Unbound by Kay Danella

he’d seduced her in her sleep, not bothering with an introduction.
    “That’s no reason to give up. Just establishing that portal must have been a miracle, a chance in a lifetime. This is the same.”
    Silence was her answer. He didn’t even bother replying.
    Unable to stand the sight of Romir’s despondence, Asrial stared instead at his prison. Now that she knew what it was, its semblance to an erect phallus was appalling. “This is barbaric. There has to be some way to free you.”
    One thing she had learned with the Castel : nothing was perfect; everything broke down, no matter how well made. Even stars died. Whatever the Mughelis did to make Romir a djinn, it could be broken. And somehow, someway, she’d do just that.
    The numb look she got in return shouted his doubts. He’d lost all hope of ever escaping this coil. Despite the measure of freedom he’d attained, he’d resigned himself to remaining a djinn forever.
    Unacceptable, absolutely unacceptable. Her horror flared against the sinking helplessness, transforming it to fury and commitment.
    “We’ll free you, whatever it takes.”
    Sure, the Spirit of space didn’t play fair. But right then and there, she wanted happily-ever-after. If she couldn’t have it for her parents nor for Amin, she wanted it for Romir.
     
     
    Astonishment overwhelmed Romir’s shock at the news of the Mughelis’ defeat, flooding the emptiness in his heart. Asrial’s outrage alone would have stunned him. But the determination on her face, as if his enslavement were a personal affront, confounded him.
    “You do not know what you are saying.” She could not have considered the implications of such a commitment. He had tried to unravel the weave both from outside and after his capture from inside. If indeed thousands of years had passed since his enslavement, how could she hope to free him?
    Asrial caught his face between her hands and rose to her toes. Leaning into him, she stared into his eyes. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll free you, however long it takes.”
    Supremely conscious of her small breasts pressed to his chest, of her palms on his cheeks, he could not tear his gaze from the burning intensity of her determination. Such foolishness, but her will seared him, demanded he live. Demanded he believe.
    “Surely there’s some way to break this . . . binding.”
    “There is. If the flask shatters, the djinn can no longer be summoned.”
    “You go free?”
    “No, merely that the djinn fails to respond to the vyzier. It was never proven conclusively, but the best guess is, the djinn is lost in the mists—or perhaps he dies.”
    She gasped, the whites around her irises widening. “I don’t want to kill you! I meant reverse it. How did they do it, anyway?”
    Romir closed his eyes against the memory and the fierce demand in hers. From the heights of lovemaking to the depths of shocking revelation to the distant impossibility of hope, the shifts demanded of him numbed the mind.
    “I do not remember what the Mugheli vyzier did. Just pain.” Such pain that it became his entire world and everything else faded to white. He did not know if he had ever known the weave and had simply chosen to forget or if the pain had ripped it from his memory. The only favor the gods had granted him was that his skill lay in battle weavings, which precluded his power being used to make other djinn. But because of that, he could not answer her question.
    “When it was over, I was djinn and tied to that.” He flicked a hand at the ordinary-seeming flask that was the bane of his deathless existence.
    “But you’ve escaped.”
    Had he ever been so hopeful? The earnestness in Asrial’s voice only drove home the extent of his enslavement. He had no hope. Even now he did not know what whim of the gods had granted him this measure of freedom. Should he ever return to the gray mists, it was likely he would lose that much. He had not escaped.
    “For the moment. As you saw, my prison may draw