CHAPTER 2
Arie
AFTER DINNER, I ENDUREDa few more hours in the Great Hall, pretending to listen to the storyteller and musicians, before claiming a headache and retiring early.
I paced across my bedroom, stopping at my balcony to gaze out at the black depths of the sea and the way the moonlight lit a path across the waves. It made me want to jump out onto the water, follow the path wherever it led, and never return.
When it felt as if hours had passed, I picked up my candle and cracked open the door between my bedchamber and the outer room. Tonight, it was Farideh who slept there, ready to come to my aid. Fortunately, she was a heavy sleeper.
I tiptoed through the room into the dark, silent hallway on slippered feet. My candle flickered as I crept down the stairs and slipped inside the castle library.
Passing dozens of bookshelves that stretched twice my height, I pushed through velvet curtains that led to a little room at the back. It was pitch-black without the moonlight coming through the windows. The smell of books and dust grew stronger, tickling my nose. But the room was empty besides the books and work tables, which was all that mattered. My reading material over the last few weeks had to be kept secret at all costs.
Glass boxes guarded the ancient books. One thick volume rested against the back wall, old and worn, that no one was allowed to read, but was too full of information to burn.
I set my candle on the table. It lit up the small pocket of space surrounding myself and the book. The enormous volume was turned to the title page:
The Land of Jinn
Lifting the heavy glass lid, I set it aside before leafing through the pages, one at a time. I’d found the book only a few nights prior, after searching the library for a book from Jinn for months, with no success. Each night I could get away, I came here to read a bit more—always making sure to turn it back to the title page and replace the glass before slipping out.
The pages in the first section,Laws and Lists,were dense: this land had been merged with that land, and this law passed underneath a similar law, and so forth. I’d gleaned very little from it beyond the first sentence, which declared, “Each individual Jinni must honor the code of Jinn or risk banishment.” I held back a sneeze as I flipped past that section.
Next wasSpells and Secrets,written in a language I didn’t recognize. The last few nights I’d studied them anyway. The pictures on each page shimmered as if they might come to life at my signal, but what that signal might be, I couldn’t guess.
On one page, a clock, on the next, a sundial. A tea kettle. A candle. Seemingly random objects. But tonight, I noticed a pattern in the spells that I hadn’t seen before: each object told time. Whether obvious, like the pocketwatch, or through items that didn’t seem designed to mark time at all: a tea kettle which would boil after a certain number of minutes passed. A candle that might last for hours, but would eventually burn out.
Interesting, but meaningless, as far as I could tell. I didn’t know how I could use the spells if I couldn’t even read them; I made note of it and moved on.
After the last page of spells, I discovered a third section:History and Households.
I snatched my candle, bringing it closer and leaning in to read. My eyes caught on the page where my fingers fell. There was handwriting in the margins.
I bit my lip. It looked like—could it be my mother’s? I recognized her handwriting. The style was utterly unique; the way her letters curved and her script flowed—if indeed it was hers—reminded me of a never-ending ribbon.
I squinted at the words.The humans believe the race of Jinn to be nearly extinct.I followed the swirled script to the next line and stopped.They fearus.
Us?
