The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty

Author:Shannon Chakraborty
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-02-27T00:00:00+00:00

An Ill-Fated Decision Due to Greed

On the morning after my wedding to Raksh, I had no sooner opened my eyes to see my new groom had sprouted tusks then I sprang from the bed, promptly tripped on the sheets, and fell to the floor. However, I was still young then and spry, recovering to fling myself at the door, nakedness be damned. I grabbed the knob.

It turned to cinders in my hand, the rest of door melting away. I gasped, but watching my sole means of escape magically vanish made me only more desperate, and so I quickly resorted to pounding on the wall with my fists.

“Help!” I cried. “Dalila! Asif! Maj—”

Raksh grabbed me around the waist, pressing a scalding hand over my mouth.

“Please stop screaming,” he implored. “My head is killing me.”

I writhed in his arms, trying to wake myself from this nightmare, but it was like fighting a man of stone. From beyond the blue fingers pressed over my face, I suddenly spotted our marriage contract. Amongst the wreckage of the room, clothes, palm wine casks, and bedding all tossed about, it was the one thing that had been carefully placed on a wooden table.

At the bottom was my signature.

Raksh let me go, and I crumpled to the floor. For the first time in years, I wept. I had done a great many awful things while nakhudha of the Marawati. I had killed and I had stolen. I had gambled, gotten drunk, and stretched the limits of adultery—often doing all three in a single evening—then failed to wake in time for fajr to pray for forgiveness. In short, I had a thousand things for which I already knew I would need to atone.

But this, this . . .

“Oh, God . . .” I dropped my head into my hands. I couldn’t look at Raksh, the acrid air smelling of future hellfire. “I am doomed. I committed fornication with a demon. I have lost my soul and will burn for a thousand—”

“Was the contract for your soul?” Raksh sounded confused and hungover—if blue beast men could be hungover. I let out another sob and he sighed in irritation. “Will you cease all the crying? It is very loud.”

He stepped back, shaking like a dog attempting to dry itself. His devilish appearance vanished, leaving both the man I’d met last night and not. The bluish hue that clung to him might have been a trick of the light; the raven tresses and speckles dotting his skin, both shadows and reality. The silver-dappled red outlining his now-vanished tusks could have passed for a poor henna job.

Raksh shuddered. “I rarely lose my form overnight. Whatever these people put in their palm wine . . . wow. It’s been centuries since I’ve sampled a beverage so fierce.”

Centuries? I glanced up through my tears. “What are you? Are you some sort of djinn?”

“Not a djinn, no. Though it’s a bit hard to explain; your languages no longer have a good word for what I am.

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