Ahhh it's release day for The Secret Gift!

THE SECRET GIFT is a villain origin story that can be read as a standalone, or before or after The Stolen Kingdom Series. Over a century before the evil Queen Jezebel crosses paths with Arie, Rena, and Nesrin, she’s just an innocent Jinni girl… who was betrayed.

I'm excited to share the FIRST CHAPTER with you below!

❤️




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The Secret Gift

FOLLOW THE AUTHOR:
Bethany Atazadeh

READ THE FIRST CHAPTER:

CHAPTER 1

“LET’S HOPE YOU NEVER develop that garbage Gift your mother had,” my father grumbled after his second cup of mead. He was getting an early start tonight. “That woman thought she could use me to hide her shifting? I’ll tell you what, in the end, I used her Gift to my advantage far more than she ever—” the rest was too muffled to hear, but it was no doubt the same litany of complaints I’d heard every night since I could remember.

He tossed his empty drink in my direction.
I didn’t bother to duck. The wooden cup bounced harmlessly across the stone floor only halfway across the room, dribbling liquid onto the surface that was now covered in stains.

“Jezebel. Another,” he mumbled, closing his eyes and burrowing deeper into his Lacklore-hide chair. He draped his arms over the bear-like paws, claws still sharp, and leaned back beneath the ox-like head where it was stuffed and set into the tall back of the chair.

Growing up, I used to whine that he could take care of himself. Without fail, he would point to his legs—those legs that started out like any other Jinni male, but transformed into the legs of a goat. Hoofs and all. A permanent gift from my mother. Or, in this case, a curse.

“Yes, father.” I lifted my chin and obeyed, bringing him a third full cup, setting it on the table beside him. My hand shook slightly. Straining against the desire to slam it down or scream at him, I kept my face serene, not revealing any hint of my feelings.

Sometimes I secretly wondered how my mother had stopped at the legs alone.

Our home was small. Only a few steps to get back to the sink, where I continued to slowly do the dishes. If I looked too idle, it’d encourage him to focus his bitter diatribe on me.

I stared out the kitchen window, past the faded blue curtains, at the street below where my few friends gathered. Asher waved when he saw me, but I couldn’t wave back without giving myself away. Pressing my lips together in a pained smile, though he was too far below to see, I wished I was with them.

Other Jinn my age had mentors after their discipline years ended. As their Gifts manifested between the ages of fifteen to twenty-two, someone with similar Gifts would take them on and train them in how to use them. How to be a lethal weapon or a benefactor or anything in-between.

I was only seventeen, so some would say I still had time.
My secret Gift was still fairly new. It’d manifested a few short months ago, after I’d finished my discipline years. Thankfully, no one else was aware. And I, for the most part, was too terrified to use it.

Still, I’d never have a mentor because no one could know my true Gifts. My mother had made that clear.
Just five years old when she’d left, I’d gripped her short skirts and wrapped myself around her tall sandaled legs.

“Please don’t leave, mama.”

“I have to, darling,” she’d said, ruthlessly prying me off of her before retying the laces and strapping on her ornamental breastplate. “When you have Gifts like mine, that’s all anyone can see. The royal family fears this Gift and wants to take control of my abilities, as your father did.” She stood. “I’m not going to let them.”

“But papa loves you,” I’d cried.

“He loves my Gift,” she’d snapped, bending down again to face me. “And I plan to break him of that.” Her grip on my shoulders hurt as she shook me slightly. “Always remember this: don’t share your Gifts with anyone, Jezebel. People will use them and use you. Better to keep them for yourself.” She’d stood, brushing off her hands as if brushing me off for the final time. “If I could go back in time, I’d keep mine a secret. Then we would see who truly loved me.”

If she would’ve known that I’d develop the same Gift as her years later, would she have stayed? Or better yet, would she have taken me with her? I still didn’t know the answer to that, but I’d never forgotten those words.

Part of me wanted to believe she was wrong. The burning question came back as it always did: if I showed my true self to someone, would it change how they saw me? Would they still love me?

My father certainly wouldn’t. He hadn’t been the same since she’d left.

“Your mother’s Gift was as useless as her,” he said now, sloshing his drink as he lifted himself out of the chair.

He set the cup down and made his way to the bed on the far side of the room, falling into it. He’d moved it out of his bedroom to eliminate unnecessary steps.

That was my cue to go to my own room for the night, though it wasn’t even dark out. Better to let him sleep it off than to make noise and risk waking him.

I dried my hands quickly, dimming the flickering ceiling lamp and pulling my door closed, when he muttered,
“She was ugly besides.”

Despite myself, I paused and looked back at him.

His cold eyes were on me, clear for once, aware of his cruelty. “You look just like her, Jezzie.”

My hands twitched, wanting to touch my long, black hair and my pale face. Lips too small and thin. Brows too thick. Nose too long. I knew it all by heart.

Instead, I let the door to my room close softly, refusing to give him the satisfaction. Though he didn’t realize it, I could easily change all of that. And someday, I would.

