Page 89 of Heavensent & Hellbent

I turned to her. She was shaking her head.

“Five seconds,” Zahhak called.

“I’m not something you can sell off,” I said angrily, not moving.

He clicked his fingers, and Red Lapels and Green Lapels moved to the side. I let out a sigh of relief and took a step forward to leave. I was halfway out the door when my arms were yanked back and I was dragged by both women, kicking and screaming, to my seat. I was placed, ungracefully, down ontothe chair and tucked in. They were strong, and ruthless, and I was sure I would have bruises from where their fingers dug into the tops of my arms.

“Well, now that that is over, we can finally start dinner,” Zahhak said, winking at Keyon, who gave a good-humored laugh.

I hated them both.

Azar shot me anI told you solook, which I didn’t appreciate. Perhaps it was because she too had been dragged back to the table before and knew it wasn’t worth it. Maybe it was one of those things you had to experience before you understood. Well, I understood now. I would not brazenly try to take on those women, or Zahhak, again, but Iwouldbe getting out of here.

The meal consisted of five courses. I ate bits of each, tentatively, always watching to see if Azar was eating too. I figured if we were being poisoned, better to die together. If I hadn’t been so hungry, I wouldn’t have eaten anything, but I had no idea when our next meal would be. Each course was small—the kind of rich-people food Nic and I made fun of. When the main course did come—lamb kebab and rice—I told Zahhak that I didn’t eat meat. He burst out laughing. Keyon smirked too, like he found that fact about me amusing. So the kebab went uneaten.

Zahhak and Keyon talked like old friends but with a formal edge, Keyon agreeing with most of what Zahhak said. They spoke using lingo I didn’t understand, laughing at remarks that meant little to me or Azar. It was like a fever dream.

The worst was when Keyon commented on the paintingson the wall. “Have you told the sisters about your mementos?” he asked. I had hardly noticed them, but when he pointed them out, I noticed small portraits clustered around the room. The subjects all looked different, some young, others old.

Zahhak was chomping on his kebab and took pains to finish eating before replying. He dabbed his lips with his napkin and glanced at one of the snakes on his neck with an affectionate smile before speaking. “I don’t think they would find it as amusing as you and I.”

Flashbacks came to me. People screaming. Maidens saying it’s better that other people be killed than them.

“Are these portraits of people you’ve murdered?” I asked in a quiet voice.

Zahhak’s head moved from side to side, like it was a scale of justice. Nodding, in a sense, to the culprits tied to his neck. “They get hungry. It’s the only way to calm them.”

I scanned the room again. There must have been thirty of these portraits scattered around. “You got portraits made of all your victims? Like it’s a sport or something?”

Zahhak made a clucking sound before taking another long sip from his glass. This was his fourth drink. I noticed Keyon didn’t drink the blood either. Perhaps it was an acquired taste.

“These are from only the first two weeks of feeding them,” Zahhak explained. “After that, I gave up on the idea of memorializing the people that have to die so I can live peacefully.”

I choked.

The first two weeks.

How many people has he killed?

“Why?” Azar asked. “Why do you have to kill innocent people so you can live?”

“I made a deal with Shaitan, or the spirit your generation would callSatan.I wanted to live forever, and the only way for that to happen was to betray my own father. Shaitan thought it would be amusing, the ultimate evil, as it were, for me to kill my own blood. That was easy. And I became king—an immortal king, at that. My curse, however, was to have these beasts attached to me. Every granted wish comes with a catch. I believed the catch would be my being fatherless, but no. I soon learned that the snakes quieted down if I provided them each with a human heart every day. It’s what they beg for, after all, so that’s what I do.”

“What happens if you don’t?” Azar asked carefully.

“They annoy me,” he said simply.

Azar and I locked eyes.My God.

“Don’t worry, it’s a great honor to be the Jinn King’s daily feed,” Keyon said with a smile. His eyes held mine for a moment, steely, almost like he didn’t find it amusing, not really. But then both men laughed like he had made a great joke, and I realized I was delusional if I thought this boy was anything but pure evil, like my demonic grandfather. Azar and I looked at them, then each other, horrified. This was what Azar and I were born into. But we weren’t evil like these two men. Our mother had raised us differently, and I hoped that mattered.

The screams of the jinn hunters, however, their burnt flesh beneath my fingertips, suggested otherwise.

39

A routine was set for us by the maidens—Pouran (Red Lapels) and Mariya (Green Lapels). We were woken for breakfast in our bedrooms and locked in those rooms until dinner, when we were made up to eat with our demonic grandfather, who drank and talked nonsense. Both women avoided speaking to us if they could help it.

When we returned from dinner that first night, the door adjoining Azar’s and my room was simply taken away. It didn’t fill either of us with hope that no one felt threatened at the prospect of us being locked up together.