“How long?” I still stared at myself, barely hearing her words. “How long can I wear this face for?”
Noor shook her head. “I’m not certain. Three weeks, maybe. A month?”
“A month is fine.” I would use whatever time I had to my advantage. But I needed more than just a new face.
I needed the power to take down an emperor.
An army.
A lover.
“We can use the seeds for other things?”
“Yes, I can give you different zoraat combinations for other djinn powers.”
“Good.” I turned from the mirror and faced her. “Are you going to disguise yourself?”
Noor shook her head. “Souma made me vow never to take it. Not after what he’d seen happen. But that’s not a risk here. And no one knows what I look like because no one ever met me outside of Souma’s storeroom. I won’t need to use the zoraat and then we will have more for you. As long as we still plan on taking down Vahid, I don’t need anything else.”
She watched me, her eyes absorbing my face as ifshedidn’t really know who I was anymore, even though she was aware it was all a mask.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” She asked the question again, but this time it had a different emphasis. She wasn’t asking anymore if I was sure I wanted to consume the seeds, but rather if I wanted to do any of this at all. If I even wanted to go down this path.
Because if we started, there was no going back.
A cool calm washed over me. Baba was murdered by the emperor’s soldiers. His smith stripped of his precious blades by his best friend. I had lost everything this past year and gained only pain. But Mazin still had everything, despite all he had taken. I thought of his face, that smooth impenetrable veneer right before the guards had taken me.
“Yes,” I said, my voice a deep growl. “That’s the only thing I want.”
Sixteen
We made it to the city swiftly after buying another horse and traveling back on the direct route through the mountains. I didn’t bother to cover my face given I was wearing an entirely new one. Noor’s dupatta covered hers but no one would have recognized her anyway. We were strangers to this city, and that was how we wanted it.
The city rose up from the dunes like it was an extension of the earth, a natural fixture moored in the ground instead of a man-made walled city the color of sun-drenched sand stretching to the horizon.
Basral.
The city of djinn power and blood. The place where I would find my retribution.
I repeated the names that were my constant companion now.
Casildo. Darbaran. Vahid. Mazin.
They had betrayed me for gain, and they would receive much more than they ever wanted. Zoraat coursed through my veins and the same whispered word I’d heard on the wind met my ears again.
Revenge.
I tasted it on my tongue, remembering the dark figure I thought I’d seen in the cave and the two footsteps beside mine in the sand.Remembering my father’s ghoulish face. It was unsettling that just touching the zoraat could have caused those illusions, because it reminded me that I truly didn’t know how much power it was capable of.
Perhaps we had enough zoraat to level this entire city.
Perhaps I could scorch the earth under Mazin’s feet and make him beg me to spare his life.
A dark feeling took hold, deeper than my rage had ever been, the djinn magic in my system feeling like it had come alive. For a moment my vision shadowed, and my palms burned as if they were coated in fire.
“What should we do first?” Noor’s voice cut through the blaze that had swept over me.
The first step in the plan.
