He leads and I follow, a boy and a jinni striding across the moon-blue dunes. Beneath our feet, the sand shifts treacherously. Halfway up a particularly steep hill, it suddenly gives way, and I cry out involuntarily as I slide backward.
But suddenly a hand grasps mine, holding me in place, though I have already half shifted to smoke to catch myself.
“Careful, Smoky,” the boy says, pulling me to the top of the dune. “You haven’t granted me any wishes yet. I can’t have you disappearing on me already.”
“My name’s not Smoky.” I yank my hand away. His touch still burns, leaving me shaken, the echo of his heartbeat resounding through me. Looking away, I shake sand from my robes. I’ve transformed my clothes from rich silks to sturdy white cotton, so that I blend into the desert.
“It is until you give me something better.”
“Where are we going?”
“Why? Bored already? I’d think you’d want to stretch your legs after lying around in that cave for—how long were you in there, anyway?”
“Since the war ended. Five hundred years ago.”
With a whistle, he slides down the other side of the dune, and I transform into a small silver cat and spring after him, shifting back into a girl at the bottom.
He stands still for a moment, watching me. He has tied the lamp to his belt, and his hand strokes it absently. It’s an affectation common to Lampholders, and he’s picked it up already.
“How old are you?” he asks.
A cool wind flows between the dunes, pulling my hair across my face and ruffling his patched cloak.
“Three thousand and one thousand more.”
“Great gods,” he says softly. “But you look no older than me.”
“Looks are deceiving.” I don’t tell him that the face I wear is stolen, its possessor five hundred years dead. Of course, I have a face of my own, one slightly younger than yours. I was seventeen the day I was first put into the lamp, when I ceased aging and became the timeless slave I am now. I have little desire to wear that face anymore. It is the one that betrayed you to your death, Habiba. The face of a monster.
At times I feel as old as the stars, but mostly I feel just the same as I did that day—lost, small, and afraid. But I keep that to myself. I square my chin and meet his gaze challengingly.
“Strange,” he murmurs.
“What’s strange?”
“It’s just . . .” He pushes his hair back. “You’re not like the jinni in the stories and songs. That jinni was a monster. You seem . . . different.”
Then he turns and begins trudging up the next dune, wrapping his cloak around him to keep the wind from tearing at it.
I stand still a moment longer, watching him. “Zahra.”
He pauses and looks over his shoulder. “What?”
“My name,” I stammer. “I mean . . . one of them. You can call me Zahra.”
He turns around fully, his grin as wide and as bright as the moon. “I’m Aladdin.”
Chapter Three
WE WALK FOR TWO MORE HOURS before Aladdin finally says, “We’re here.”
He drops to his hands and knees and crawls slowly up the side of a dune, and when we reach the top, Aladdin goes flat and motions for me to do the same. Slowly, cautiously, he peers over the crest of windswept sand, and his expression turns grim.
“There,” he murmurs.
I look over and see a small camp tucked in a sandy depression, out of the wind. Several soldiers sit around a small fire of burning horse dung, their mounts hobbled nearby. One finely dressed young man stands alone between two tents, his shoulders hunched as he studies a map by the firelight.
“That’s him. Darian rai Aruxa, prince of Parthenia.”
“Friend of yours?”
Aladdin snorts and slides down a bit, until the sandy ridge blocks the camp from view. “He’s been tracking me for two weeks, ever since I left Parthenia. Not that I can blame him, really. He’s after this.” Aladdin tosses the ring and catches it with one hand.
I raise a brow. “You stole it from him.”
His eyes are hard as diamonds, glittering in the starlight. A change passes over his face, and he suddenly seems older, harder, angrier. Like a cloud crossing the sun, so fleeting I nearly miss it, but it turns me cold.
“Zahra, if I wished for someone to die, could you do it?”
Outwardly, I am stone, but inside I rock like a stormy sea. I loathe this wish more than almost any other. It is cruel and cowardly, and I reevaluate this boy thief. There is a darkness in him I hadn’t seen. “I could do it, but the price will be high.”
He swallows, his eyes deep and haunted. “What’s the price?”