Chapter 9
To Preserve
Rakan
Iris is beautiful. I’ve always known this, from the very first moment we met. But her beauty lies in her humanity, and that’s also what makes her so frail.
When I cradle her close to my chest, her body feels almost impossibly small. “You really weren’t wrong when you tried to chase me away,” I whisper into her soft hair.
She doesn’t reply. The shock of the transportation has knocked her out, no doubt a consequence of her panic.
My penthouse greets us with utter silence. I step out of the shadows, straight into my bedchambers, and lay her across the sheets.
When I set her glasses aside, she doesn’t stir. In sleep, her face loses the wariness she carries through the waking world. What’s left underneath it is younger than I expect. I’ve watched this city burn and rebuild itself twice over. I forget, sometimes, what twenty-five actually looks like.
I pull the blanket to her shoulder and straighten up.
I stay at the foot of the bed longer than I need to.
My penthouse has housed heads of state, relics that would destabilize governments, secrets older than most human civilizations.
It has never once felt full. One sleeping woman in a corner of one bed, and the entire space has shifted around her without asking my permission.
I reach into the air beside me. The phone forms in my palm, its casing the color of cooled volcanic rock. I’ve had it four years and the screen is still cracked in the upper left corner. Kasim’s return has been testing my self-control more than I’d like.
I take it to the window and dial Sigurd’s number. He picks up on the first ring.
I don’t even bother with a greeting. At this point, it’s not necessary. “Well? Did you find it?”
“I found where it might be,” Sigurd says. “But there is some bad news. Are you ready?”
His tone tells me immediately that the situation is dire. I brace myself and clutch the phone harder. “I’m always ready. Tell me.”
“It’s deep. Deeper than I’d like. The currents carried it away from where I knew it to be. The route runs through contested water.”
Contested water. Fuck. That’s worse than I thought. The wars of oceanic creatures have never been merciful, and modernity hasn’t changed that at all. “So there’s blood in the water. Anyone you know?”
It’s not just a self-interested question. Sigurd’s family lives in the very depths of the ocean. For all I know, they may be in danger. It seems unlikely, since few things are dangerous for a kraken. But stranger things have happened. Like a djinn falling in love with a barista.
At the other end of the connection, Sigurd lets out a small huff. “There’s a leviathan that’s been pushing into merman territory for the better part of a year. The clans have been holding the line, but it’s split them.”
“Wonderful.” I grimace, feeling a headache begin to pulse in my skull. “That’ll take years to solve.”
“If we’re lucky,” Sigurd confirms tightly. “Two of the main factions aren’t speaking, and right now neither will grant surface access to anyone.”
“And your neutrality makes it worse still.” Outside my penthouse, the city keeps moving, unaware of our monstrous secrets. I turn away from it, for once unable to face its petty spectacle. “I realize I’m asking a lot.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Sigurd replies. “You’re only asking for what needs to be done.
Be at ease. There’s a matriarch in one of the factions.
She owes me a debt that predates this dispute by several centuries.
I’ll go to her directly. I’ll get us a window, and the moment everything’s in place, we move. ”
“We’ll be ready,” I offer, though that’s an assurance I can’t possibly make.
The silence that follows has nothing to do with the connection. I’m already anticipating what comes next, and I don’t have the energy to deflect it cleanly.
“How are you holding up?” Sigurd asks me. It’s a question I expected, but it still somehow hurts.
I look toward the bedchamber, where Iris is still asleep. No, not asleep. Unconscious, because of the way I brought her to my penthouse. Because of my life forcing its way into hers.
But there’s no turning back now. Kasim will never let things go, and not just because she’s a loose end. This is all my fault, and I have to keep Iris safe.
“I’ll manage,” I tell Sigurd. “I always do. Isn’t that what you said at the party?”
“That was before you found out the woman you love is being hunted by the worst possible person on the planet.”
