But I didn’t want that path anymore.
I didn’t want to kill Nanu, despite what she had done. It wouldn’t end this circle of hatred, of vengeance.
“You couldn’t hurt me if you tried.”
“I have more power than you,” I said carefully, raising my palm up and letting her see the blackness inking my palm and the hot flame within it. “I don’t want to use it.”
Her eyes burned bright. “So, you’ve made a bargain too.” She smiled, too stretched, like skin pulled over a skeleton. She had become something other than human, as if the djinn had inhabited her and pulled out her humanity, leaving her with a husk of a body fed on rage.
She advanced on me, but this time, I stood my ground.
Was this who I would have become?
Was this the future that awaited me?
A woman wretched and shriveled with her need for vengeance?
No. Not anymore. You had to choose to become this, to forsake all joy in favor of destruction.
That would not be me.
She took another step forward and I lifted my palms again. Unease flashed through her eyes. And then a different kind of look altogether.
Her face creased in agony, and she unleashed a low howl.
“Nanu?” I moved toward her hesitantly.
“Don’t call me that,” she snapped, jerking away from my outstretched hand. She curled into herself. “You are no granddaughter of mine,” she croaked out.
Then she lifted her hands, those pale green eyes bleeding into black. My breath caught in my throat as tendrils of darkness spilled from her fingertips, glossy, as if she’d spilled a bottle of ink into the air and it took flight. They curled around me, a viper tightening around its prey ready to choke the life away.
I could have raised my own hands in defense, could have used the djinn power pounding against my pulse and light the dark on fire.
But I didn’t. I wanted to see how far she would go.
“You could have loved me,” I whispered. “All these years, you held yourself back and I never knew it was because of your grief over my mother. But you could have opened yourself to loving me.”
“Like you opened yourself after your father died? You came back for the same thing. Revenge.”
The spiraling black veins grew closer, an echo of the ones crawling down my hands. They closed in, the air around me turning cold, then unbearable.
I called on the borrowed djinn magic that burned under my skin, waiting to erupt. It wrapped itself around the blackness, swarming it like a hive of bees. A column of fire burst from me and enveloped the sack of zoraat beside the bed, alighting like a puff of desert scrub.
Then I walked through the flames, toward my grandmother.
Her eyes widened, her face blanching.
“How did you do that? How much did you have to consume?”
“I didn’t consume any. I was given this by the djinn himself.”
“Djinns do notgive. You traded something considerable for a taste of that power.” She tilted her head, her black eyes knowing. “Your life, perhaps?” She watched my face carefully, and I realized she’d been doing this to me for years, assessing, evaluating. “You think I’m the dangerous one when you bargain for much more?” She watched me. “Youarelike me.”
“I’m nothing like you,” I bit off. “I am capable of changing. And even if I did something I regret, I can atone. I can make it right.”
I wanted to believe that.
Ihadto believe that.
