Lost in my thoughts, I didn’t notice Zand return until the whoosh of his carpet blasted my hair all over my face.

Elated to see him again, I jumped up to greet him with a long hug. One I didn’t want to ever end, but knew it must—we had to save our brothers.

“What did you find?” My words came out fast. “Where are our brothers?”

Zand’s forehead pinched. “They were both removed from the lamp and are being held in the vizier’s tower.”

Tension in my stomach eased a little, knowing my brother was not being kept prisoner in those filthy dungeons where his illness might have deteriorated.

“Your brother is chained to the floor.” Zand ground his teeth as if he was preparing to smash something. “The guards have laid hands on him.”

“What?” I grabbed a rock and heaved it at one of the bridge’s columns, chipping off some concrete.

Fire boiled in my chest. The fire of life and death. Together, my genies and I would save everyone we loved, destroy the vizier, and live out our days by the ocean. With every passing second, my mind raged with wildfire. I had to leave and get my brother and Kaza back before it was too late. Before I could catch up with my feet, they had carried me halfway up the riverbank.

Zand and Dahvi shouted behind me, their words white noise barely registering above the crackling and spitting of the blaze set off in me.

A hand caught my arm and yanked me back. It took a few seconds before it dawned on me that Zand had stopped me. Dahvi stood closely behind him, his body rigid.

“I’m going to make that wretch, the vizier, pay.” Venom coated my words. It shocked me at the same time. I hadn’t spoken of anyone like this since I cracked a chair over the orphanage director’s head.

“Azar, we can't rush in there.” The tone in Zand’s voice told me that would not be wise.

“The vizier has laid traps everywhere," he added.

I pressed my hands to my hips. "I'm a thief, remember? I can get in anywhere."

"These traps are invisible to human eyes," he replied. "Existing on higher planes. Like where my brothers and I are from.”

A terrible dread scratched at my gut. How the hell did the vizier know how to do that? Something told me I wasn’t going to like the answer.

The tightness in Zand’s mouth told me he didn’t like the answer either. “The vizier is a powerful sorcerer, versed in the arts of dark magic.”

Haunting memories of my first meeting with the vizier sprang to mind. His eyes had turned black, and I’d felt a sickening dread as my life force had bled into his dark flames. Dear gods, I’d almost met my end.

I waved my hands around as I paced. “You’re both genies. Can’t you protect us against the vizier’s dark magic?”

“To an extent,” said Zand. “We use light magic for the purpose of good, only. It, like dark magic, has its limits. But for the right price, let’s say a sacrifice, dark magic can be enhanced…”

I didn’t like the way his words trailed off and braced myself for a dump of bad news. A sacrifice? Like my brother’s or Kaza’s life? A pit opened up in my stomach.

“Let’s just say,” said Dahvi, finishing for his brother, “we’re not sure how powerful this dark flame is. We’ve heard rumors about how it corrupted our Mother Queen. When she used it to siphon energy from the Marid djinn, granting her more power, the darkness overwhelmed and killed her.”

What a horrible story, but secretly, I hoped the same fate befell the vizier. Would serve him right for playing with dark things he shouldn’t mess with.

“Well,” I said, lifting my arms high out of frustration. “What’s the plan?”

“Black magic is most powerful at the peak of the night,” explained Zand. “As the sun sets, his power will grow stronger. We must get him at his weakest. Trap and bind him.”

I glanced up at the golden orb, sitting at the midday position in the sky. Light magic at its strongest. With two genies by my side, I had no doubt we could defeat the scumbag vizier and get Ali and Kaza back.

“Can we somehow trap the vizier in the lamp?” I asked.

Both Zand and Dahvi nodded.

“To get the lamp, we will need to sneak in,” said Zand.

Hah! Finally, my skills would come in handy. Thank the gods. I’d felt so useless without any magic to contribute.

“Okay,” I said. “I know a few ways in.”

“No.” Zand grabbed my hand and ran his thumb over it.

Fire scorched through me, leaving me breathless and wishing he’d never let me go.

His next words brought me crashing back to reality. “During my surveillance of the palace, I found four tunnels, one leading to each tower of the palace.”

I’d never heard a whisper about any tunnels. Nor had I found any evidence of them in all my sneaking around. I’d been everywhere in Utaara, and there was no place I couldn’t find a way into. I searched Zand’s heart, and images flashed in my mind of even more tunnels, all of them connecting to different realms within Haven.

Perfect. Once we defeated the vizier, we had an escape route to the ideal little life I envisioned by the sea. If that option didn’t work out, we could find a new home in either The Cove or near Scarlet in Terra.

“Where do we find these tunnels?” I asked, bursting with excitement to retrieve Ali and Kaza and to start our new life.