He’s right, and we both know it. I don’t have anything to give him that would be true and also adequate. “It’s still true, Sigurd. It has to be. I wanted to give her choices, you know that. But at this point…”
“Choices are a luxury,” Sigurd murmurs. If there’s anyone who’d understand that, it’d be him. “All right, Rakan. Just be careful. Remember, you’re not fighting this battle alone.”
He ends the call, and just like that, I’m alone with the silence. I’m almost resentful of it. Sigurd’s questions frustrate me on a good day, but at least they anchor me. Without that, I’m not sure what I’ll do.
In some ways, I find myself jealous of Kasim. He has a clear path. Mine suddenly seems so obscured.
A reflection flickers in the window, and for a brief moment I could swear he’s right there in front of me. “You’re soft, Rakan,” he’d likely say, if he were here. “You always have been, since we were children.”
He wouldn’t be wrong. He never was, about me.
A sudden sound cuts through my thoughts. It’s small, almost a whimper, and it comes from the bedchamber.
By the time I reach the door, Iris is already sitting up. She presses her hands to her temples, as if in pain. I want nothing more than to help her through it, but she wouldn’t welcome my touch. Or anything from me, for that matter.
“What happened?” she croaks out, still dazed. “W-Where am I?”
I take a step forward, allowing her to see me. Her breath catches and her eyes widen. “You… Rakan!”
She stares at me, no doubt trying to make sense of it all. I give her the time she needs.
“You brought me here against my will,” she finally says. She isn’t shouting. That almost makes it worse.
I did, and there’s no way around it. I have no intention of pretending or lying to her. “Whether you were willing or not, you’re safe. That’s what matters right now.”
“Safe,” she repeats, as if she’s never heard the word before. “Rakan, from the very moment I met you, I stopped being safe.”
I suppress the urge to flinch. “That may well be, but I’m not the one trying to kill you. That much, at least, you have to accept.”
“I suppose that’s true,” she replies. “Because if you’d wanted me dead, you’d have killed me in the cafe. Or maybe in The Obsidian Lounge, once you had your fun.”
That comment is almost worse than knowing the danger she’s in. This is truly my doing, the hurt I caused her through my arrogance and stupidity. There’s nothing I want more than to fix it. “Iris, whatever you think happened—”
“I know precisely what happened.” She cuts me off. “And the way I see it, you’re using someone’s tragedy to get me right where you want me. To control me. Because that’s what you do, don’t you, Mr. al-Rashid? You play games with people’s lives and revel in their struggles.”
I don’t answer immediately. There’s something almost cruel about the distance between what she believes and what’s actually true, and part of me wants to close it.
I want to tell her plainly what she is to me, what all of this actually means. But the full truth doesn’t stop there. It goes further back, into territory I haven’t let myself speak of out loud to anyone. She’s already carrying enough tonight without me adding my grief to it.
“I must be so small to you. So pathetic.” Something shifts in her face, and for a moment it isn’t anger. “Even that harpy and her daughter. I bet their lives, their dreams, their pain… None of it matters to you. You can just wave your hand and the world itself obeys.”
If only it were that easy. But as any djinn would know, the wishes that matter can’t be so easily fulfilled.
“If that’s what you think about me, Iris, I don’t blame you,” I tell her. “But the djinn who hunts you is infinitely more dangerous. And there are wards here, shields that can protect you. Curse me if you want, but you’re not going anywhere.”
Iris opens her mouth, perhaps intending to protest further. But there’s no reason to prolong this confrontation. I step back from the doorway. “That being said, you don’t need to worry about being disturbed. You’ll have everything you need. I’ll leave you alone.”
She stares at me. Whatever she was going to say next, she’s forgotten it. I don’t fill the silence for her. I’ve taken enough from her tonight already.
With a thought, I will myself away from the penthouse and leave her to it.
“So, my daughter is dead.” The harpy elder picks up her teacup and stares into the liquid inside. “I always did tell her to be careful what she wished for.”
