Wishbound

She opened an old brass lamp. Two men stepped out of the smoke.

Selene Haddad has spent fourteen years bringing tarnished things back to life in her little shop on Copper Lane. She is careful, steady, and very much alone, and she has not let anyone close in longer than she likes to admit. Then a soldered-shut lamp from an estate crate finally gives way under her cloth on a rainy November night.

Zahir is a mountain of a man with a shaved head, a black beard, and a gold cuff on his wrist. Idris is lean and laughing, with long black hair and a gleam of gold at his ear. They are djinn. They have been lovers for longer than most cities have stood, and for eight hundred years they have been trapped together inside the lamp, granting three wishes to whoever holds it.

Everyone before her asked for gold. Selene asks for time to think.

So they take her inside, into a marble palace of carved arches and brass lanterns under a moon that should not exist, and slip her into sapphire satin, and ask her what she wants. Out loud. Every time.

What she wants is something she has never once wished for: herself, and both of them, for one night with no need to be careful.

But a wish is a bargain, and every bargain has a price. Selene has three wishes. Before the night is over, she will have to decide who she spends the last one on.