Page 53 of The Wishless Ones
She chewed the inside of her lip and glanced down the hall. “You’re a great deal sadder than the last time I saw you.”
“My melancholy ebbs and flows with the tides,” Jafar said, his own voice a little hoarse.
“So poetic,” the girl drawled. “Let’s do another trade.”
He liked this game. He likedher, even more than he did the first time. Jafar thought about it for a moment.
“I have been known to go too far,” he said, rubbing at his blood-crusted nails with discretion.
“His melancholy is at its peak, everyone,” she mock-announced. “Come now, get up! Life is too short to obsess over any one thing.”
She reached for his hands and hauled him up, her face coming dangerously close to his chest. Wisps of her hair brushed his skin and his breath caught. It made something slither up his veins and put his lungs in a vise before she let go as if his skin were coal.
Her gaze swept to the floor, the first instance of reserve he’d seen in her. Her chest heaved just as heavily as he felt his own did. When she crossed her arms, he noticed how she slid her hands up them, as if she too had felt that unexpected slither.
“I—” Her voice cracked.
She cleared her throat with a sheepish smile. It made her look younger, softened the harshness of her features that Jafar hadn’t noticed at first. Had she, too, lived a lifetime in her youth? Did she know what it was like to be subjected to subordination when she didn’t deserve it?
“My turn,” she said in a voice like gossamer, a little thinner but just as silky. A little unnerved, and it was because of him. It was as intoxicating as when he’d made the prisoner bleed.
He didn’t know what compelled him to hold her gaze. “Yes.”
She dipped her head again, flooding him with warmth and something brazen and thrilling. When her gaze went coy and her smile turned shy, it made his heart feel too big for his body. It made him forget about everything else.
He saw the ripple down her throat when she swallowed. He wondered what it would be like to brush his fingers along the slender column of her neck.
“I’ve been known to give in too easily,” she said.
That surprised him, for she wore confidence like the heady jasmine of her perfume. “You don’t seem the type.”
“Are you referring to my boisterous personality?” she asked, pushing out a hip.
The warmth that was spreading through Jafar suddenly gathered and pooled low.
She gave him a half smile. “I’ve got to make up for it somehow.”
“What—”
“Ah,” she reprimanded. “No more questions. We have our agreement, remember? Why else did I refrain from asking about your excursion earlier? Pity, too. I wanted to meet your friend, but it was too dark to see him.”
Jafar did not want her to meet hisfriend, his brother, his nemesis. She sauntered past, veering closer to him despite the wide expanse of the hall. Her skirts brushed his legs, and he bit back a shiver, watching as she pulled a key from her pocket. He didn’t know how she managed to make something as dull as a key heat every ounce of his blood, but she did. And judging from the way her eyes darkened, she knew it.
“A key of your own,” Jafar drawled.
“Because I’m here on my own,” she replied coyly. “My first time, really.”
But a key meant she was trustworthy enough to be given one. Jafar and Rohan didn’t have keys to their rooms. Whowasshe, and why was she here alone?
She winked. “Until next time, melancholy boy.”
Jafar bowed with a flourish. “Until then, boisterous girl.”
Perhaps it was because of her voice, or her touch, or the fact that she was something Rohan did not and would never have, but when she left him, he did not feel particularly like moping anymore. He smiled at the guards, nodded his way to the House of Wisdom’s laboratory, and busied his hands.
Just before noon, Jafar climbed to the palace’s rooftop terrace and wrapped his fingers around the banister until the sharp edges cut into his skin. He inhaled the sun-soaked desert air.
He could see much of the capital city from here. Dunes churned on the horizon, but the city was rife with people treading to and fro, stirring sand as they bartered and traveled and went about their day.
