Chapter 13
The Twin Lamps
Rakan
The wards have been breached.
I stand on the dock, two feet away from Sigurd’s yacht, my mind roaring with the sudden realization. My carefully constructed shields are screaming, and there’s only one reason why that would happen. There’s only one person who could have attacked them and survived.
The sudden backlash makes me recoil and let out a short gasp. Sigurd turns toward me. His tentacles twitch, the way they do when he knows something isn’t right. “Rakan? What’s happened?”
I don’t reply. There’s no time for words, not now. Maybe there never was, and all this time, I’ve been fooling myself. Maybe even this quest for the lamp was a colossal mistake.
Gritting my teeth, I will myself away from the docks. Smoke envelops everything around me, and an instant later, I’m standing in my penthouse. So is Sigurd. Apparently, in my haste, I ended up taking him with me.
He blinks and rubs his eyes with a tentacle but quickly adjusts to the sudden shift in location. Then, he shoots me a quick look and squeezes my shoulder. “Breathe, Rakan. If she were dead, you’d know.”
It’s a cruel thing to say, but it’s also true. The wards around the penthouse would have shattered entirely if that were the case.
As it is, I know something has gone very wrong. But perhaps not as wrong as it could have.
The knowledge gives me the composure I need to venture into the penthouse. It’s quiet, almost too quiet. Nothing seems disturbed, the expensive furniture and ancient decorations as irritatingly untouched as they always are.
But the silence coming from the kitchen is deafening. I head in that direction, and within seconds, she comes into view.
Iris is sitting on the floor, trembling in terror.
Her eyes are blown wide, and she’s staring at nothing.
When I walk in, her head snaps up. She shoots to her feet and almost falls over.
I rush to her side and take her in my arms, catching her before she can hit the floor.
“Rakan!” she sobs. “Rakan, he was here! Your brother… K-Kasim came!”
Her voice breaks on Kasim’s name, and with it, so does my heart. I wanted so badly to protect her, but I’ve utterly failed.
“How is that possible?” Sigurd asks from behind me. “Your wards should have kept any djinn signature other than yours away.”
I was so entirely focused on Iris that I hadn't realized he'd followed me into the kitchen. “Clearly, the wards didn’t work,” I say, pulling Iris closer.
“I think they did,” Iris croaks out. “He just… He came in under a mundane guise. H-He acted like he was one of your employees. Tried to get me to make a wish. But… He couldn’t use his powers at all. Even his transformation collapsed midway through our conversation.”
Every word comes out weaker than the last. She’s visibly struggling, the simple memory of her ordeal draining her of her strength. I don’t think I’ve ever hated myself more. “I’m an idiot. I protected you from a magical threat, but not a mundane one.”
It never occurred to me that Kasim would resort to such an option. Donning a human’s guise should feel humiliating to him. But maybe I’ve underestimated him, and just how far he’s willing to go.
“I’ll go see if your people saw anything,” Sigurd whispers. “Rakan… She’s safe now.”
He leaves, the echo of his words settling over Iris and me like a heavy blanket. Normally, I’d believe him. She’s right here, shaking, but alive, as real as the day I met her. But I’ve failed her once. What’s to say I won’t fail her again?
“I’m sorry, Iris. This is all my fault.”
For the longest time, Iris is completely silent. It should feel like condemnation, but Iris is never quiet in her anger. Somehow, this is worse.
But she needs it, needs this moment of stillness. Her breathing starts to ease, and the violent tremors finally begin to leave her body.
“I don’t blame you for what happened, Rakan,” she says at last. “I just… I don’t understand.”
Of course she doesn’t, because I’ve kept the truth from her. Like a liar. “Kasim is my older sibling, my only family, really. But when I was younger… A human took him captive.”
“That’s why he’s angry?” Iris asks. “Because he was forced to fulfill wishes against his will?”
“Not exactly,” I answer, sighing.
Without another word, I pick her up and carry her out of the kitchen. The scene of her confrontation with Kasim isn’t the right setting for what I have to say.
I slowly make my way through the penthouse, toward the library. A few hours ago, this was the place where I kissed her against the bookcase. The room looks no different now. But it is, because of what I’m carrying. Because of what I’m going to say.
I set her down on the small settee and reach for the same shelf she found her scroll on. Right there, behind the books, is a lamp. It’s almost identical to the one Sigurd and I pulled from the ocean.
“Humans perceive lamps as objects of punishment for djinn. But the reality is quite different. They’re actually… Well, for us, lamps house our souls.”
