Free The Fire Wish by Amber Lough Page B

home. I couldn’t stand the pain.
    “She turned into a flame and slipped through the window,” she said, choking back tears.
    Zayele had transferred like a jinni, but why had she turned into fire? I looked up at the woman. “I have to leave,” I said. I tried to go through the door, but it was firm as granite, and there was no way to open it from inside.
    I couldn’t get out! I banged on the door, screaming for it to open.
    “They won’t open it. Zayele tried that for days.” The woman slumped down onto a bed platform. “You look like her.”
    “I can’t stay,” I said. I held up my hands and rubbed the owl-eye tattoo. It still glittered. But I didn’t press on it. If I managed to escape this strange wish, then any images I sent back would be glaring at me from the Eye. There’d be no way to deny I’d left the Cavern without permission.
    How was I going to get out of this if I couldn’t open the door and I couldn’t wish myself home?
    The woman pursed her lips and then said, “So her wish worked.” Her gruff voice broke again, and she pressed her hands against her mouth before holding up a clay pot.
    “I …” I fought back my tears. “Why did she do this to me?”
    “Sit.” It wasn’t a request, so I sat. “What’s your name? If jinn have names.”
    “Najwa.” It came out a faded whisper.
    “I’m Rahela. I’m Zayele’s cousin.” She was a few years older than me, with straight hair, narrow shoulders, and a piercing glare. “From now on, I have to refer to you as Zayele. Until she comes back or you find a way to fix all this.” Everything I’d been raised to do, all that Faisal had hoped for me, would never come to be unless I escaped. He was going to kill me.
    If the humans didn’t do it first. Deflated, I let my head fall forward. Rahela picked up one of my hands and spread my palm flat.
    “We have to get you ready, and we have very little time.”
    I shook my head in protest, but Rahela picked up a long, narrow box and set it on her knees. She lifted the lid and pulled out a thin brush. Then she opened a clay pot of henna paste.
    I had first seen henna a few months ago, in the artifact room. Shirin and I had drawn swirls and diamonds on our hands, trying to copy human designs. Faisal had been amused. My mother had nearly spat when she’d seen it, and clamored for a jar of the paste, but Faisal wouldn’t let it out of the artifact room. She’d simmered for days. None of her wishes matched the intense red the henna had stained into my skin. Now I watched as Rahela took my palm.
    She inspected it, flipping it over. She examined my mark and shrugged. “You feel exactly the same, but we will have to cover that up.”
    “I’m flesh and blood, just like you,” I said. A lock of hairfell over her eyebrows, shading them. She nodded, and then expertly sketched out a filigree design on my hand with the brown paste. What if I did look like a human? What if I could blend in? My fears eased a little. I was being dressed up like a human princess. I was in her place.
    Rahela was halfway through with the first hand when the guards rotated their posts. The retiring guard stopped by the door.
    “Princess,” he said. “We will be there in a few hours.” My heart beat quickly, but I managed to look him in the eye and nod. When he left, I started shaking. There was no way anyone would think I was human. They were going to kill me. I was going to die. And then Faisal was going to kill me again.
    “Be still, or this will look horrible,” Rahela said. “I have to cover up this tattoo.” She colored over the owl eye and turned it into a flower petal. Amazingly, the blue didn’t show through.
    Although everything around me was falling apart, and the mark I’d had for only a day was covered, I was fascinated. She made such small lines. They swirled and joined in what seemed the perfect places. It was nothing at all like what Shirin and I had tried to do. Ours had been childish and random. This