As if traveling on air currents were anything but child’s play. Jinn were born on the air. Unseen. Free to fly wherever the wind took them in whatever shape they wished.
The chattering of tiny winged creatures hiding behind tufts of moss and lumps of stone prompted Sidra to lift the hem of her caftan in disgust so that the beastly things wouldn’t hitch on. If she’d known the insufferable beings inhabited the forest like lice, she might have thought twice about her plan to escape to the Fée lands. But no, she’d not been ready to confront her enemy. The one who’d entrapped her in the city. Not yet. And so she had to suffer in this hideous realm for as long as it took.
A leathery-faced imp flew in her face and squirted nectar at her from a plump flower head he’d plucked from the path. She swatted the thing away. The touch of her skin sizzled its wings off in a puff of smoke. She took a small pleasure from the act, knowing she had such an effect on the nuisance beings.
Yvette pointed to the circle of standing stones. Her gauzy new clothes, much too elegant for a sharmoota, shifted in the breeze, clinging to her body like second skin. Another one of their fairy tricks because she knew the girl had slipped several bulky items in her pockets, yet there was no proof of them in her lithe silhouette. Enviable magic. A pocket like that could come in handy for one with her sticky-fingered talents, but the girl no longer carried the air of a street thief. Cleared of a murder she hadn’t committed, Yvette had taken on the role of a daughter of the court with more dignity than Sidra might have expected. Grudgingly, she admired the girl’s audacity. She was foul-mouthed and inappropriate at every turn, but the jinni supposed she was merely true to the ways of her kind.
“Greetings.”
The tall woman, the queen of this place, hailed them with a wave and a dagger smile from a throne made of interlaced willow branches. At her feet sat two of the tiny winged fiends, shelling hazelnuts and piling up the nutmeat in a woven basket. They hissed at Sidra as if they’d seen what she’d done to the third creature that ought to be there with them.
“Titania,” Yvette said and lowered her head.
“Nonsense. Call me Grand-Mère, child.”
The girl turned to face the man with the antlers sprouting out of his temple and bowed. “Oberon . . . er, Grand-Père.”
“Your luminescence is improving,” he said. “May you continue to shine.”
“Thank you.” Yvette still carried praise uneasily in her grubby hands, but she was getting better at accepting kind words without swatting them away like flies. The girl nudged her head toward Sidra. “I brought her like you asked.”
The jinni had stood tall and impassive during their formal exchanges. These trifling Fée with their featherlight bodies and narcissistic posturing were of little concern to her. All she cared about was the safe haven the occlusion of their realm provided from the rest of the world. Still, when Oberon finally turned his attention on her—his golden eyes lit with the hues of the forest, unblinking in the morning light—she could not deny she felt the full heft of a king’s prerogative weigh on her head. She had heard tales about the king of the Fée. How proud he was. How indulgent. She saw now the truth in the rumors as he twirled a wineglass in his hand before draining the contents in one gluttonous gulp.
Oberon wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “We are open to guests in our realm,” he began. “We are a social people by nature. Proud of our ways and gifts, which we freely share.” He set the glass down and leaned forward, brows like oak leaves tightening. “But we are not accustomed to harboring stowaways whose only wish is to hide from the troubles of the world.”