The Sultan's Daughter (Princesses Uncovered #5)

Chapter 22: New Habitations

Fath sighed, straightening his new, gold threaded jacket.

Hashim never showed up to help him figure out how to use the oil pot, but Fath had figured it out on his own.

It had been an accident – as many things Fath had done the last month or so had been. He had been washing his hands one day and noticed that a particular section of the pot was covered in a grease smudge from some unknown source.

He had then drizzled water on the empty pot, thinking that he could scrub the smudge off. All of a sudden, grey and red smoke began pouring out from under the pot’s lid. Fath had dropped the pot, but it hadn’t broken, instead remaining solid and intact. He had stared at it, stunned and too frightened to move.

And then, the djinn had appeared.

The djinn – much to Fath’s surprise – did not appear as they were supposed to in the legends and story-books. The djinn did not have green or blue skin – or any strange color thereof. In fact, the djinn had normal olive skin tones.

The djinn also didn’t have glittering or glowing skin, and her eyes did not spit fire or seem to glow with unnatural light. Nor did she have a strange pigtail on top of her head like most stories said djinn did.

In fact, the djinn was quite beautiful. Fath had stood in awe of her as she had stood before him, a delicate, plucked black eyebrow arched as she had tapped a bare foot on the stone floor of his two story house.

He had taken a few moments to recover from his shock before examining her.

The djinn had luxurious black curls that reached to her waist, a flowing white linen top that settled gently about her hips, melding into the white of her overskirt and creating a stark contrast to the dark black of her underskirt.

About her wrists and ankles, thin, hammered gold and silver wrist cuffs were clasped, and her neck was adorned with a silver and gold necklace with a single emerald pendant, which shone with some mysterious light, which lurked in its depths. Her sapphire green eyes contrasted her olive skin tone elegantly and her long, tapered fingers were unadorned aside from a single, silver band with an emerald – matching her pendant in hue and strange light – set in the center.

She was stunning, to say the least, as her dark, sapphire green eyes had focused on him in the washroom.

After that encounter, she had instructed him on summoning her. All he had to do was get the pot wet, in some way or another, and she would come.

She had told him that she had to do his bidding until he set her free or another claimed the pot. No matter what he told her to do, she could carry it out so long as it did not require her to take another’s life in an act that did not protect Fath’s life in some manner. If he ever ordered her do such a thing, his bond with her would be broken, and she would no longer do his bidding.

The last thing she had told him before disappearing back into the pot was that her name was not djinn, but Akila.

He had seen why. The dark gleam in her eyes had suggested an intelligence to uphold her name’s meaning.

He snapped back to the present, staring at the palace before him.

She had created it for him upon his behest.

The entrance was a grand arch, the sandstone blocks giving it a nice, creamy tone. The rest of the palace was also sandstone, carefully polished – or rather, instantaneously polished as soon as Akila made the palace appear – so that the sun glowed on the stone.

He walked through the arch, staring at the courtyard. Acacia and Balboa trees adorned the courtyard, which had a bubbling stream in the midst of it, welling from some formerly nonexistent spring underneath the sand.