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I SCREAMED.
“It’s just me!” Koda hurried to say, catching my wrist when I swung at him.
“What took you so long?” I demanded, embarrassed, pulling away. “Did they discover the rings were taken?”
He grinned. “If they haven’t yet, they will soon.”
“That’s not very reassuring.”
“You don’t seem like a woman who needs to be reassured,” he countered, still radiating excitement.
I couldn’t keep my frown, turning to stare at the mountains as I hid a smile. “What now?”
When he didn’t answer, I turned back to find him suddenly serious. He slowly took my hand again, tracing a thumb over my skin. “Now, we begin.”
A shiver swept over me.
We were really doing this.
Pulling the rings from my bag, I held them in my palm for him to see. The larger dragon one was obviously meant for a man. I picked up the delicate Jinni one that had been intended for Tehya. I put it down and picked up the dragon ring. “I don’t think this one will fit me...”
“It shouldn’t make a difference which one you wear,” Koda said, taking the gold dragon ring from me to inspect it himself. “My father explained the covenant spell to me multiple times. We prepared our ring and instructed the Jinn on how to prepare theirs—both rings are enchanted to speak for their people, but they won’t begin pulling on our power or our promises until the covenant begins.”
“How will we know if it works?” I met his eyes through the circle of the gold ring.
“There will be a weakening as the spell begins to slowly pull out our strength.”
A weakening. The word reminded me of how he’d described the covenant when we’d first met. I still remembered my response: Why would anyone willingly be vulnerable? I would never trust someone enough to consider that.
Yet here I was.
I swallowed audibly, staring at the ring now instead of Koda as he lowered it.
With a finger under my chin, he brought my gaze back to his, as if he’d remembered our conversation as well. “I have full trust in you,” he murmured. “Can you say the same of me?”
Afraid to speak, I managed to nod.
He ran a thumb softly over my bottom lip.
I shivered.
This time, the kiss wasn’t rushed. I drew in a ragged breath, closing my eyes. His fingers slipped through my hair. Pulling me closer, he lifted me suddenly, and I broke off laughing as my feet dangled in the air. He spun us around, and with one lingering kiss, he finally pulled back, but only enough to kiss my forehead.
I lowered my eyes to hide the sudden emotion. “I haven’t been to any weddings in the human world, Vaade or otherwise,” I murmured. Or any weddings at all, for that matter. “But I believe the kiss comes at the end of the ceremony?”
Wryly, Koda laughed, stepping back. “Then let’s hurry up and start so we can get to the end.”
I bit my lip, holding back a laugh too. “I’ll follow your lead. How do we begin?”
Like before, Koda pointed to my three middle fingers one at a time. “Mind, body, soul.”
Had it sounded this romantic the first time he’d explained? I stared into his eyes, memorizing the amber sunset colors, and the way they warmed as he looked down on me.
“A typical human marriage places the rings on the soul finger,” he repeated the words he’d said the first time. “But the covenant requires vulnerability as proof before the rings will accept the spell.”
This time a different word caught my attention. “Proof of what?”
“Trust.”
The one word that had haunted me since before I could remember, causing me pain at every turn. Could I accept it now? Koda waited patiently, as my inner battle manifested itself in pulling back with tense shoulders.
He reached across the growing space, fingers softly touching my cheek, tucking a loose hair behind my ear gently. “Can you trust me, Jezebel?”
Hearing him speak my name instead of Jinni Girl made my lips twitch.
He didn’t know what he asked of me.
But in all my time here, he’d never broken a promise. He’d been the one to rescue me from the Vaade who’d attacked me. He’d tended my wounds, told me the truth about the Dragon’s plans. He’d even tried to protect me from the pain of discovering Shem’s betrayal. As his prisoner, I’d been obligated to rely on him, but still, he’d never let me down.
“Okay,” I whispered finally, taking the hand he held out. “Time for you to make me weak and defenseless.”
He chuckled. “As long as you’ll make me the same.”
I still held the delicate Jinni ring, so he moved to take it, holding it in front of my middle finger, clearing his throat. “The ceremony begins when we each place the other’s ring on the middle finger and speak the words of the enchantment. Once this is done, the weakening starts. Our abilities will fade gradually.” He paused, gazing down at our hands intertwined in front of us. “We’ll say our vows, before completing the ceremony by moving the rings to the last finger with a final oath.”
Wordlessly, I nodded. I couldn’t have spoken past the tightness in my chest if I’d tried.
“Say this after me,” he began, intoning in a deep voice, “To prepare the soul, I surrender the body.”
I cleared my throat, which was suddenly dry, and rasped, “To prepare the soul, I surrender the body.”
As I finished, he slid the ring onto my middle finger.
Immediately, a tingling sensation flooded through me like a cool inner wind running through my veins. When I grasped for one of my Gifts, they seemed distant, as if they were housed in my body, but had moved to another “room” of sorts. Shifting felt just out of reach, and the distance I could normally travel felt like it was decreasing steadily, shrinking away like the water lapping at the shoreline beside us.
Koda was speaking, and I made myself focus, as he repeated the vow for himself. At his nod, I slid the dragon ring onto his middle finger.
He flinched a little, clearly not liking the weakening any more than I did.
When he blinked back at me, his sunset-colored eyes were a little less vibrant. If I hadn’t spent a full minute staring into them moments ago, I might not have noticed. Subtly, they continued to change, dark pupils growing less narrow and more round by the second, visibly proving that the covenant had begun.
