I whirl to Aladdin, eyes wide, my heart of smoke bursting into sharp fragments. Nardukha’s command drags at my every fiber. It whispers through my thoughts, muddling my mind.
Kill him.
Yes, that is what I want.
No! It’s not! You love him!
But I want to kill him.
No, you don’t! Get control of yourself, Zahra!
My name isn’t Zahra. I am Smoke-on-the-Wind, Curl-of-the-Tiger’s-Tail, Girl-Who-Gives-the-Stars-Away.
He loves you!
He is just a mortal. Just a boy, a moment in time that will soon pass.
His name is Aladdin.
I have known a thousand and one like him. I will know a thousand and one more. He is nothing.
He is everything.
“Zahra?”
My legs shift to smoke. My eyes turn to fire. I rise, hands held out, fingers crackling with lightning. It sizzles up my arms, singeing my false skin. I am no human. I am jinni, the most powerful of all Nardukha’s children, exalted above all the hosts of Ambadya.
“Tremble, mortal,” I intone in a thousand and one voices. “I am the Slave of the Lamp.”
“No!” The boy’s hair whips around his face as the wind of my breath swirls around him. “Your name is Zahra!”
Above the alomb, clouds roll and multiply, flashing with lightning. A hot, sticky wind howls through the columns, and in the wind are the jinn, and the jinn are laughing.
“Zahra!” The boy holds up a hand, trying to block the sand that stings his eyes. “I know you can hear me! Stop this! You’re stronger than this!”
I shift my eyes to my master, who stands glorious and shining as a god. He smiles at me, and I bask in his approval.
Kill him.
“I love you,” whispers the boy, his words reaching me improbablythrough the howling wind and the crackling fire. “I love you. Do you hear me? I love you. No matter what.”
Kill him.
I stretch my hands toward him, preparing to launch the lightning that sizzles across my fingers, biting me like a thousand and one angry snakes.
KILL HIM.
I draw a breath, and my palms burn white, blindingly white, as the lightning bunches and readies.
Then something glints on my hand, drawing my eye, just for a moment.
A ring.
The ring I forged for the thief to give to the princess, which he gave to me instead, and with it, his heart. The symbols I myself pressed into the gold seem to shine at me:love, undying, infinite, unity.Symbols of power, symbols of truth. They burn into my ears, sear themselves into my soul.
Time slows.
The clouds overhead roll backward.
