Page 8 of Kiss of Fire

Safe. She was safe.

She slept. And for once, the demon didn’t haunt her dreams.

Five

The air grew steadily colder as Shadeed flew north. The landscape below changed from green to white, the snow sparkling like a diamante blanket in the last rays of the sun. He didn’t feel the cold. Jinn burned hot, as a rule.

He glanced at the girl in his arms and wondered briefly ifshewas cold. She seemed to be wearing some kind of dull grey garb, institutional in appearance. Certainly not flattering. And against the severe cold of the Nordic weather, deeply ineffective. There were goosebumps on her thin arms.

He held her closer to his chest and she curled against him like a cat. He hoped the heat radiating from his body would suffice.

He reached the Gatekeeper’s forest just ahead of dusk, alighting in a clearing among the pines. The rich fragrance of the forest filled his nostrils. A reminder that home was but a short step away.

He concentrated for a moment and his wings melted away, becoming as insubstantial as smoke before disappearing entirely.

He lay his passenger carefully on the ground, frowning as he did so. She didn’t look like much. All this way, forthat?She had better be worth it.

Still, she had agreed to go with him. Either she was very, very brave or very, very desperate.

“So this is her. Took you long enough.”

A querulous voice broke into his thoughts. He straightened, reining in the sharp retort that hovered on his lips. The Gatekeeper had been at her post for centuries. She was entitled to be rude.

Indeed, she was theonlybeing in the universe he would tolerate rudeness from. Anyone else speaking to him that way would have been ripped limb from limb in a heartbeat.

He nodded gruffly at the figure squatting by a small wooden hut. It was hard to identify her as a woman; her face was brown and wrinkled, and she had a habit of wearing a random selection of clothing that gave very mixed messages.

Currently she was sporting a bright red bobble-hat. Shadeed eyed it with disfavour.

“Good to see you too, Magda.”

His voice reverberated through the forest. A flock of birds took wing, startled from their roosts. Magda cackled.

“You can dial down the theatrics, your Lordship. She’s asleep.” The old woman got up and shuffled over to take a closer look. “Pretty. Nothing like her mother though. Are you sure this is her?”

“Tala found her. We’re lucky she traced her before Ravij did.”

Shadeed toned down his voice so it merely rumbled instead of thundered. Not as a concession to the old woman, he told himself, but because on this side of the Gate it was wise to be discreet.

The old woman prodded gently at the sleeping girl.

“And she was locked up? Makes no sense, someone of her calibre staying locked up.”

“Her calibre?” He snorted. “All she has done since I set eyes on her is cry and sleep. She is a snivelling coward. If I did not need her…”

“But you do. So when she wakes up, try not to scare her. And above all, keep your temper on a short leash.”

“I make no promises.”

The girl murmured and tightened into a ball. Magda frowned.

“She’s injured. There’s blood in her hair.”

Shadeed stiffened.

“It must have happened before I arrived. She was being attacked. She passed out but I assumed she merely fainted.”

“What, overwhelmed by your magnificence?” Magda tutted. She had served jinn for millennia and their power was undeniable. But sometimes they needed a reality check. “Let me see.”

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