Fortune Favors the Cursed
the-reticent-seer
diverselit
diverselit
1.3K5
An orphan girl with questionable morals. A scarred prince with two lives. One relic to change their world.
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Badriya As-Sahra is sick of piling up camel dung and ...Chapter 44
Badriya didn't realize the wish that saved Ayaz was her damnation.
As the light swallowed her, Kareem appeared in her mind's eye. His features shifted from Rashid's to Bilqis', to a young girl's to a scarred man's—countless faces he borrowed over countless years—until it settled back to Rashid's face.
A cacophony of voices came out of his lips when he spoke, "I warned you about the curse. You should have listened to me when you had the chance."
Somewhere beyond the pain of her transformation, Badriya stood in front of him. "What's going to happen to me?"
"The moment you wake up, you will be reborn as a djinni," he said. "Your life will be tied to the Jewel and the man who owns it next."
As his words settled heavily in Badriya's heart, the suffering she felt washed over her once more. The fire raged through her veins, replacing every fiber of her being until she became fire itself.
The djinni's face changed for one last time, an aging woman's. Her mouth turned into a sad smile. "You will live a powerful and immortal life, and yet you will never live a happy one."
Badriya closed her eyes, a tear trailing down her cheek. The torture finally stopped, but the memory of it lingered in her skin. Perhaps it would always be there to haunt her.
This was what Mustafa was talking about, how the Jewel would curse its owner with eternal misfortune. He never told her that it all meant turning into a creature of fire.
"How do I fix this?" Badriya stared at the woman with a teary gaze. "Tell me how to become human again."
The woman shook her head. "This is the price of your greed, and the price is absolute. Your humanity cannot be bartered."
"B-But I had to save him!" Badriya yelled. "I used my wish to turn Ayaz back to normal!"
"Selflessness." She shot her a look of pity, and by then Badriya wanted to scream and lash out at her. "We should have learned that lesson before saying our last wishes, hm? Perhaps you and I would not be here in the first place."
That was three days ago.
By becoming the Jewel's new prisoner, Badriya had freed the woman from centuries of isolation. No one except Badriya saw her flying away from the palace when the light from her final wish faded into nothing. Since then, the woman's words couldn't get out of her head.
You will live a powerful and immortal life, and yet you will never live a happy one.
Who was she to say that she would never be happy? Badriya could say with confidence that she regretted nothing when she used her wish for Ayaz. Because with him, she could never be happier, and despite her wished wealth and status, she couldn't ask for more.
But one thing was clear: nothing would ever be the same again.
That wasn't the only thing that bothered her. Not a day after the Sultan was put behind bars, Badriya discovered she could shift her appearance, just like Kareem—the previous female djinni of the Jewel did. She could make her limbs as long or short as she wanted and change the color of her skin. She could turn into any person she wanted—she could even turn into an animal.
She could create things out of nothing. Sand, fire, water, air—you name it. It was a power that terrified her the most, the power to play god. No wonder Kareem was able to grant her wishes with the snap of his fingers.
Even with all this power, she felt like something was holding her back. A chain tying one of her limbs down. Somewhere deep inside her, she knew that these weren't the only things she could do, and she already had an idea why she felt that way.