Page 55 of Kiss of Fire

Ornate, gold-coloured bars shaped into roses and birds which formed an elegant trellis over the opening, but bars nonetheless.

Her heart started to pound and she felt short of breath.

“Raya. Raya, what’s wrong?” Shade was at her side in an instant. He frowned at her, perplexed.

“Bars. There are bars on the window.” Her mouth felt slow and stupid.

“Of course. To keep my guests safe. I do not want anyone to fall.”

Raya licked her lips, trying to moisten them.It’s not the same as the hospital. I’m not a prisoner.But her heart didn’t seem to hear what her head was telling her.

“There were bars at the hospital,” she said faintly. He leaned forward to hear her. “Over the windows. The doors. There was a man. An orderly. His name was Griggs. He liked… he liked to push my face into the bars while he… while he touched himself.”

The memory made her shudder.

Shade’s hands closed into fists as he tried to control his anger. Too late.

Shadows started to boil from him, writhing into the room, growing with every breath. They were as dark as ebony, as dense as granite.

They smashed into the trellis, grasping the metal with smoky coils. Raya jumped as it groaned and bent under the immense pressure. With a thought, Shade wrenched the whole thing from the window and threw it out of the opening.

There was a moment’s silence. Raya cast a look at Shade. His eyes were blazing bright blue and his lips were thin with fury.

“No more bars. Not ever,” he told her.

And he stalked out, his shadows gathering around him like armour.

Twenty One

“So, four hundred years old?” Raya ventured. Shade seemed calm but smoke was still curling from him. She wanted to thank him for his empathy, for his outrage on her behalf, but she couldn’t find the words.

“It is still young, for a jinn.” Shade gestured around them. “What do you think of the garden?”

“I think it’s beautiful. Why’s it called the night-garden?”

“You will see after dusk,” he replied enigmatically.

They were sitting in a pagoda in a green and luscious oasis bursting with flowers. The air was heavy with the scent of rose and jasmine. An ornamental pond at one side was filled with golden carp, a fountain at the other cascaded with water that changed colour constantly.

“My mother… my adopted mother, I mean, Caroline, she would have loved this. She was obsessed with plants and flowers.”

“When she died, was she… I do not know what human customs are. Were her remains placed somewhere?”

“Her ashes are under a rose bush in a cemetery. Ross’s too. I’ve never been there. I doubt they’d want me there after… after what I did.”

She shied away from the memory, deliberately focusing on the beauty in front of her. Peacocks roamed the grounds, their haughty cries answered by exotic songbirds in the trees. Branches hung low with the weight of fruit; apple, pear, fig. And though it was evening, golden sunshine still dappled the lawn, catching the wings of the butterflies which flitted from bloom to bloom.

This is what Eden must have looked like. Raya took another piece of cheese from the plate in front of her, savouring the tangy flavour. She was glad she’d changed into a free-flowing kaftan. Her stomach was so full it was close to bursting.

“I am sorry,” Shade said abruptly.

“For what?”

“For your suffering. For the indignities inflicted on you in the human world. I am sorry I did not find you sooner.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“The man you spoke of. Griggs. Did he force you to...”

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