Harley Merlin 12 Bella Forrest (100 best novels of all time txt) 📖

“Kadar?” Santana whispered.

I felt him leer. “Who else?”

“Maybe you should sleep some more,” she suggested.

“And maybe you should mind your own business,” he retorted. “This is your fault, anyway.”

Santana’s expression shifted to anger. “Excuse me?”

“You wouldn’t stay behind, and you being here is messing with Raffe’s mind—distracting him. Why do you think he’s pushed you away? Honestly, for someone who acts like an intellectual, you can be dense.” I fought to wrangle Kadar, but he wouldn’t budge. “And he won’t say it, so I will. His greatest fear is his inability to give you children—well, without potentially killing you, anyway.”

“What?” Santana grazed her bottom lip with her teeth. “I told him we didn’t need to worry about that.”

“Then you really are stupid,” Kadar shot back. “Of course you should worry. You’re not exempt because you’re powerful in your own right. His mother was, too, and it didn’t do her any good.”

Kadar, stop! I tried to take back control.

No. Why should I? She needs to hear it, and she needs to hear it from someone with more punch to them, Kadar replied inside my head.

“That’s why he’s been trying to push me away?” Santana looked heartbroken.

“Did you think he’d just gone cold? You—the one he’s been pathetically in love with from day one?” Kadar scoffed against my wishes. “You think señoritas like you come along every day for a guy like him? Pfft, as if. They might for me, but Raffe’s a sap.”

Santana rallied. “Then why didn’t he just say so? I bet you had something to do with it, didn’t you?”

“He did say so, but you wouldn’t listen!” Kadar snapped.

Her eyes widened. “Not being able to have children with him doesn’t mean he has to push me away. There are ways around it, Kadar.”

“Not satisfactory ones.” He grabbed her arm and pulled her around to face us. “He wants your kiddos, Santana. He wants the shiny, happy family he never had, the one you constantly harp on about. You think he’ll give that up? You think it doesn’t hurt us when you say you want a billion children, knowing each could be a death sentence for you?”

“I—”

Before Santana finished, Abdhi swiped Kadar across the face with a slap that sounded like a lightning crack. Instantly, Kadar disappeared inside me, and I came back to the surface, feeling the almighty sting from that smack.

“Djinn. Such drama queens. Am I right?” Abdhi shook his head. “They should all spend some time stuffed in a lamp. That’d teach them.”

“Sorry about that.” I peered at Santana, but she’d turned away. Evidently, Kadar had given her food for thought at the worst possible moment. Did he want both of us distracted during this mission? At least it had brought my mind back to the task at hand, as mortified and angry as I was with him for bringing up that sensitive—and secret—subject. I’d been trying my best to keep it from her, and he’d gone and blurted it out. Impulsive idiot. I glanced at the book to skirt past my embarrassment, ignoring the throb in my cheek and moving on to the specifics of the collective djinn world. “Are all of these djinn connected to Erebus?”

“They are indeed,” Abdhi answered. “All of us born of his Chaos mutations.”

Santana turned her attention on Abdhi. “So he’s like your dad?”

“Alas, he lacks paternal instincts. With that in mind, he is more the scientist who botched us into being. If he were truly our father, he wouldn’t leave us to suffer like this.” Abdhi’s tone held a bitter note as he gazed over the shadowed dunes where a strange, goat-like creature grazed on sparse shrubs. It had spiraled horns, bent backward. An oryx, if memory served.

“‘Botched into being.’ It doesn’t sound like you’re all that glad to exist,” I cut in.

He shrugged. “I make the best of my situation. But let me ask you—what is the use of existing if you are destined to be a slave?”

“There aren’t free djinn?” Santana asked. We made quite the tag team of questioners, but I wished she’d look at me. Kadar really gave it to her straight, and I knew I had to clean up his mess.

“‘Free’ is a subjective term.” Abdhi huffed a sigh. “There are djinn who consider themselves free, but they can be called on any moment to do their overlord’s bidding. So how free can they truly be? At least in my lamp, I am relieved of that duty. The lamp protects me from the call of Erebus, as it is imbued with djinn magic that shields me from him, as per the instruction of the spell of the one who placed me in my lamp. Again, it spares me the worst of this illness because it has an energy source of its own. Lamp or no lamp, however, the fabric of my being is linked to Erebus.”

I was about to ask another question regarding Erebus’s servants who weren’t djinn, but Abdhi stopped abruptly at the top of the dune. A second later, I understood why. Below us, in a deep valley between the dunes, lay a massive city of rocks and ruins, literally sitting in the middle of nowhere. It must have once been an incredible feat of architecture, with towers and spires and walls of white and gold, but it had crumbled, leaving the shell of its former glory. Flames flickered within and shadows darted between buildings, letting me know we’d reached true djinn territory.

“What the—!” Santana gasped.

“Welcome to Salameh,” Abdhi replied. “The city of sanctuary for the supposedly free djinn. You cannot see them all, but hundreds of djinn reside here.”

“Hundreds?” My throat clenched.

Abdhi smiled. “There are many here like your djinn, born inside magicals but freed by their magical’s death. Consider it… a retirement home for djinn.”

“They’re crusty old folks?” Santana looked down at the city with worried eyes. I shared her apprehension. Even from here, the ruined city gave me the creeps. Shadows swirled, with bursts of fiery light scattered