Page 108 of MidKnight
I tilted my head. I’d been too lenient with Ember’s death.
I knelt next to Malia and pulled out my bloody weapon. “You’re sentenced to death, for betraying Evaness.”
She coughed, “Don’t.”
I shook my head. “It’s done.”
“No. Don’t kill me. I don’t deserve mercy. I deserve …”
I smiled down at her coldly. “I wasn’t going to show mercy. I wanted to give you hope, for a moment, and then rip it away. Just as you gave me hope when you fed Willard information. Hope that you might not be irredeemable. But you tried to take my—” I couldn’t say Declan’s name.
I didn’t bother to finish. I didn’t owe her explanations. I had a djinni to kill.
I walked over to Abbas, who was trembling in his human form, tears streaking down his cheeks.
I stared at him, my lip curled in disgust. How could he cry after all he’d done? He didn’t get to cry. Monsters shouldn’t cry.
But then I remembered what my knights had told me about the djinn. Quinn’s words echoed in my head.Djinn are slaves to wishes. Any wish short of death is fair game. If a djinn grants you a wish, he has to fulfill it. He has to do anything to see it fulfilled.
Full djinn had to grant wishes to anyone who wore the ring. Abbas had no choice. I curled my fingers into a fist and stared at the cave ceiling.
Why in the sarding name of the gods did I have to realize that now? I asked myself. I didn’t want to pity him. I wanted to kill him.
I looked down at the boy, who wiped a line of sob snot with his forearm.
My mother would have killed him.
I was not my mother.
I took a deep breath and said, “I wish you were fully human. I wish you’d forget everything you’d ever done or been before this moment. I wish this ring was broken.”
I strode toward Abbas, but something midair smacked me hard in the side of the face. I fell backward, hitting my head on the cave floor as gold light erupted from the ring.
My vision went black.
When I opened my eyes, I grabbed at my cheek, where I’d been hit.
It almost felt as though my bird had flown into me in the dark. “Blue?” I asked. My vision flickered as I rose to my elbows.
I didn’t see Blue crumpled on the ground beside me. A man leaned over me, naked.
Abbas stared down at me.
Sarding hell! The wish didn’t work! It was a trick. Somehow, it was a trick.
My stomach churned and I scrambled backwards.
Above me, Abbas smiled.
He was sarding with my mind.
Rage was a fireball. And my hands flew forward like flames. I struck out.
I hit him with enough peace magic to light the entire cavern an eerie green. If I bled out, so much the better.
Abbas eyes went wide, and his body swayed.
My hairpin hit its target. He gasped.
