Kissing her mother’s fingertips that lingered close to her lips, Nixie braced herself and stepped out of the comfort of their arms. Soon she’d need to learn to survive without their support.
Babak’s voice sounded thick as he spoke. “Jinni, you wish terms. I cannot promise you anything, but I will hear them.”
With a final loving look at his daughter, Jinni turned toward the council. “Let her be free to decide what should and shouldn’t be followed one month a year, for the next fifty years.”
“No.” Rivet’s brows rose. “That is not the genie way and well you know it. A genie’s will is to serve his or her master always.”
Cyrus patted the younger man’s shoulder. “And yet the poor child was not raised for this life, Rivet. Nixie was born and raised amongst a different breed of people, taught that their will is their own and no one else’s. To be a proper genie she must still feel a sense of self-worth. We cannot honor a month a year, Jinni, but I believe that we can all agree that one day a year can be her own.”
Nixie gasped, grabbing her chest. Trying and failing not to show her mother how shattering that blow was. One day out of an entire year to feel like a free person, her own person. To not be told what to do, to not be bartered and sold over and over and over, to do and say things that would fly in the face of her own personal convictions because she could not control herself…
She bit her tongue hard enough to make herself bleed.
A mother’s intuition was such that even though she made no noise, though she did not move or bat an eyelash, Paz was once again by Nixie’s side and pulling her in for a tight hug.
“I love you daughter, I love you,” she whispered in her ear, patting her back gently.
Rivet’s lips were thinned, but Babak was nodding thoughtfully. “It is most peculiar,” he muttered, “to be sure. But”—his brown eyes found Nixie’s—“not against our rules. We have not many half-breeds to call our own, in a case such as these, rules are meant to be bent, just a little.”
Tapping his fingers on the sparkling bench of starlight, Rivet finally sighed. “This is not how we do things. We run the council with truth and laws that have been handed down to us from immemorial to eternity...” His full lips thinned. “And yet, Cyrus is right, it would not be fair to thrust you like a lamb to the slaughter into your new life. I agree then, one day a year your will is your own.”
Jinni turned to Nixie and gave her a short smile. One that spoke volumes. That said he’d tried, and he hoped it would be enough for her. That he loved her. And that he was so sorry.
Nixie closed her eyes. She could not go home to try and set things right. They’d all known in the early hours of the morning when the missive had arrived by falling star on their kitchen table that their lives would be forever changed.
She could only hope that Eric would eventually forgive her. And that, hopefully, someday he’d be happy again. All dreams of a wedding and blond-headed children died within her. It could never be now.
Taking a deep breath she turned toward her parents and held out her arms. “Then I guess this is goodbye.”
Paz threw herself into Nix’s arms and planted tons of kisses upon her daughter’s face. “I love you, Nixie. I do, I love you. Your father and I will begin our preparations to move to Kingdom and—”
“Mom.” She grabbed her mother’s shoulders, gently pushing her back into the arms of her father. “You know you can’t. My uncles will not come and you cannot leave them. We both know that they’ll need someone to watch over them someday and it has to be you.” She swallowed hard, steeling herself to say the next words. “When they are…” She stuttered and had to clear her throat. “Gone”—she swallowed hard—“then you come. But family comes first.”
“Nixie, you are my family.” Her mother rested her head against her father’s broad chest.
Jinni looked absolutely destroyed. His eyes were rimmed in red and a heavy beard shaded his jaw. His fingers dug into Paz’s right shoulder, but it seemed to Nixie he didn’t do it to hold her mother up, but rather himself.
She’d never seen her parents so distressed before. Realizing there was something she could do for them, even if it was only a very small thing, she squared her shoulders and gave them a bright smile.
She would not allow them to see her go away sad. Their last memory of her would be happy. It was the only gift she had left to give them.
Plastering on a bright, cheery smile she said, “Mama, yo te quiero con todo mi corazon.” She spoke the words of love in Spanish, her mother’s native tongue. “But it is time to go. You guys take care of each other, and I will see you in fifty years.”
Paz shuddered.
Nixie knew as well as her mother that fifty Kingdom years was several centuries, possibly even thousands of years, on Earth. She’d never been good at math, but it was a long, long time.