Chapter 36
I projectile vomited as soon as I touched down in the Underworld. Unsurprising, considering I was yanked into another realm in a matter of seconds. Zahhak let go of me, nose raised in the air, wrinkled in disgust. “Ew” was all he said while I tried to control my rolling nausea.
I finally regained control of myself, resting against a cool wall.
I wasn’t sure where I was, the ceilings high and windowless, with crumbling slate bricks around us.
My damp towel was still wrapped around me, my bare feet standing on what appeared to be a Persian carpet runner.
It was rough against my feet, but that was really the least of my problems. Along the wall opposite me were the contents of my breakfast that morning—a donut Zain had gotten me after the attack—which now felt like a lifetime ago.
I had to think only of the now, of the fact that I was alive and relatively safe, otherwise the bubbling panic in the pit of my stomach would spill over, and the potential to die from shock seemed a strong possibility.
We were not alone for long. Cloaked figures began to appear.
“What—” I began.
“You are home now, and your maidens will ensure you’re comfortable in your room,” Zahhak said, voice strained, still no doubt disgusted by the stench of vomit in the narrow corridor.
“Take me back to Denver. This isn’t my home.”
“That simply is not going to happen. You’ve proven yourself to be untrustworthy.” He turned away, crossing paths with two cloaked figures who parted to let him past.
I remembered Ehsan downstairs, watching his TV show. He would notice I was gone. And…“My dad—” I began.
“Has been left a heartfelt note about how much you hate Denver—and him,” he said over his shoulder. “Don’t worry—it was very convincing.”
The cloaked figures began to move toward me.
Please don’t leave me with these things.
The words almost left my lips, but what was I thinking?
Was I really any safer with the Jinn King than whatever these things were?
They were only a little taller than me, their cloaks akin to Zahhak’s.
With him gone from view, turning out of the corridor, they cornered me.
I gulped, preparing to say something, anything, but I wasn’t given the chance before one of them grabbed my hands and pulled them to my back in a firm grip.
“Ow!” I yelled.
Another wrapped a cloak around my shoulders, protecting my modesty after the useless towel fell in a heap at my feet.
The fabric was harsh against my bare skin.
The two on the right of me started walking, and that’s when I was turned around and pushed along.
I had two maidens behind me, holding me, and two in front, leading me.
Neither said anything, nor did they respond to my yelling, asking where exactly they were taking me.
The end of the corridor led to a spiral staircase in what appeared to be a tower, and then I knew where I was: Rabiya’s Underworld home.
While in my flashbacks I had seen her castle in Persia, this was the palace she grew up in.
The maidens left me pretty much as soon as they dropped me off in the bedroom upstairs.
The door was quickly locked. In the center of the chamber, against the wall, was a large four-poster bed with a burgundy-embroidered blanket atop it.
Across the room, opposite the bed, was a large window.
Facing the obscured view were a dressing table and stool.
I ran over to the window, pushing the heavy curtains back, disappointment encircling me when I saw the bars on it. A new addition. I slipped my small hands through them to try to open the window, but it was bolted shut.
I flopped onto the bed, not expecting it to be quite as hard as it was.
Artwork decorated the ceiling, a depiction of the sun at its center, surrounded by wispy clouds.
The brushwork was soft and if I hadn’t been in captivity, I might have found it beautiful, even calming.
But reality hit too heavily for such musings.
I couldn’t stop hoping that Zain would somehow save me.
But Zahhak picked the perfect time to do all this—after I had murdered two jinn hunters.
If Zain knew what I had done, what I was capable of, would he even come to help me?
A stirring within me reminded me that I didn’t need saving.
That I was no damsel in distress. That I’d proven I could fight and kill if it came down to it.
My mental spiral was interrupted by a clattering to my right—opposite the door I had come in from. It sounded like it was coming from the wardrobe, and I sprang from the bed, tightening the cloak around my waist as I crept toward it.
There was shouting, though I couldn’t hear what was being said, or understand how it was coming from my wardrobe.
But as I neared it, I realized that next to my wardrobe was another door.
From my position on the bed, the wardrobe had obstructed my view of the door.
My heart was beating too loudly for me to hear properly, and I took deep breaths to try to tell it to shut up.
“Let me out of here!” a girl yelled, louder this time.
Not just any girl.
“Azar!” I shouted, grabbing the brass door handle and yanking it. It was locked, of course. “Azar! Is that you?”
“Roxana!” my sister exclaimed, and I was met with the same motion on the other side of the door, of her trying to open it, and then the impact of her pounding her fist against the wood.
“You’re going to need to boot the door open!
” She said it like that was the easiest thing in the world.
Like I, Roxana Esfandari, had ever in my life kicked a door down.
“Can’t you do it?” I asked.
“It opens from my side—that won’t work. Come on, just boot it as hard as you can.”
“Okay,” I began, gassing myself up. “Move back.” I also stepped back before raising my bare foot in the air and kicking the center of the door with as much strength as I could muster. The effect was nothing more than a mediocre bang. “I told you.”
Even though I couldn’t see Azar, I knew exactly what expression she had on her face. That of exasperation, eyebrows furrowed together, lip twitching. She hated nothing more than incompetence, especially when it came from me.
“You’re a jinn!” she yelled. “You’re strong, you can do this, you just need to believe you can—that’s the trick.”
“Wait, what? You knew?”
Faintly, I heard a noise of frustration. “Obviously, but now isn’t the time. One of our powers is literally that we have extreme strength. Believe you can kick it down, Rox.”