Back in the Vaade camp—and all of Jinn—our people would be feeling the covenant start to take effect, slowly leeching away their Gifts and strengths as well.
If they hadn’t noticed the missing rings before, they certainly knew now.
An image of Shem panicking caused a confusing mixture of satisfaction and guilt all at once.
“Now the vows,” Koda murmured, staring at our hands shyly, cheeks growing red. “There aren’t any required words for this part. It’s usually just the standard wedding promises... We can make up our own.”
As his words sank in, I felt a full-body flush as well. He meant we needed to say how we felt. That might be even more vulnerable than the temporary loss of our abilities. “You first,” I managed to squeak.
He cleared his throat. Staring out at the water, he thought for a minute, then turned back to me. “When I came to Jinn that day, I didn’t expect that I’d be kidnapping my future wife,” he began with an ironic grin.
I scoffed, shaking my head, but gave him a small smile.
“I promise to protect you,” he continued. “Even when you might not see it that way.” I frowned at his choice of words. That was an odd way to make that vow. Perhaps it was a Vaade saying? “To provide for you,” he went on, distracting me from asking. “And to prove myself worthy of being a husband. I look forward to learning to love you.”
He leaned in, whispering, “Based on my experience so far, I don’t think it will be hard.”
His breath tickled my ear.
I shivered. Warmth stole over my body as I dared to meet his eyes. I could admit now, in this moment, if only to myself, that I wanted this.
It was my turn.
Gathering my courage, I drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I vow...”
My mind went blank.
What was I willing to promise him? Nothing felt safe. But that was the point, wasn’t it?
“I vow to tell you the truth,” I began in the softest whisper, growing more confident as I spoke. “To always try to love you back, and to... trust you.”
Simple words.
Not nearly so simple to put into action.
His eyes softened, and he squeezed my fingers gently. When he didn’t continue, I blinked away the emotions and cleared my throat. “Now what?”
He hesitated.
An odd emotion I didn’t recognize flickered across his face, too fast to read.
“Now,” he said in a slower voice, “We say the final words to complete the covenant as we place the rings on... the next finger.”
Slowly, he drew the delicate white gold ring off my finger, staring down at the ruby and diamond for a long moment before he lifted my hand.
There was that strange expression again. It was gone before I could name it.
With his hand and the ring poised in front of mine, he dipped his head lower, until there was only a breath of space between us. “With this ring, I take you, Jezebel, to be my wife in every way, until death takes us.”
As he slid the ring onto my finger, he closed the distance between us and captured my mouth with his. The kiss flooded my senses as strongly as the magic had the first time. My entire body trembled.
When he pulled away, my mind felt almost fuzzy from the kiss, as if a fog had come over me.
Eyes closed, I laughed on a shaky breath as he finally pulled back. “That wasn’t technically the end,” I reminded him in a teasing tone. “We still have to do your ring.”
“I know.” His smile was close-lipped, almost tight at the corners. One hand absently touched the dragon tooth necklace. He didn’t usually fidget. Our covenant must be making him more nervous than he’d let on. “I just couldn’t hold back.”
Pulling his own ring off his middle finger, he held it out to me and stretched the fingers of his left hand out so I could place the ring on his ring finger.
As I reached out to take his hand, a flash of white and red on my own finger caught my eye.
It struck me as strange.
My thoughts felt uncharacteristically out of reach, like I was forgetting something important.
“What am I supposed to say again?” I asked Koda to cover my hesitation, staring down at the ring on my first finger.
“With this ring, I take you, Koda, to be my husband,” he chanted the rest, but I slowly stopped listening.
The ring.
It was on my first finger.
What had Koda said before we’d started? It was a struggle to remember his words. Straining, I found them one at a time. Mind... body... soul. The ring finger was for the soul—for the marriage and the covenant to be completed.
But he’d put it on...
The first finger.
Mind.
Something teased my memory... Something to do with forgetting?
My heart stalled as it finally came to me.
The curse.
Drawing in a slow, careful breath, I managed through years of practice to keep a calm mask on my face as I met his eyes. They were shifting from sunset orange and yellow to a darker hazel. Was the weakening completed? If so, I was entirely defenseless... and I might’ve made the biggest mistake of my entire life.
“What’s wrong?”
All kinds of alarm bells were ringing in my head.
He wasn’t stupid. He wouldn’t put the ring on the wrong finger by mistake.
I hoped I was wrong.
On instinct, I kept my suspicions to myself as I repeated the vow carefully, watching his face the entire time. There was a tightness in his eyes even as he smiled. It added to my growing tension.
“... until death takes us,” I finished, staring into his eyes the way he had mine.
I slid the dragon ring onto his first finger.
Just like he’d done for mine.
When panic flickered in his eyes, my heart sank.
The emotion was gone so fast though, I almost thought I'd imagined it.
He cleared his throat. “Good,” he said as he pulled the ring off again, though I got the distinct impression he did not think it was good.
He placed the thick dragon ring in my palm. Stretching out his hand toward me for the third time, palm toward the ground, he said, “Now move it to the final finger, to connect the soul, and the covenant will be completed.”
I took it.
Then, I slipped my own ring off as well.
Holding both of them in shaking hands, I held mine out to him, wanting despite everything to trust him. Desperately hoping he’d prove me wrong. I whispered, “You first.”
Stricken, he didn’t take it. “I... can’t.”