“And we’re just to believe that?” Jai growled.
The Jinn King’s eyes slid so slowly over to Jai the room was given time to ice over with his menace. “Perhaps you should colar your dog, daughter. His refusal to show me deference might get him put down.”
Instead of frightening him, Ari knew it only made Jai want to attack. She shot her guardian a warning look and he glared at her. I’m not a fool. I’m a trained
Ginnaye. Do you think I’m going to attack an immortal Jinn King?
To be honest she wasn’t sure. Jai was more impulsive where she was concerned. Just as she often reacted without thinking where he was concerned.
“If you could make your point without being rude, it would be appreciated,” Ari replied to White.
To her surprise, White nodded. “If you agree to return to my home here in Mount Qaf for an indefinite amount of time, I wil speak for Charlie at his trial. Together, Red and I can save him.”
The words unlocked the darkness. It uncoiled in her chest like a python lashing out at its nearest victim and Ari had to grab hold of it, slamming her eyes shut and gritting her teeth to stop herself from commanding White to be suppliant to her for daring to use Charlie’s predicament against her. She reined in the darkness and shoved it back down, her hands trembling so much she had to clench them into fists.
She could say yes and Charlie could walk away unscathed. But she’d be here at the mercy of White, who wanted to bring Azazil to heel. Had it been so long since his talk with his mother that he’d forgotten what such a thing would do to the world? Or was that what he wanted now?
Praying Charlie would never find out that she’d walked away from a chance to save him, Ari shook her head. “I’m never going to trust you, you know. Your deals, your seeming patience… it’s al hiding the truth. You’l destroy us.”
She thought she caught a note of wonder in White’s eyes before he cocked his head to the side in that alien and disturbing way of his. “Your stubborn determination to ignore me is going to get one of your friends kiled, Ari. I am surprised at you.” His eyes narrowed and then he looked at Jai. “Or maybe I am targeting the wrong friend.” Jai glared back at him, unflinching. “Is that what you want? Me, to hurt him?”
“As stupid as this may sound to you, al I want is to be left alone.”
White shook his head, his eyes finding her again. “I made you, Ari. I made you for a purpose. I am not going to walk away.”
“Why?” She took an unthinking step towards him, and at Vadit’s growl, she felt Jai’s strong hand wrap around her wrist and pul her back. “Do you realy think commanding your father to your bidding is in line with your supposed wishes to return things to the way they should have been; to maintain the balance? According to Red, commanding Azazil to your every whim could bring destruction to the realms.” Okay, maybe Red hadn’t said al that, but Lilif had.
The White King froze at the knowledge she had acquired, and then he sighed as if deciding it didn’t matter. “I do not want to command my father for every little whim, Ari. I just want one thing from him. Something he wil never hand over unless I force it from him. One thing.”
Ari shook her head, disbelieving. “You said yourself you want to be Sultan.”
“Did I? I do not remember ever saying that. I said I want to return the order. Everyone else believes that my purpose is to dethrone Azazil. Let them. My father knows better. He knows exactly what I want, and he wil play my brothers off of each other to keep me from getting it. But he knows you can get me what I want. He knows, Ari, and he wil do whatever it takes to stop that from happening. So you should think very carefuly before you trust him.”
Trying not to let him play mind games with her, Ari shrugged. “What thing? What’s the thing you want?”
“Something that wil restore the Jinn world. Something that wil insure that chaos remains within its own space and does not intrude into others and bring the destruction you have spoken of.”
For a moment, Ari was lost in the unusual sincerity in White’s gaze, but the sound of Jai clearing his throat made her shake her head, spiling the strange and unwelcome questions out of it. “I’m sorry. I can’t help you. I don’t trust you, and I want nothing to do with the power within me. I’d quite happily spend the rest of my life pretending it doesn’t even exist.”
White’s features froze and a grim determination etched into the hardness. “That is foolish and naïve. Soon others wil discover what you are. You are going to spend the rest of your life running and fighting unless you let me help you. Unless you help me.”
“Here’s the thing… Red is just as powerful as you are and he’s protecting me with no apparent strings attached. I don’t need you to protect me.”
“My brother is my father’s puppet, Ari. He protects you as long as Azazil wishes him to protect you. You wil discover that hard truth soon enough.” He took a step towards her, and Ari wanted to step back. Her real father was so huge he could crush her windpipe with one squeeze of his hand. “I am not asking for much from you, daughter. I want one thing, and then you wil be free. I would even free your mother.”
Cheap shot. Ari sneered, disgust awakening the darkness again. She shoved it back down and let her own anger take over. “I might have a little more faith in your promises if you did anything that wasn’t ninety-nine percent selfish. Free my mom just for the hel of it, and maybe we’l talk.”
The White King shook his head, his expression blank once more. “I am a businessman, and that is bad business.”
Ari shrugged again, looking braver than she felt. “Then I guess this meeting is over.”
“I’d say it is,” Red growled as he moved through the open doorway with a predatory anger. “Azazil commanded you to keep your distance, White.”
