The Forbidden Wish Read Free Page A

scars on his hands and his legs. The gods have been negligent with this one.
    With a sigh, I say, “You look like you’ve been kicked by a horse. Here, get up.”
    I offer my hand, but he scrambles away, his eyes wild and wary.
    For a moment, he and I regard one another silently beneath the pulsing stars. His ragged breathing is laced with fatigue, but he is as tense as a cornered cat, ready to flee, waiting to see what I will do. My head is still spinning from the suddenness of what’s happened: the first human I’ve seen in five hundred years, the mad race to escape the collapsing ruins, the vastness of the desert after so manycenturies confined to my lamp. I sway a little, taking a moment to sort out earth from sky.
    â€œI cannot hurt you,” I say. My hands clench at my sides, and I force my fingers to open disarmingly. “The same magic that binds us together prevents me from harming you. Don’t be afraid.”
    â€œI’m not afraid.”
    â€œHave you never seen a jinni before?”
    The boy clears his throat, his eyes fixed on mine. “No, but I’ve heard stories of them.”
    Turning my back to him, I look up at the stars. “Of course you have. Tales of ghuls, I’m sure, who devour souls and wear the skins of their prey. Of ifreet, all fire and flame and no brains at all. Or perhaps you mean the maarids, small and sweet, until they drown you in their pools.”
    He nods slowly and climbs to his feet, brushing sand from his palms. “And the Shaitan, most powerful of all.”
    A chill runs down my spine. “Ah, of course.”
    â€œSo are they true? All these stories?”
    Turning to face him, I pause before replying. “As the poets say, stories are truth told through lies.”
    â€œSo are you going to devour my soul?” he asks, as if it is a challenge. “Or drown me? What sort of jinni are you?”
    With a curl of smoke, I shift into a white tiger and crouch before him, my tail flicking back and forth. He watches in amazement, recoiling a bit at the sight of my golden eyes and extended claws.
    â€œWhat are you?” he whispers.
    Should I tell him what—
who
—I really am? That even now, legions of angry jinn—ghuls, maarids, a dozen other horrors—couldbe racing toward us? If he has any wits about him, he’ll abandon my lamp and put as many leagues between us as he can . . . which would leave me completely helpless. At least while he holds the lamp, I have a fighting chance.
    â€œHow did you find me?” I ask. So many centuries, and this hapless young man is the only one to have found my prison. After that final battle, after you fell, Habiba, my kin threw me into the garden I had created for you.
Sit in the dark and rot, traitor
, they said. And for so many years, I was certain that would be my fate. But then, surpassing all hope, the boy appeared.
    â€œI’m from Parthenia.” At my blank expression, he adds, “Two weeks by horseback, to the west. On the coast. As for how I found you . . . I was led here. By this.”
    He pulls from his finger the ring he’d been twisting earlier. He holds it out on his palm, and after a slight hesitation, I pick it up. A tingle in my fingers tells me the ring was forged in magic. There is something familiar about it, but I am certain I have never seen it before. The band is plain gold but for the symbols carved into the inside, symbols that have been blurred by time and fire.
    â€œAnd you say it led you to me?” I straighten and stare hard at him.
    He takes the ring from my palm. “When I . . . um,
found
it, it began whispering to me. I know it sounds insane, but I couldn’t get it to stop. Even when I took it off and tried to throw it away, I kept hearing it. So I thought, why not see what it wanted?”
    â€œWhat did it say?”
    â€œIt wasn’t so much words . . .” He closes his