With barely a glance at his brother, White urged Vadit towards the door, and with a look of utter boredom he replied flatly as he brushed past Red, “As if I ever listen to father.”
As soon as he was gone, Ari let out the breath she didn’t even know she’d been holding.
The Red King strode towards her purposefuly, his body seeming to vibrate with uncoiled anger. “Are you okay?”
Jai rubbed a comforting hand over her shoulder. “She handled herself beautifuly.”
She shot him a grateful smile and nearly melted at the pride in his eyes.
Oh wow.
A throat clearing broke their gaze and Ari glanced up at her uncle. He smirked at her knowingly, and then, just as quickly, grew serious. He nodded at her. “You can tel me what White said after. For now… it’s time for Charlie’s trial.”
2 - The Lawlessness of Kings & Courts
It had taken a while for Charlie’s lungs to get used to the thick, rich smel of damp soil. It was everywhere. The ground was untouched, packed dirt. The wals, at least here, had been quarried of their emerald. If he’d had to sit al night in a room with emeralds, he might have gone insane with need. Charlie winced as he leaned his head back against the dirty rock and nicked his scalp. That was about the fiftieth time he’d done that.
He eyed the bars that formed his cel down in the dungeons of the Sultan Azazil’s palace. They were the only source of light, the iron aglow with a fiery magic. He’d been warned by the huge Shaitan that had thrown him in here that if he touched the bars he would be incinerated. After hearing a scream wrench the night air last night, folowed by the vomit-inducing stench of burnt flesh, Charlie was glad he’d chosen to sit in the farthest corner of the smal space and take the Shaitan at his word. After the scream of the dying man wrenched the air the chatter, al around him from the other prisoners had silenced into death and somehow, impossibly, Charlie had drifted in and out of sleep.
The Red King had visited him the night before, the secret of Red’s part in turning Charlie into a sorcerer threading a fragile bond between them. Charlie didn’t know what Red wanted, or if he was only folowing the Sultan’s orders, but he liked to think of Red as an alright guy. At least whenever he looked at Ari, Charlie was sure he detected feeling in the Jinn King’s gaze. He had to believe that one of these scary ass creeps were on their side.
He had to believe that Red wasn’t going to let him die today.
The Jinn King had promised him that much last night, making an oath to do everything he could to save Charlie’s life. Charlie’s stomach roiled and his chest squeezed tight with fear. How had everything culminated in this? His life was weird, no joke, but this? Sitting in a dungeon in another realm, waiting to find out whether he was going to die for kiling a maniacal sorcerer?
Maybe he’d smoked a little too much dope this last year, he thought regretfuly.
A crackle hissed in the air and Charlie heard the mumblings of a guard and the shuffling of feet. Was that the first prisoner being released for trial?
Was it only a day ago he was sitting with Falon as she soothed him over the Jai and Ari situation? The Roes had been briliant, helping him work his way through the guilt of kiling a man.
He’d kiled a man.
Worse stil, his best friend was stil too weak from her own attack at the hands of the same man to help talk him through it. And just to add bitter sour cream icing onto the top of that piece of crap cake, Jai had been sitting at Ari’s bedside, waiting for her to wake up so he could tel her he wanted to be with her.
Charlie had lost Ari.
Falon was a comfort. Charlie could listen to her talk about nothing and everything and for a while it kept the world at bay. That’s what she’d been doing—talking to him about her first job as a hunter, her smal hands tucking his growing hair behind his ear, rubbing his shoulders, stroking the tattoo around his wrist, measuring her smal hand against his own. Sily, familiar stuff that made him feel close to her, that numbed the pain of losing someone so exquisite as his Ari. And he had no one else to blame but himself.
His walowing had been interrupted by The Red King who’d burst out of the Peripatos to warn him, too late, that Jinn were coming from Mount Qaf to arrest him for Dalí’s death. The two Shaitans had arrived on the back of Red’s warning.
Charlie couldn’t remember getting to Mount Qaf. He tried and tried but there was nothing there. One minute he’d been in shock at Red’s warning and the next he was being dragged down a dark earthen tunnel, fire flickering out at him from medieval-looking wal sconces. He’d passed cel after cel until he was thrown into his own.
Had he realy anyone else to blame but himself for his predicament? Al along this is what Ari had feared for him when he’d told her he’d become a sorcerer to take vengeance against the Labartu that had kiled his brother, Mike. He’d been warned that kiling a ful-blooded Jinn would end up with him facing a death penalty in Mount Qaf. Charlie had come to terms with that as long as it meant the Labartu was dead.
But to be forced to face trial for kiling a half-blood and one who’d almost kiled Ari? Wel that stuck in his craw more than a little.
He bet it stuck in Ari’s too. The Red King had told him she was here with Jai and had asked to see him, but she wasn’t alowed. Charlie pounded a fist in the dirt beside him. He hoped she was wel enough to be here. He prayed she wasn’t going to do something inadvisably stupid to set him free. God, he hoped she wasn’t going to be like him.
And selfishly, underneath it al, Charlie was glad she’d taken off after him. That he stil meant enough to her to drop everything, including Jinn-Boy Jai. A stupid part of him stil hoped that maybe fearing for him would make her remember their bond. That they were family…
… “Okay, who’s winning?” Charlie grinned as he strode back into the sitting room with a glass of ice-cold Coke for Ari. It was a blistering summer day
and the a/c in the house had broken, leaving them to use crappy fans that just blew recycled hot air back at them.
Mike frowned over at him from his place beside Ari on the floor, the game controller dangling from his hand. “Where’s mine?”
Charlie shrugged. “I only have two hands.”