She had come here, halfway across the world, to escape the thing that would kill her. Instead, it had stitched itself inseparably to her.
It could not speak, would only show itself as smoke the colour of verdigris, of lichen in the endless humid gardens they had left behind. But Lady Reza understood that by the time the djinn found her, it had forsworn its original purpose. Her heartbeat was proof enough. The contract was void.
Whether this independence was of its own making, or her family had tired of the long pursuit and cut ties with their degenerate pet, she would never know.
Now, in a snowbound and hardscrabble city, in a room beneath a bridge that breathed in the river’s rolling cold, the Lady and her assassin shared an exile. It trailed her soundlessly about her business; it crawled in to share her warmth at night; it no longer entertained thoughts of swallowing her soul. Here, she was all it had.
She supposed that was beautiful, in a way. It was nothing like friendship, even less like forgiveness. It was an understanding; a reality that the last year had left her raw enough to bear.
Lady Reza watched her companion now, casting awful shadows in the firelight, doing and thinking whatever it did. She had come to sense when its attention was on her. She smiled. Ice crackled around the doorframe.
In time, this understanding would serve her very well. She had never been more sure of anything.
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