“I tracked an entrance back to a wall a few blocks to the north,” said Zand. “But there is a door sealed by magic.”

Of course, there was. The vizier had cast it himself.

Zand touched the band on his wrist. “No. This is the work of a djinn.”

Recollections flew back to me of the city circle tower, which people said was haunted by a djinn. They left tributes there in hopes the djinn might grant their wish. And it did sometimes. How the djinn managed to do so while trapped, I didn’t know…the entire concept didn’t seem to make sense. Then again, neither did genie magic or dark sorcerer power.

“A djinn is more powerful than a genie,” Zand said. “With our limited magic, we might not be able break its spell.”

A drowning sensation captured my gut.

Something poked me in the back, and I twirled to find Dahvi’s magical carpet waving a tassel at me to get onboard.

As always, Dahvi lifted me onto it, and Zand leaped on beside us.

Did I mention I loved having genies by my side? Zand for protection. Dahvi to comfort me. Kaza to make me laugh. I set my mind to the fact that soon we’d be reunited as a family.

Normally, I was the planning type, laying out every part of my mission in advance. Entry and exit points. Spare tools for unforeseen circumstances. Various “Plan Bs” in reserve in case of emergencies. But today, I was going in completely unprepared and out of my depth, to fight against an evil sorcerer wielding dark magic. A sudden coldness tightened around my entire body. What was I getting myself into?

At the djinn wall in the center of the city, rock scraped as Zand’s magic shifted a loose block about the size of a tiger, leaving a space wide enough for Dahvi and I to hunch down and enter. Stale air, probably hundreds of years old, blasted us, and I coughed, pulling my shirt over my nose.

“Gods, I can hardly breathe in here,” I said.

“Shall I make it smell like roses?” Dahvi adopted the smartass tone I’d expect from Kaza.

Either Dahvi missed his brother, or he was trying to lighten the mood. Gods knew, I needed something to take my mind off this rescue. For the last hour, a vice had clamped down on my heart, one I knew wouldn’t let go until my brother and the genie were safe and sound, and we were a thousand miles from here. But humor always did the trick when it came to making me a little less stressed.

I tickled his armpit for being cheeky, and he gave me a quick kiss.

Zand closed the stone block behind us, releasing a puff of dust that stuck to my hair and eyes. I blinked a few times to dislodge the dirt and rubbed the rest away.

I groped around in the pitch black that had swallowed us. “A little light, please.”

“We must conserve as much magic as possible,” warned Zand.

Fire snapped to life, crackling and writhing on his palms. Its illumination stretched about twenty feet in either direction, revealing the same view on both ends. Large bricks, stained with red iron marks from water dripping down the sides. Tree roots crawled along the wall, seeking the water, ending where they found it. Spiders hunched in their webs, which clung to the corners. Gods only knew where they got their food when there wasn’t another bug in sight.

The chill clinging to the air raked along my skin, and I rubbed my arms for warmth. Arachnids and darkness didn’t bother me. What turned my bowels to water was the thought of the evil awaiting us in the palace.

Dahvi ran his palm flames along my upper arm, and an invigorating warmth filled me, chasing away my fears. Dahvi—my strength, my rock. I leaned into him so our arms just touched. Fire sizzled between us. I needed his calming energy right now. The possibility of losing my brother was turning me into a crazy mess, and only Dahvi kept me sane.

“Thanks,” I said, looking up at him through my lashes.

“Anything for you,” said Dahvi, flashing his gorgeous smile.

Awww. I loved how adorable he was. Out of all my genies, he was the most considerate and the sweetest. I didn’t know what I would have done without him by my side.

“Enough of that, Brother,” said Zand, kicking Dahvi’s behind playfully and pushing him forward.

I loved this fresh, new side to Zand. His stiff broodiness got a bit boring.

I laughed and smacked him on the ass. “Don’t get jealous.”

Zand offered me an urgent kiss before moving on. “I’m not. I just don’t want him getting all the attention.”

I touched my lips, which were tingling from the impact of both their kisses, and smiled. Gods, they were sexy. Once my brother was safe and the vizier dead, I fantasized about bringing each of them back here for some alone time. Separately, of course. I imagined each of them, fucking me all day until my pussy stung from too much sex. I pictured myself screaming as loudly as I wanted, with no one to hear me. Heat pooled between my thighs, but I pushed those thoughts aside to concentrate on Ali and Kaza’s rescue.

Our footsteps crunched on the ground as we made our way deeper into the tunnels. Silence suffocated us, as if the genies had descended into dark thoughts of their own. Based on the stiffness in Zand’s expression, I assumed he’d prepared an attack of his own on the vizier. The deep lines in Dahvi’s forehead told me he worried for his brother’s safety.