For all the words I have at my disposal, I’ve never found the right ones for grief. “I’m sorry. She didn’t deserve what happened to her.”
“No.” She sets the cup down. “She didn’t. But then, most people don’t.” Her eyes move to the child asleep on the cushion in the corner. “She’ll ask questions when she wakes up. I don’t know what to tell her yet.”
“Tell her the truth. When she’s ready for it.”
The elder looks at me for a long moment. Her eyes are old enough to have seen everything, though perhaps not quite as old as mine. “You didn’t have to bring her here yourself. Why did you?”
The honest answer has Iris at the center of it, and that’s not something I’m going to say in this room. “It needed to be done,” I tell her. “And I was the only one who could do it.”
She studies me for another moment, then nods. It isn’t forgiveness or absolution. It’s acknowledgement—that I came, that I brought the orphaned child, that I sat here and drank her tea. It’s enough.
I set the cup down and take my leave. On the landing outside her door, the eastern quarter spreads out below.
The market stalls are closed, and a pair of naga are coiling together in an alleyway.
It’s an ordinary night. I stand in it for a moment longer than I need to, and then I let the shadows claim me.
The library light is on when I return to the penthouse. I make my way there and stop in the doorway.
Iris is kneeling on the floor, leaning over an ancient scroll. She’s tracing the lines on the weathered parchment with almost reverent care, a respect so few people show to ancient things.
I lean against the doorframe and take the time to look at her. At this point, she shouldn’t be able to surprise me any longer, but she does. “This scroll… It’s priceless,” she murmurs.
She’s the one who’s priceless, but I can never tell her that. “It’s eight hundred years old, yes. You have a good eye, Iris.”
Her eyes shoot up to me, but she doesn’t immediately stand. “Rakan.” The anger from earlier is still there, but something else surfaces first. “You came back. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to mess with something valuable.”
“Of course I came back. I wanted to make sure you were comfortable.” Perhaps she might prefer it if I abandoned her, but I’m just not willing to take the chance. “And you can mess with the scroll as much as you like,” I belatedly finish. “It’s only an object.”
She looks down at the scroll, then her eyes come back up to mine. “An object. Just like I’m only a barista?”
“Yes and no.” I raise my hand and the scroll floats away, up into my palm.
I close my fist around it. Fire erupts from my fingertips, and in an instant, eight hundred years of history become ash on the floor.
“You see? Fragile. A flick of my fingers and it vanishes. In some ways, I suppose you were right.”
She goes pale but doesn’t look away. That particular stubbornness has been my undoing since the morning we first met.
I twist my wrist and the scroll settles back into my palm, intact, every character preserved. “But it’s something material. Not alive. That’s why it’s in my keeping. The sultan who found it knew I could preserve it, no matter what. Centuries pass. Civilizations end. The scroll remains.”
“That must be reassuring, then,” she says, pushing her glasses up her nose.
“Not as much as you’d think.” The scroll is warm in my palm, but that brings me little comfort. “Humans are nowhere near as easy to preserve.”
“I don’t need you to preserve me, Rakan,” Iris replies, narrowing her eyes at me.
“Of course you do. You have no idea what you’re really dealing with.”
“Because you’re lying to me,” she snaps back, shooting to her feet. “You’ve always been lying to me. Pretending to be someone you’re not.”
“You want the truth?” I take a step closer. She doesn’t move back. “You have it. You always had. I’m exactly the person you saw in The Daily Grind.”
“Then why—?”
“Because you were the only one in this city who looked at me like I was simply a man in a room.” I close the remaining distance between us. She finally stumbles back, into a library shelf. “I kept coming back for that. Not the coffee.”
Iris doesn’t reply. Her hand lands on my chest, her fingers spread flat against the fabric. And at that moment, the last of my restraint gives way.
When I brought her here, I told myself I wouldn’t push her. But I am a djinn, and not truly a creature of restraint.
I kiss her, and she kisses me back.