With barely a glance at his brother, White urged Vadit towards the door, and with a look of utter boredom he replied flatly as he brushed past Red, “As if I ever listen to father.”
As soon as he was gone, Ari let out the breath she didn’t even know she’d been holding.
The Red King strode towards her purposefuly, his body seeming to vibrate with uncoiled anger. “Are you okay?”
Jai rubbed a comforting hand over her shoulder. “She handled herself beautifuly.”
She shot him a grateful smile and nearly melted at the pride in his eyes.
Oh wow.
A throat clearing broke their gaze and Ari glanced up at her uncle. He smirked at her knowingly, and then, just as quickly, grew serious. He nodded at her. “You can tel me what White said after. For now… it’s time for Charlie’s trial.”
2 - The Lawlessness of Kings & Courts
It had taken a while for Charlie’s lungs to get used to the thick, rich smel of damp soil. It was everywhere. The ground was untouched, packed dirt. The wals, at least here, had been quarried of their emerald. If he’d had to sit al night in a room with emeralds, he might have gone insane with need. Charlie winced as he leaned his head back against the dirty rock and nicked his scalp. That was about the fiftieth time he’d done that.
He eyed the bars that formed his cel down in the dungeons of the Sultan Azazil’s palace. They were the only source of light, the iron aglow with a fiery magic. He’d been warned by the huge Shaitan that had thrown him in here that if he touched the bars he would be incinerated. After hearing a scream wrench the night air last night, folowed by the vomit-inducing stench of burnt flesh, Charlie was glad he’d chosen to sit in the farthest corner of the smal space and take the Shaitan at his word. After the scream of the dying man wrenched the air the chatter, al around him from the other prisoners had silenced into death and somehow, impossibly, Charlie had drifted in and out of sleep.
The Red King had visited him the night before, the secret of Red’s part in turning Charlie into a sorcerer threading a fragile bond between them. Charlie didn’t know what Red wanted, or if he was only folowing the Sultan’s orders, but he liked to think of Red as an alright guy. At least whenever he looked at Ari, Charlie was sure he detected feeling in the Jinn King’s gaze. He had to believe that one of these scary ass creeps were on their side.
He had to believe that Red wasn’t going to let him die today.
The Jinn King had promised him that much last night, making an oath to do everything he could to save Charlie’s life. Charlie’s stomach roiled and his chest squeezed tight with fear. How had everything culminated in this? His life was weird, no joke, but this? Sitting in a dungeon in another realm, waiting to find out whether he was going to die for kiling a maniacal sorcerer?
Maybe he’d smoked a little too much dope this last year, he thought regretfuly.
A crackle hissed in the air and Charlie heard the mumblings of a guard and the shuffling of feet. Was that the first prisoner being released for trial?
Was it only a day ago he was sitting with Falon as she soothed him over the Jai and Ari situation? The Roes had been briliant, helping him work his way through the guilt of kiling a man.
He’d kiled a man.
Worse stil, his best friend was stil too weak from her own attack at the hands of the same man to help talk him through it. And just to add bitter sour cream icing onto the top of that piece of crap cake, Jai had been sitting at Ari’s bedside, waiting for her to wake up so he could tel her he wanted to be with her.
Charlie had lost Ari.
Falon was a comfort. Charlie could listen to her talk about nothing and everything and for a while it kept the world at bay. That’s what she’d been doing—talking to him about her first job as a hunter, her smal hands tucking his growing hair behind his ear, rubbing his shoulders, stroking the tattoo around his wrist, measuring her smal hand against his own. Sily, familiar stuff that made him feel close to her, that numbed the pain of losing someone so exquisite as his Ari. And he had no one else to blame but himself.
His walowing had been interrupted by The Red King who’d burst out of the Peripatos to warn him, too late, that Jinn were coming from Mount Qaf to arrest him for Dalí’s death. The two Shaitans had arrived on the back of Red’s warning.
Charlie couldn’t remember getting to Mount Qaf. He tried and tried but there was nothing there. One minute he’d been in shock at Red’s warning and the next he was being dragged down a dark earthen tunnel, fire flickering out at him from medieval-looking wal sconces. He’d passed cel after cel until he was thrown into his own.
Had he realy anyone else to blame but himself for his predicament? Al along this is what Ari had feared for him when he’d told her he’d become a sorcerer to take vengeance against the Labartu that had kiled his brother, Mike. He’d been warned that kiling a ful-blooded Jinn would end up with him facing a death penalty in Mount Qaf. Charlie had come to terms with that as long as it meant the Labartu was dead.
But to be forced to face trial for kiling a half-blood and one who’d almost kiled Ari? Wel that stuck in his craw more than a little.
He bet it stuck in Ari’s too. The Red King had told him she was here with Jai and had asked to see him, but she wasn’t alowed. Charlie pounded a fist in the dirt beside him. He hoped she was wel enough to be here. He prayed she wasn’t going to do something inadvisably stupid to set him free. God, he hoped she wasn’t going to be like him.