“I’m notbored!” Sirah khala had exclaimed, though she absolutely was. “How could I possibly be bored when I can do things likethis?”
Then, with a flourish, she’d turned her kohl-rimmed eyes on Riya, her irises suddenly glowing faint, molten gold. A classic peri trick.
“I can do that, too,” Riya had said, unimpressed.
“What?”Sirah khala had grabbed her shoulders. “Really? Truly?!”
“With colored contacts.”
Sirah khala’s howl of frustration was loud enough to make her mom wince.
But a few years later, her wish came true.
During a family dinner, Sirah khala leaned over Riya to place a jug of sharbat on the table—and suddenly, she froze.
“You—you smell like jasmine,” she whispered, her voice reverent.
Riya blinked. Any other bodily changes she’d noticed in herself—the sudden growth spurt, the weird sensitivity to other peoples’ emotions—she’d chalked up to puberty.
“Mom got me a new body wash.” She scooped a serving of chicken biryani onto her plate. “That’s probably what you’re smelling.”
But Sirah khala didn’t look convinced.
“No,” she murmured, studying Riya like she was seeing something invisible. “No, this isn’t body wash. I can feel it. I should have known when you started growing like a reed, but—you have peri magic in you! And it’sstrong, Riya.”
Riya went very still, trying to ignore the shift in the air—a brush of something against her skin, featherlight. As if the magic within her was responding to Sirah khala’s words. Which, of course, was a ridiculous thought.
“You’re joking.”
But Sirah khala was already turning to the rest of the table, eyes shining.
“She has it,” she breathed, hands trembling. “She has the gift!”
Nyra dropped the cheesecake she’d just taken out of the oven while Amara let out a giddy squeal. Their momnearly toppled out of her chair to grab Riya in a suffocating hug. And her dad mussed Riya’s hair, ignoring her halfhearted swats.
Riya didn’t know what to say, caught in a hurricane of expectation she didn’t ask for. She didn’t want to smell like jasmine against her will, or hear Sirah khala’s overly dramatic declarations about her destiny.
She just wanted to eat her dinner in peace and get back to studying in her room.
Sirah khala launched into another lecture: Peris weren’t as common as they used to be, and their dwindling numbers had turned them into little more than an exotic footnote in dusty folklore books. She’d had wild theories about why—something about Mount Qaf, secret migrations, hiding from human governments—but Riya stopped listening as soon as her khala’s voice turned feverish, like an over-caffeinated documentary narrator.
What Riyadidcatch, though, was that this revelation meant something big. That despite all odds, peri blood had been alive and well in her all along.
She could be the one to carry our family’s peri magic into the future!
She could heal people’s woes. Inspire hopeful hearts. Give them courage.
She could—
Not that it mattered in the end.
Because that wasbeforeeverything changed. Beforethe Incident, when she turned her back on magic. Before Sirahkhala stopped visiting, like she didn’t trust herself to be around Riya without trying to fix what had been broken.
And soon enough, her family stopped bringing up peri magic at all, as if it had never existed.
In Riya’s opinion, that was for the best.
Chapter 4
