“So are you going to devour my soul?” he asks, as if it is a challenge. “Or drown me? What sort of jinni are you?”
With a curl of smoke, I shift into a white tiger and crouch before him, my tail flicking back and forth. He watches in amazement, recoiling a bit at the sight of my golden eyes and extended claws.
“What are you?” he whispers.
Should I tell him what—who—I really am? That even now, legions of angry jinn—ghuls, maarids, a dozen other horrors—could be racing toward us? If he has any wits about him, he’ll abandon my lamp and put as many leagues between us as he can . . . which would leave me completely helpless. At least while he holds the lamp, I have a fighting chance.
“How did you find me?” I ask. So many centuries, and this hapless young man is the only one to have found my prison. After that final battle, after you fell, Habiba, my kin threw me into the garden I had created for you. Sit in the dark and rot, traitor, they said. And for so many years, I was certain that would be my fate. But then, surpassing all hope, the boy appeared.
“I’m from Parthenia.” At my blank expression, he adds, “Two weeks by horseback, to the west. On the coast. As for how I found you . . . I was led here. By this.”
He pulls from his finger the ring he’d been twisting earlier. He holds it out on his palm, and after a slight hesitation, I pick it up. A tingle in my fingers tells me the ring was forged in magic. There is something familiar about it, but I am certain I have never seen it before. The band is plain gold but for the symbols carved into the inside, symbols that have been blurred by time and fire.
“And you say it led you to me?” I straighten and stare hard at him.
He takes the ring from my palm. “When I . . . um, found it, it began whispering to me. I know it sounds insane, but I couldn’t get it to stop. Even when I took it off and tried to throw it away, I kept hearing it. So I thought, why not see what it wanted?”
“What did it say?”
“It wasn’t so much words . . .” He closes his hand around the ring, looking haunted. “I just knew it wanted me to follow it, that it would lead me to something important. I didn’t know what. Only that I had to find out, like it’d put a spell on me or something. When I found your lamp, it went silent for the first time in weeks, so I guess . . . it was leading me to you.”
I wonder if he is truly as naïve as he seems. Perhaps he is a simple pauper who stumbled across an ancient and powerful talisman without understanding its true worth. The ring is enchanted, meant to lead the bearer to me. But who created it? It is very old, likely made around the time I was abandoned by my kin in the jeweled garden five hundred years ago. Why hasn’t it been used until now, and why by such an unlikely individual?
“So you followed a magic ring all the way to Neruby, just out of curiosity?”
“Well,” he says gruffly, glancing aside, “it’s not as simple as that. Let’s just say I’m not the only one interested in the ring. I knew it would lead to something valuable, and finding valuables happens to be my . . .” His voice fades and his eyes grow wide. “Wait a minute. What did you say?”
I frown. “I said it’s strange that mere curiosity—”
“No, not that. You said this city was called Neruby.”
“Of course,” I reply.
He sucks in a breath, taking a half step backward, and he scans me head to toe as if just seeing me for the first time. When he next speaks, his voice is tight, excited, breathless.
“I know who you are,” he says.
Something about his tone causes my heart of smoke to flicker in response, and I throw my guard up. “Oh? And who, O boy of Parthenia, am I?”
He nods to himself, his eyes alight. “You’re her. You’re that jinni. Oh, gods. Oh, great bleeding gods! You’re the one who started the war!”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re the jinni who betrayed that famous queen—what was her name? Roshana? She was trying to bring peace between the jinn and the humans, but you turned on her and started the Five Hundred Wars.”
I turn cold. I want him to stop, but he doesn’t.
“I’ve heard the stories,” he says. “I’ve heard the songs. They call you the Fair Betrayer, who enchanted humans with your . . .” He pauses to swallow. “Your beauty. You promised them everything, and then you ruined them.”
A thousand and one replies vie for my tongue, but I swallow them all, bury them deep, deep in my smoky heart. Was it too much to hope, Habiba, that five hundred years would be enough to bury the past? They sing songs of us, old friend. This boy, in his rags and poverty, knows who I am, knows who you were, knows what I did to you. And how can I deny it? Beneath our feet, the ruins of your city lie. He saw them with his own eyes. And why should I hide who I truly am? The Fair Betrayer. The name fits. I add it to the long list of other names I have collected over the years like flotsam in my wake, many of them far less flattering.
Letting out a long breath, I shrug one shoulder. “So what now? Will you toss me away? Bury me again?”
He laughs, a cold, sharp laugh. “Throw you away? When you can grant me three wishes? Would I throw away a bag of gold just because I found it in a pile of dung?” He winces. “I didn’t mean . . . It’s just all so . . . I need to think.”
I watch as he paces in a tight circle, his hands raking his hair over and over, until it nearly stands on end. When he finally stops, I feel dizzy just from watching him. I’d nearly forgotten how frenzied you humans are, always bouncing here and there, like bees drunk on nectar. And this boy is wilder than most, his energy radiating outward, warming the air around him.
He seems to arrive at some conclusion at last, because he stops his mad pacing and faces me squarely, his jaw hardening in resolution. I have to bend my head back a little to meet his gaze.
“So. Three wishes. Anything I want?”
“Anything in this world, if you’re willing to pay the price.”
His eyes narrow. “Tell me about this price.”
With a sigh, I conjure a small flame in my hand and let it dance across my fingers, like a charlatan’s coin. “Every wish has a price, O Master. Seldom do you—or I—know what that price is, until it has already been paid. Perhaps you’ll wish for great wealth, only to find it stolen away by thieves. Perhaps you’ll wish for a mighty dragon to carry you through the sky, only to be devoured by it when you land. Wishes have a way of twisting themselves, and there is nothing more dangerous than getting your heart’s desire. The question is, are you willing to gamble? How much are you willing to lose? What are you willing to risk everything for?”
At that, his eyes harden, and I see that he knows exactly what he wants. He turns and begins walking, his steps sliding in the sand. I follow behind, my eyes on his tattered cloak as it snaps in the wind that whips across the dunes. As I wait for him to reply, I pass my little flame from hand to hand.