“Zahra.”
I can’t help but lift my gaze at the warmth in his tone. His eyes are shining, his lips slanted in a small smile.
“You’re beautiful,” he says. “I mean, you were beautiful before, of course, but knowing that this is the real you... I didn’t think I could love you more, but I do.”
I grin. “You’re just glad I didn’t turn out to be an old hag after all.”
He laughs. “There is that,” he admits.
“We should return to the city,” I sigh, thinking of the fight at the palace. “Caspida needs our help.”
“Can’t you just magic us there?” He waves his fingers as if casting a spell, and I laugh a little and nod.
Such a small thing, moving us from here to there, but less than an hour ago it would have been impossible without a wish. I draw in a long breath, reaching for my magic.
But nothing happens.
No tingle. No rush of magic.
Because thereisno magic. Or if there is, I cannot find it. Panicking, I reach deeper, shutting my eyes, trying to probe with my sixth sense—only to find that it, too, is cut off.
With a gasp, I open my eyes and lean against the doorway, staring without seeing.
“Zahra, what’s wrong?”
“It’s gone,” I gasp.
“What is?” He looks me up and down. “Are you hurt?”
“I...” Thinking back to the moment when I trapped Nardukha, I remember the snap I felt deep, deep within. “I stretched too far,” I whisper. “I have heard of this happening before, when a jinni goes too deep, attempts magic too big. Something breaks.”
He looks alarmed. “But... you’ll get better?”
I keep reaching inward, trying everything I can, but already I know the truth. I’m still jinn, but manipulating time drained every drop of magic in me. Even my shapeshifting is gone, I realize with a sinking spirit. What am I now? Less than jinn, more than human. Still a creature of smoke and fire, but that fire is smallernow. Without magic to sustain me, I’m practically mortal. In Ambadya, I would be an outcast, ridiculed and despised, turned into a worthless slave. But here in the human world, I’m almost... normal.
“Zahra...”
“No, it’s all right.” I manage a smile and grasp his hand. “I’m here, I’m alive. I’mfree.” If losing my magic is the price for saving Aladdin, then I would lose it a thousand and one times.
I rise onto my toes and kiss him, and he responds at once, pulling me closer, his hands pressing against my back. Around us, ashes flutter like rose petals, covering the ground and our hair. I barely notice. Never has he felt so real, so warm, so possible. The emptiness inside me, where magic once welled and sparked, now floods with all the hope I never dared to hope before. Always, I’ve held a part of me back, afraid to fully trust myself.
But now, for the first time, I do.
My magic is gone, but this seems to leave room for everything else to deepen: the taste of his lips, the texture of his cloak, the feel of my own true face. This is the first time I have kissed him with my own lips and held him with my own hands. I could go on like this forever.
But time is no longer at my command, and I reluctantly pull away. Aladdin tries to find my lips again, but I laugh softly and press my fingers to his.
“We have a long way to walk,” I say. “And who knows what we will find when we reach the city?”
He groans a little, but nods. “Are you sure you’re up for it?”
I want to shift into a hawk and show him just how up for it I am, but of course nothing happens. “Just you try to keep up,” I say instead.
•••
The battle is over by the time we reach the palace, hours later. Priestesses move among the wounded, and soldiers sit in little defeated groups, watched over by angry citizens. But the fight seems to have gone out of everyone. The jinn attack was brief but disastrous, and I see signs of the Ambadyan horde all over: scorch marks, smashed buildings, ripples of magic still curling through the air.
We find Caspida and the Watchmaidens at the top of the steps leading to the palace’s main doors. The princess looks exhausted, and she wears a bandage around her shoulder, her clothes ripped and bloody. The other girls look no better.
