Free Slave to Passion by Elisabeth Naughton Page B

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 sahad s. 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