It was that familiar pinch in her chest, her pulse pounding in her bleeding palms.

Her
hands shook without warning, petals falling loose from her fists. Alizeh was struck with a
frightening need to run from this place, to strip the apron from her body and tear across
the city, lungs blazing. She wanted desperately to return home, to fall at her parents'
feet and grow roots there, at the base of their bodies. She felt all this in the span of a
second, the feeling flooding her with a riotous force and leaving her, in its wake,
strangely numb. It was a humbling experience, for Alizeh was again reminded that she
had no home, no parents to whom she might return.
It had been years since their deaths, and still it seemed to Alizeh an outrageous
injustice that she could not see their faces.
She swallowed.
Once, Alizeh's life had meant to be a source of strength for the people she loved;
instead, she often felt her birth had exposed her parents to bloodshed, to the brutal
murders that would take them both—first her father, then her mother⠀”in the same
year.
Jinn had been viciously slaughtered for ages, it was true; their numbers had been
decimated, their footprint reduced near to nothing⠀”and with it, much of their legacy.
The deaths of her parents, too, had seemed to the unsuspecting eye much like the
deaths of countless other Jinn: random acts of hatred, or even unfortunate accidents.
And yet—
Alizeh was plagued always by an unsettling suspicion that her parents' deaths had not
been random. Despite their diligent efforts to keep Alizeh's existence concealed, she
worried; for it was not only her parents, but all those whose lives had once touched hers
who'd vanished in a series of similar tragedies. Alizeh could not help but wonder
whether the true target of all this violence had been someone else entirely—
Her.
With no proof to corroborate such a theory, Alizeh's mind was unable to rest, devoured
every day a bit more by the voracious appetite of her fears.
Heart still thudding in her chest, she retreated inside.
Alizeh had searched the back alley beyond the kitchen each of the twelve times she'd
come downstairs, but the Fesht boy had never turned up, and she couldn't understand
why. She'd scavenged from the remains of breakfast a few chunks of pumpkin bread,
which she'd carefully wrapped in wax paper, and hid the rations under a loose
floorboard in the pantry. The boy had seemed so hungry this morning that Alizeh could
not imagine an explanation for his absence, not unless—
She added firewood to the stove, and hesitated. It was possible she'd hurt the boy too
badly during their scuffle.
Sometimes Alizeh did not know her own strength.
She checked the kettles she'd set to boil, then glanced at the kitchen clock. There were
still many hours left in the day, and she worried her hands wouldn't survive the
onslaught. Sacrifices would have to be made.
Alizeh sighed.
Quickly, she tore two strips of fabric from the hem of her apron. Alizeh, who made all
her own clothes, quietly mourned the ruin of the piece, and then bandaged her wounds
as best she could with blistered fingers. She would need to find time to visit the
apothecary tomorrow. She had some coin now; she could afford to purchase salve, and
maybe even a poultice.
Her hands, she hoped, would recover.
Having wrapped her wounds, the sharp edge of her torment began slowly to abate, the
modicum of relief unbolting the vise from around her chest. In the aftermath she took a
deep, bracing breath, experiencing a prickle of embarrassment at her own thoughts, at
the dark turns they took with so little encouragement. Alizeh did not want to lose faith in
this world; it was only that every pain she owned seemed to extract hope from her as
payment.
Still, she considered, as she refilled her buckets with freshly boiled water, her parents
would've wanted more for her. They would've wanted her to keep fighting.
One day
, her father had said,
this world will bow to you
.