“He’s not my mate…” “I was sent to you…” “Let me help you…”
His pulse picked up speed. His heart raced beneath his ribs as he walked his tray across the room and set it on the high counter that adjoined the kitchen, then turned back toward the guards. There was only one answer that made sense.
She wasn’t highborn.
The guards led him to the indoor training ring, smaller than the arena but with enough room to spar. His legs ached, and he was weak from the infection, but as he stepped into the center of the arena and the guard to the left handed him a wooden sword, he didn’t care. All he cared about was learning the truth.
“Leave us,” Malik said to the guards. They exchanged confused glances—they were always on hand to watch Nasir, even during training, because a Marid could never be trusted—but when Malik shot them a try-to-defy-me look, they both shrugged and exited, the heavy door clanging closed behind them.
Malik clasped his hands behind his back, the fingers of his right hand closed tightly around the hilt of his sword. “Do you feel rested, sahad?”
“Yes,” Nasir lied, knowing not to show weakness. In the arena, weakness meant death. In the training ring, it translated to punishment. He grasped his sword tighter as Malik circled around behind him. His mu’allim was legendary for attacking when least expected, and, considering how scattered Nasir felt right now, he needed to stay on his toes.
“Honesty between teacher and pupil is the only bond we have, sahad.”
Shit, Malik knew he was lying. Nasir tensed.
“However,” Malik went on, moving around Nasir’s right and coming back to stand before him, “considering the circumstances, I’m willing to overlook it. Just this once. I sense your question. Ask it.”
Nasir looked up sharply. A sahad was never supposed to question his mu’allim, in anything. But he wasn’t about to waste the opportunity, because he might not get it again. “The female in my cell. You called her jarriah. It’s not a word I know.”
“No,” Malik said, circling once again behind Nasir. “Nor should you. It is not of our language. It is a Ghul word.”
Our language? Nasir’s brow dropped low, and more questions swam in his mind, but before he could ask them, a shot of understanding rippled through him, allowing him to see clearly, as if a veil had just been lifted. When Malik moved in front of him once more, Nasir’s eyes opened wide. “Holy Allah… You’re—”
The curtain dropped swiftly, blocking Nasir’s senses. Malik stared hard into his eyes. “I am your mu’allim.”
No, he was more. The air left Nasir’s lungs on a whoosh. Malik was Marid, just like him.
“Not all your djinn powers are blocked, sahad,” Malik said in a low voice. “Only the ones they fear you will use against them. You’ve been so focused on death and killing that you’ve overlooked what is at your fingertips.”
What did that mean? “But how did you—”
Malik resumed his circle. “I was once a sahad like you. I developed the powers I was left with. And I learned to block certain things from those around me.”
His heritage. He’d blocked who he was so the Ghuls he served didn’t know he was Marid. Nasir remembered stories when he’d first arrived, about the mu’allim who trained the sahads. He’d been here for ages—no one knew quite how long—had started as a fighter but had eventually worked up to his elevated status of mu’allim. Was it possible the current highborns controlling the city didn’t know Malik was Marid?
“To answer your question,” Malik went on, “jarriah is a Ghul word which means concubine.”
All his questions about Malik came to a screeching halt. The female in his cell was a pleasure slave? He knew Ghuls kept them—hell, his brother Tariq had been imprisoned as one—but the thought the redhead was one made even less sense than the idea Malik was Marid. “How…? Why...?” He shook his head to try to clear it. Didn’t work. “But…she doesn’t bear the slave band.”
“No.” Malik said. “Because she’s yet to complete her test.”
“What test?”
Malik stopped in front of him. “Females newly turned of age come into the harem untouched. Before being granted full access to their masters’ luxuries, they have to prove their worth. Each is sent to the pits for a night. If she survives, she goes back to the harem remembering there are much worse things in this life than serving the pleasures of one or many highborns. If she does not survive the encounter…well, then she’s deemed unworthy, and her body is disposed of without the ritual burial.”
Bile rushed up Nasir’s throat. Even Ghuls had very finite burial ceremonies to ensure a djinn soul crossed to the afterlife. To be denied that rite—in any tribe—was a punishment reserved only for the worst of society. But the knowledge her life had so little value was quickly blanketed when he realized just what his part was in this whole sick scenario.
He swallowed hard. “She was sent to me to…”
“Yes. For her test. But you’ve yet to cooperate. Which is why she still remains.”
Cooperate. A civilized way of saying he’d yet to rape her. Sickness swirled in Nasir’s stomach as he stared down at the sand beneath his feet. He’d known highborns were malicious, but this…to torture one of their own in such a way by casting her into the pits with a sahad who hadn’t touched or smelled or tasted a female in months simply to terrorize her into submitting…
“Why me?”
“That’s a question only a highborn can answer,” Malik said as he continued pacing. “To be honest, as champion, I’m surprised you haven’t been used before this. The question isn’t why, but what are you going to do about it?”
What was he going to do? Malik sounded as if he were asking what Nasir was going to do about a broken sword. They were talking about a person, for shit’s sake… A fellow djinn, regardless of her race.
He swiped a hand across his suddenly sweaty brow. What was he going to do? Holy hell, he wasn’t going to rape her, that was for damn sure. He had no intention of doing anything the highborns wanted him to do. If they thought he was defiant because he stayed alive, then they hadn’t seen anything yet. There was no way he was touching that poor girl.
“A jarriah gets only one test,” Malik said. “They will not give her to another. If you’re thinking you won’t comply in an attempt to snub the highborns, then I must tell you, it won’t work.”
Fuck them. There had to be a solution to this nightmare. Nasir’s skin grew tight as his mind spun. “How long?”
Malik came around his right side again then stopped and regarded him with steely eyes. “She’s been given five days to complete her test. Two have already passed.”
That sickness swirled and circled in his stomach. “And on the fifth? If I don’t…comply? What happens then?”
“You mean if you don’t use her before the allotted time is up?” Malik tipped his head. “Then she will be executed.”
Chapter Seven