Someday, I promised myself I’d get away from him and find a place where I could be my true self. And I would never let anyone call me that name again.

The minutes passed slowly as I paced my tiny room, from one side of the small bed to the other, past my few possessions inside the dresser and the bare walls with peeling gray paint. Outside, the sun began to set.

Only when my father’s heavy snores pierced the air did I finally steal toward my window and crack it open.

Our cramped living quarters were located on the third floor of the acropolis that surrounded the capital.
Hundreds of Jinn lived in the little apartments above, below, and to the sides, as well as roamed the streets at any given time of day, so this was always a fear-inducing moment. It was far too high to jump, and the spells surrounding the acropolis prevented Jinn from traveling to the ground in a flash. Since there was no way I’d risk sneaking past my father, that left me with only one option.

I shifted as quickly as possible into a green lizard the size of my palm, glancing over my shoulder the whole time until it became green and scaly, along with my clothes, and basically ceased to exist. This form would be permanent until I chose to shift again.

Then, with those helpful sticky footpads, I crawled up the wall, out the window, and down the tall columns to my hidden corner near the acropolis’ main entrance. In the dark space where no one could see, I shifted back to myself—short white dress, sandals, gold arm bands, and all.

Being forced to keep my Gift to myself meant I didn’t always know exactly how it worked the way it did, but as far as I could tell, it was like molding clay and reshaping it into something new. I had to do it a little bit at a time, but as I got used to sculpting certain things, they came to me quicker. Such as returning to myself; that always snapped back into place.

All four of my friends stood in the shade of the acropolis, lounging by one of the passways. They all had ebony hair and pale, almost translucent skin with a hint of blue veins beneath like all Jinn, but that was where the similarities ended.

“Bel,” Asher called softly, his deep-red eyes flashing in excitement as I strode up to them. “We were starting to wonder if you were coming!”

I warmed to him and the nickname as always, to the whole different person I became with them, though I still kept my shifting a secret.

“You know I have to wait for old donkey-legs to fall asleep,” I retorted, but I let the corner of my mouth tip up a bit. Summer heat radiated off the dark-stone street, even now after the sun had set. “What’re we doing tonight?”

Besides Asher, our group was made up of three other adolescent Jinn: tiny Phillipa, whose strongest Gift let her sense when fruit was ripe, obnoxious Simon, whose main Gift allowed him to put himself and others to sleep, and the ill-tempered Miriam who—like Asher—couldn’t claim a single Gift. Not even the most common Gift of Traveling. Which meant I fit in with them perfectly. As far as they knew, traveling was my only Gift, and only short distances.

Other Jinn our age looked down on us; often they wouldn’t even acknowledge our presence, as was evidenced by a small group of former friends walking past right now who pretended we weren’t there. Our own parents saw us as a disappointment. Since we weren’t strong enough to be considered for the Jinni Guard, and most of us couldn’t even acquire a basic mentor, we were for the most part left to ourselves.
Until eventually, one by one, we’d be forced to take on some kind of menial labor.

“We can’t talk here,” Asher whispered, which immediately made me perk up. Secrets were Jinni bread and butter. It must be an especially good secret to worry that another Gifted one might overhear. “Take us to the usual place,” Asher commanded, holding out a hand.

Times like this, when his insecurities about being Gift-less made him sharp, I oddly liked him more. To be seen as powerless—well, I knew the feeling better than he realized.

So, I simply took his hand and traveled with him to the edge of the main island where the others had already landed.

When we glanced back at the enormous capital city of Resh we’d left behind, it looked like a miniature toy town in the distance, with the acropolis stretching protectively all around it. The castle rose above everything else in the center, glowing white in the moonlight.

Here at the edge of the island, clouds drifted past, close enough to reach out and touch. Somewhere far below, too distant to see from our elevation, was the human world. And there to the right, floating in and out of clouds, was Urim, one of the smaller Jinni islands. It was close enough that many Jinn could travel the distance between these particular islands without the use of the bridges.

Not the five of us, of course… but some.

Asher pulled his hand away as soon as we landed, and I tried not to let my disappointment show. He turned to the others who stood in a half-circle. Miriam was next to Simon, since he’d brought her. Her wrinkled forehead and crossed arms said she felt the same as Asher about their lack of abilities. Simon might’ve brought Phillipa too, I couldn’t tell; though she could travel on her own, she preferred to stick with one of us and fade into the background of our little group.

After a quick glance around, to where tall grasses swayed in the bright moonlight on one side and the island dropped off on the other, I whispered, “You have to tell us! I can’t stand the suspense!”

Asher’s pinched lips relaxed into a smile. Knowledge was a kind of power, after all. He waved for us to follow him into the trees. “Remember our discipline years, when they taught us what a Daleth was?”

“A portal to the human world,” Miriam snapped, though her expertise didn’t seem to make her feel better. She hated being out in nature. “What of it?”

“I found one.”