“Can’t I just set it on fire?” Somehow throwing fireballs from my hand felt much easier.
“And burn the place down? With us in it?” Azar sighed.
“Right, good point,” I muttered.
She knew. She knew all this time and didn’t tell me.
“I don’t know…” I whispered to myself, sure she wouldn’t be able to hear me.
It was unclear if she did, but she growled, “Roxana, just fucking do it.”
Her anger was something I wanted to avoid, and it was for that reason that I did as I was told.
I stepped back, took a deep breath in and out, and warned her to stay back.
I shut my eyes and imagined that I was someone different.
I was the kind of person who worked out and was strong.
So strong I could lift a car. So strong I could fight Zahhak with my bare hands and win.
So strong I could rip a lion apart. That thought made me open my eyes.
I was an animal lover and was not inclined to fight a lion, let alone kill it. I had no clue where that came from.
“Rox?” Azar yelled.
I shut my eyes again. Focus. I could kick the door down. It would be easy—I simply had to lift my leg and kick.
When I opened my eyes, the door was on the floor, and Azar was running across it to grab me into the tightest hug I had ever received.
Her hair smelled like it always did, of cherries and berries, her favorite shampoo that she had used for as long as I could remember.
I buried my head in the crook of her neck.
At five foot two, she was shorter than me, so that involved stooping while I sobbed into her.
Once I let it all out, she released me from her grip and held on to my shoulders, examining me.
Azar wore the same cloak as me, and it oddly suited her.
My sister resembled a feline, both in her features—with her catlike eyes and upturned lips—and in the way she presented herself.
She often wore tight-fitting dark clothes and slunk around, her hair in a sleek bob.
This was all to the dismay of my dad, who wanted her to be more covered and look less like a reminder of the woman he lost.
It had been months since I’d last seen my older sister, and these were not the circumstances in which I had imagined our reunion.
“You knew about all this?” I asked, accusation thick in my voice.
Her pale lips were set into a fine line. She nodded but didn’t elaborate.
“And you didn’t think to tell me?” I pressed.
Despite the overwhelming relief at seeing her—and realizing I wasn’t stuck here alone—resentment overtook all other emotions.
She’d known all about what we were and had never once considered telling me?
Things could have been so much different had I known.
“She told me not to,” she explained. “Mum wanted you to have a normal life. She hid it from everyone, but when she died, she left me a note…One of us needed to know, just in case. And as the eldest, I was the one given that particular privilege.” There was a hint of resentment in her tone, too, which softened my anger.
“Do you think we’ll be able to get out of here?” I asked in a small voice, instinctively looking behind me, to the locked door. Surely someone had heard me break down a door? If they had, they didn’t seem to care enough to rush in.
“Of course,” Azar said, though her tone didn’t match the certainty of her words. She took another step into my room, surveying the area. “Well, you got the better room.”
Even now, she was trying to pull the big sister card and get the better of the two rooms.
I raised an eyebrow to her back. “Really?”
She turned on her heel. “I’m just trying to figure out what this place is.”
“It’s the Underworld.”
She let out a noise of impatience as she peered out the barred window, disappointed at the lack of view. “I know that, Sherlock. I mean this palace specifically.”
“I’ve been here before.” I explained everything to her, having to repeat myself several times when I told her about Zain and me being reborn into many lifetimes.
“An angel?” she interrupted. “You fell in love with an angel?” She stared off into the distance, through the doorway leading to her room. “Okay, we’re screwed.”
“Azar!” I scolded, eyes widening. “You can’t say that. You need to be the voice of hope.”
She bit her bottom lip, was practically gnawing on it in her increasing anxiety. “That was before I knew that our evil grandfather was stopping you from making a generational mistake that meant you would be—burnt at the stake, wasn’t it?”
“That only happened once, though,” I said.
“Yeah, well, that isn’t the context I was given.”
“Why did you think he’d taken you, then?”
“Well, since Mum died, he’s been visiting my dreams every so often.
He knew I knew, so he wanted me to really turn to the dark side.
I started taking zopiclone to sleep, along with some recreational drugs, which did block it out, but then he began visiting me in my waking life while I was in clubs and stuff, so I stopped taking those drugs pretty quick.
Since you guys went to Denver, he’d become a bit more persistent.
I hadn’t been replying to you because I was just trying to survive.
“Then he told me now that I’m twenty-one, I had to join the jinn army. Apparently, royalty or not, service is compulsory. And he wants me to lead the army one day, as the eldest. He said in a previous life I was a great warrior, a leader.”
It was unsurprising to an extent; Azar had always been the athletic one of the two of us. She relished going for early-morning runs, lifted weights every day, and even worked at a gym. I could see her leading an army. Just not a jinn army.
“And when I was in the gym, he came into the locker room to take me away. I don’t really get how he moved from only being accessible in our subconscious to visiting us while we are awake, but he said you summoned him?
And that was enough to let him enter our lives.
” The blood must have drained from my face at those words, because Azar quickly said, “I mean, I’m not blaming you or anything. ”
“But you should,” I said, realizing how much of a mistake it was to have read Jamshid’s summoning spell. “This is all my fault.”
“If I’d told you about what we are…you wouldn’t have tried to summon him.”
My throat was suddenly exceptionally dry, which was likely because I’d vomited all my fluids out into the corridor.
“Were you sick when you got here, too?” I asked.
Azar smiled. A small smile, but present. “Yeah, vomited right in Zahhak’s face.”
The image made my lips quirk up, too. “Well, there’s that, at least.”