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His breathing became more uneven His eyes fell to my lips

Slowly, he reached a hand up intoI knew, he was leaning in closer And then his lips were onhim closer as his mouth locked with mine I tasted the salt on his lips, felt their coolness, their firainst ues touched, fireworks erupted in my chest

I had never kissed a boy before But Ben’s kiss was everything I had iined it would be… and so ain earlier that evening vanished completely as I was consumed by the vampire prince of The Shade

Chapter 14: Jeraround hu in the machine We had done extra this week and there were too many to carry downstairs co the prison beneath the atrium, alked swiftly past the half-bloods’ and hu deeper and deeper into the maze of cells until we reached the farthest cha inside, I told Lloyd and Michael that they could leave

Looking down at the trap door in the center of the room, I bent down and lifted it open to reveal a dark,wafted out I’h one by one before closing the trapdoor

If this were a usual day, my work in this roo else to accomplish

Opposite the main entrance to the rooanthe botto in the corner of a kitchen the size of a large hall Everything about it oozed extravagance, froold to the shiny silver cutlery

Several large pots were bubbling over stoves and snake heads were baking in the giant oven The sacks of ground bones I had just dropped through the chute were piled up in a heap in one corner, ready for the chef to return

Passing through the kitchen, I opened its rosewood door and stepped out into another atrium Situated directly beneath ours, this atriuer and immeasurably more luxurious There was barely an inch of surface that wasn’t made of some kind of precious stone or metal, and in the center was row upon row of celestial fountains It was truly a gli one of the heavily ornaht blue mist appeared before me I stopped and stared at it until the body of a man manifested in thin air froht blue mist, which had thickened and now lookedblack hair and a thickset jaw, Karam levitated before me

Karam Nasiri--brother of the head of the Nasiri family of jinn Our cohabitants and self-proclaiht you three times the requested amount of supplies today," I said "Noish is to see your sister"

He frowned at ht," he replied, his voice low and throaty "Come with me"

He kept himself manifested so I could see him, and I followed him as he levitated toward the upperold-plated door studded with red rubies

He opened it andthe door behind hiainst the wall of the veranda, looking down at the sparkling fountains below

Sometimes I still couldn’t believe that we had lived this way all these years When o and I’d gotten the idea to coht find here We’d guessed we’d come upon--at the most--a ruined palace And indeed that e’d found With the help of our five witches, we’d renovated and built up The Oasis into the beauty that it was today and placed a protective spell over it What we hadn’t realized was that The Oasis had already been inhabited since the Maslens had lived here The place had been infested with a family of jinn--one of the oldest of thisup this place andwith, we couldn’t find it in ourselves to move

And yet the jinn, who had round, would not allow us to live in peace without sub to their rules--not even our witches could resist theo We didn’t want to risk leaving The Oasis to get stranded in the desert or be discovered by hunters, so we’d seen it as the lesser of two evils to stay, and provide them with certain… luxuries

Some of our vampires had protested and refused to cooperate They all ended up leaving, and we never saw theain We didn’t knohat had happened to them--whether they’d escaped the desert safely or not The rest of us who decided to stay were marked by the jinn, initiated as part of their extended fa used to--I’d never seen a jinni inhere I’d hated everything about the powers to s for their own benefit--and truth be told I still did But as tiotten used to thes with the creatures, it was important to control one’s mind and one’s desires around them They thrived on uncontrolled emotions and unfulfilled wishes That was how they manipulated their victims The more you desired in this place, the more sway they had over you, and the more indebted you became