The Hour of the Crow

Chapter 14: The Flying Carpet

Inna had never flown before, but gods, had she missed the pure joy of the wind blowing through her hair and caressing her cheeks. It was worth the tears that streaked her face because she could hardly hold her eyes open at this speed. She loved the feeling of weightlessness and her elevated pulse as she leaned over the edge of the carpet to watch the earth sail by. Zazi enjoyed it as well; she had lifted her head toward the sun, eyes closed in the absolute peace of the moment.

However, Arran didn't share their delight. The slight furrow in his brow and the unnatural rigidity of his posture betrayed his discomfort with flying. A small smile curved her lips, which widened when he caught her gaze.

"Are you all right?"

"Just fine," he answered, shifting his tangled legs.

She studied his tall form, the way he had folded his limbs to fit on the carpet. "You can swing your legs over the edge if you have cramps in your muscles, you know. I'll make sure you don't fall over."

He waved away her offer with a dismissive gesture of his hand. "Don't bother."

Fine. If he'd rather petrify in that position, that was his problem.

She kept her face turned to him, though. The Amulet dangled from his neck, its gleam cold despite the warm, orange rays of the late afternoon sun. The darkness of the djinn's soul inside expanded to Arran's own aura, deepening the shadows at its edges. Her stomach grew heavy as a stone from merely looking at it. How much longer before the first symptoms of the illness lingering under his skin would show?

"What's the point of having access to cosmic powers if you can't use them to take away a stupid curse?" she muttered. Arran had told her every detail of his conversation with the djinn in the dungeons, including the part about the three wishes and their limitations.

He leveled his gaze with hers. "I reckon even a djinn can't interfere with a god's wrath."

She clucked her tongue. "So what are we supposed to do, then? Find the nearest temple dedicated to Onshra and pray until our knees bleed?"

"I don't know." He rubbed his face. "Gods, if my mother could see me now ... She would never let me hear the end of it. For that matter, neither would her rolling pin."

Inna tilted her head. "Rolling pin?"

His lips twitched with the ghost of a smile. The dry, hot wind played with the curls in his hair, inviting him to a flirtatious dance to loosen the tension in his body. "Her favorite weapon to threaten me with whenever I've gotten myself into trouble."

"Really?" She laughed. "Sounds like a lovely woman to me. If I got into trouble as a child, my tutors would have me apologize to my victims and that was that." Her smile died on her lips, blown away by the breeze. "You know, I love my father and siblings, but sometimes I feel like an employee in a business rather than a member of a family." His brow quirked, but he said nothing. She lowered her voice, aware that she was about to tread into sensitive territory. "What's your family like?"

For a few seconds, Arran only stared at her. "We're poor."

She quelled the urge to roll her eyes. "So?"

"So?" His eyes burned with white-hot rage, the sharp lines of his nose and jaw somehow even sharper than before. "Poverty ripped my family apart. Every time I look at my mother, all I see in her eyes is disappointment. She keeps rubbing me in the face that my thievery stains my father's memory. Adira, my sister, always tries to conciliate between us, but my mother and I are too much alike, too bitter about the hand life has dealt us. We only have different ways of coping with it." He averted his gaze, his fingers fidgeting in his lap. "Yesterday, I let both of them down."