More than anything, I wished someone would say something because my mind, too, kept drifting to endless possibilities that could go wrong. I blamed it on us not having a backup plan in case of an emergency. Winging it was at odds with the planner in me.

“So, what are we going to do with the vizier?” I broke the silence as I stepped over a tree root jutting out of the ground. “Kill him? Imprison him in a land far away? Stuff him in the lamp?”

“I vote for the first option,” said Dahvi. The lightheartedness he’d shown earlier had all but disappeared.

“Careful, Brother,” warned Zand. “You know the rules.”

Oh, Zand… Such a stickler for genie law. We’d only reserved that plan if the vizier killed anyone.

An unexpected tremor rocked the passage, and we all crashed into the wall. The shuddering vibrated all the way up my legs. A deep groan echoed down the tunnel beneath the palace. It sounded like the whole place was about to collapse or something. It was almost as if the vizier had ears in the tunnel, heard our plan, and decided to attack first, to kill us before we could reach him.

A lump sprang up in my throat. I spun around, squinting into the darkness at the edge of Dahvi’s flame.

“What was that?” I asked.

Zand tilted his head, as if listening. “The djinn who sealed the tunnels is here.”

I glanced at Dahvi, but he, too, was focused, as if a voice from another world called to him.

“The vizier is a sorcerer of old,” Zand repeated, as if passing on the story. “His dark magic trapped her in the city’s walls for three hundred years.”

That bastard! How many other creatures had he abused for the sake of accumulating his power? My stomach prickled with remorse for the poor djinn. I couldn’t imagine being bound to the city for several lifetimes.

Dahvi spoke up. “Our sister requests our help in getting free.”

Geez. The quaking sure was a funny way of asking for help.

Fissures snaked across the ground as another quake rumbled. This one was much stronger, and I almost lost my balance.

Zand grabbed me protectively, pulling me up against him, steadying me.

My fingers dug into his waist.

“She doesn’t agree with us taking a human as a mate,” advised Zand.

My chest thrummed at the mention of the word mate, pumping a delicious, electric charge through me. Until now, I’d never been anyone’s mate. Hadn’t been looking, to be honest. Beyond my own basic needs, my brother’s health and survival was my first priority. Everything had changed the second I had met the genies. Having three mates made me the luckiest girl in Haven.

I pushed aside those thoughts for the moment. For now, I just wanted to focus on one thing at a time. Prime objective number one: save my brother and Kaza, and in the process, don’t gain any new enemies, like a cranky djinn.

“Brother, look.” Dahvi pointed to the tree roots on the wall.

A black mass crawled over them, burning the fibers and turning them to ash. Dark veins stretched through the bricks. Sand on the ground blackened as if burned.

Suddenly, a sickening nausea gripped me, and I didn’t feel so confident in our odds. “The dark flame.”

The quaking and groaning ended at the mention of those words.

Like we needed any more magic to contend with. Wasn’t the vizier, the dark flame, and a severely pissed-off djinn enough to deal with?

“Watch your step,” said Zand, taking careful steps, as if avoiding booby traps.

Nerves tense, gut clenched, I followed close behind him in case I needed a magical get-away from my buried prison beneath the streets of Utaara.

Gods knew how much time passed before we reached a sealed door with strange markings carved into it. I sure hoped Zand could do his magical shifting trick; otherwise, we might have to return the way we’d come and sneak in the old-fashioned way. My way.

Pushing past Zand, I let my fingers trace the foreign symbols. The marks scorched with magical fire and spat embers.

Zand ran his finger along a circle carved in the stone, exposing more writing, which he read out loud. “Here rests the mighty djinn Wanessa. Punished for refusing to do the vizier’s bidding. Only when she performs the spell she was summoned for, or the vizier leaves this Earthly plane, will she be released.”

Well. That was easily solved, then, wasn’t it? We were going to slay the vizier and free this djinn.

“Our poor sister.”

The forlorn tone in Dahvi’s voice made my heart ache.

Both genies pressed their foreheads to the door as if it were some sort of djinn ritual.

When Zand straightened, he placed a hand in the circle at the center of the door. Fiery shapes shifted across its surface. Fireworks flashed outward like party sparklers. Rock cracked and groaned as it inched open. Sand poured off the top of the door. The noise slammed down the corridor.

Uneasiness tumbled inside me. I half expected to encounter something nasty on the door’s other side. Guards with swords raised, ready to slice me to bits. A three-headed dragon or something, waiting to roast us to a crisp. The vizier with a ball of dark flame to turn us to ash. But none of that presented itself. Only a dusty stairwell, lit by blazing torches. Something about the glowing stairway didn’t feel right. As if someone had expected our arrival via this route. I mean, who would light torches in a stairway leading to tunnels sealed by magic doors? It almost felt as if the vizier had anticipated this move.