I take my lamp and set it in her lap. Iris’s hands instinctively go to it, a reaction no doubt born from the urge to protect something rare. Two seconds later, she goes completely white, as if she’s just realized what she’s holding. “Y-Your soul?” she stammers.
Her hold on my lamp tightens, and she pulls it close. I can’t help but feel guiltily comforted. Her touch is so gentle, so kind. I have a feeling my brother didn’t have this luxury.
I produce Kasim’s lamp and hold it up for her to see. “That human… He stole Kasim’s lamp. And when he was done with my brother, he made a wish Kasim couldn’t fulfill. An unfulfillable wish… That’s an almost unbreakable chain. And because of it, Kasim was locked up inside the lamp.”
To this day, I don’t know what type of wish that human had demanded. It died with him, but even then, it didn’t free Kasim. Even then, his lamp remained lost. “I tried to find him, to free him,” I continue. “But it was too late.”
Three hundred years went into the search—markets, vaults, the desert shrines where old prisons were sometimes unearthed, anywhere a thing like that might have been buried or forgotten. Every year that ended with nothing in my hands was a year my brother spent in the dark.
A djinn isn’t meant to be kept that way.
By the time I broke the seal, what came out had Kasim’s face. It walked with his gait. It looked at me like a stranger, and then it didn’t. The recognition was worse.
I shake my head, trying to chase away the memories. “The time he spent in the lamp broke his mind. It turned him into… that. Into an ifrit.”
“An ifrit. And that’s…”
“A different type of djinn. Colder. More ruthless and crueler than I could ever be.” Kasim shouldn’t be one either, but that is the price for my failure. “But even so… He’s still my brother. And when you called about the harpy murder…”
Iris’s eyes widen. “Oh. So that’s what this is about. That’s the real reason I was the loose end.”
I nod. There’s so much I want to tell her, a million apologies I want to make. But I’m sorry is hardly good enough. “That’s right. Iris, I know what I’ve done. I kept the truth from you. And I haven’t managed to keep you safe. But it won’t happen again. I promise you—”
“You don’t have to promise me anything.” She cuts me off. “I understand, and I don’t blame you. Even if he is an ifrit, you love him. Just as he loves you.”
I can’t help but let out a bitter laugh. “Sometimes, love isn’t enough.”
“And sometimes, it is. Otherwise, humans and monsters could have never learned to live together.”
It’s such an Iris thing to say, a clever argument that somehow seems designed as a perfect counter to my own. But this time, it feels different. This time, she’s clutching my lamp and looking at me. It’s not an argument at all. Because all of a sudden, we’re no longer talking about Kasim.
With a thought, I store my brother’s lamp away in the space between realms. Magical objects can’t stay there for too long, but for a little while, it’ll do.
Then, I reach for Iris, and she reaches back.
My hands frame her face. Her skin is impossibly soft, still pale from the terror Kasim unleashed.
But her pulse is a steady, resilient drum against my thumbs.
She leans into my touch. She’s human, fragile enough to be broken by a single careless misstep.
But she holds the metallic weight of my soul in her lap as if it belongs to her.
Maybe it does. Maybe it always has.
I slide my fingers into her hair and brush my mouth against hers. It isn’t the desperate, consuming collision of before. The raw, violent hunger is gone, replaced by an ache so deep it threatens to crack my chest wide open.
I kiss her slowly, breathing her in. She tastes like salt and leftover fear, but beneath it all is that stubborn, beautiful fire that is entirely Iris. Her hands leave my lamp, sliding up my chest, her fingers tracing the ridges of the amber veins beneath my dark skin.
I break the kiss just long enough to lift the lamp from her lap. I keep the enchanted gold securely in one hand and gather Iris into my arms with the other.
The bedroom is quiet. I lay her down on the cool sheets with the excruciating care she deserves. Iris looks up at me, her eyes dark and steady, entirely certain of what she wants. I set my lamp on the bedside table. It sits there, catching the dim light, a silent anchor in the room.
I strip away my clothes. I don’t rush. The heavy fabric falls to the floor, leaving nothing to hide. Iris doesn’t look away.
I kneel beside the bed and slowly pull the cotton of her shirt over her head. This time, I don’t use my magic. I could, but there’s something satisfying about undressing her like this, as if I were a simple human.
Iris’s skin is flushed. Her body is a map I’m desperate to memorize without leaving a single bruise behind. When she is entirely bare, I trace the line of her collarbone with my hands. It shouldn’t be possible for a djinn to burn, but my skin feels like it’s on fire.