Simon immediately traveled in front of Asher to halt him in his tracks, though he’d only been two steps away. He liked to show off the meager skills he did have. “You’re making that up.”

“You wish,” Asher said with a grin, hitting Simon’s decorative silver breastplate as he stepped around him.

“Those don’t pop up one day out of nowhere,” Miriam said, swatting at bugs as she followed. “How would no one have found it before? I don’t think it’s really a portal at all, you’re just trying to trick us.”

“You’ll see.” Asher didn’t stop, grinning over his shoulder. “This one is nearly impossible to stumble onto. If I hadn’t tried to pick a specific herb right between two trees, I’d have missed it myself.”

The details made me start to believe him. My heartbeat sped up. We could use information like that as a way to curry favor with the royal family—maybe find a better profession at the castle than what we were destined for. Better yet, being introduced to such powerful Jinn could help me finally get away from my father completely.

Maybe it’d even produce an opportunity to meet the handsome Prince Shem. I glanced over at Miriam and Phillipa, wondering if they were thinking the same thing.

The royals were always looking for Daleths. For whatever reason, they liked to have control over them. Probably because an unguarded portal was asking for trouble when it came to adolescent Jinn like us.

At the smirk on Asher’s face, I sighed.

He’d chosen the trouble.

Leading us away from the edge of the island, on a curving path through the grass and the trees, he couldn’t stop talking. “I found it when I was looking for some star anise.” His cheeks blushed slightly blue. Since his natural-born Gifts were non-existent, he’d been determined to learn Jinni spells and enchantments instead. Though we all knew this, he changed the subject quickly. “Besides the Jinni Guard, no one we know has ever visited the human world.”

“Except for Master Yeshiva,” Miriam reminded him. All of our thoughts turned to the teacher we’d had briefly during our discipline years, right around the time we’d all met. He’d been banished to the human world for breaking one of the Three Unbreakable Laws: Never use a Gift to deceive, never use a Gift to steal, and never use a Gift to harm another. To this day, we still didn’t know which one he’d broken.

“Well, we don’t know anyone personally who’s ever come back,” Asher modified. “We’re going to be the first! We’ll see this human world with our own eyes, instead of hearing dull bedtime stories about it. Maybe we’ll even have a little fun with the humans themselves.”

He and Simon chuckled as each tried to hit the other’s breastplate first, making the showy armor clang loudly when Simon succeeded.

I shuddered at the thought of interacting with humans, exchanging tight-lipped glances with Miriam and Phillipa.

Humans were said to be slimy to the touch and terribly unsanitary. Not to mention their intelligence level was about the same as one of our mutton grazers. You couldn’t approach them in groups or you’d be more likely to be attacked than greeted.

We had a few humans living in the capital city of Resh, but it was rare, and usually only for a short time before someone with the Gift of Memories made them forget. They were usually employed by Jinn who thought they had a special talent or ability they needed. I couldn’t fathom it. What could a human do that a Jinni couldn’t?
Though the dangers of the human world didn’t appeal to me, I trailed along behind them anyway.

Asher drew up next to a seemingly empty space between two trees that gently arched toward each other. Other than that, there was nothing to indicate they were anything special. Gesturing to the bark on one, where some scratches created a poorly carved circle, he said, “I marked it so we can find it whenever we want.”

“But do we really want to go to the human world?” I finally spoke up, arching a brow at him.

“Everyone knows they’re inferior,” Miriam agreed, though coming from her it didn’t mean much. “I hardly see the point.”

Asher ignored her and stepped through the space between the trees. He disappeared.

“The point—” Simon mocked her “—is to have a little fun. But if you’re as scared as an actual human and want to stay behind, then we’ll see you when we get back.” With that, he followed Asher.

Unlike traveling, where the whole body vanished at once, the daleth seemed to almost eat his body, swallowing it in pieces.

Miriam shook her head at the empty space, while Phillipa glanced between us, and I rolled my eyes.

When Asher stuck his head back through unexpectedly, I was closest, and I couldn’t help myself—I squeaked.

He roared with laughter. Miriam shoved his head back through and followed, no doubt anxious to prove herself. Giving me a small shrug, Phillipa stepped through next.

Once again, I brought up the rear.

Throwing my head back, I took a deep breath, then pressed through the invisible portal to the human world. The tingle of magic on my skin as I passed through made me shiver.

In the dark, it surprised me how similar it appeared to home. Though the moon above was naturally smaller from this lower vantage point, the rest of the landscape wasn’t terrible. Wildflowers grew along the edge of the woods. A town on the hill ahead shone like a cheerful lamp, lights flickering in windows and laughter flooding out all the way to where we stood in the clearing.

Asher was already moving.

From the dark edges of the forest, we were still invisible to the humans, but there were at least a dozen of them ahead, hurrying in different directions like little ants on a mission.

“Wait for us,” I called softly, rushing to take his elbow and pressure him into waiting for the rest of us. Though I’d never made my feelings for him known, I liked to think I held some sway over him. He did slow a bit, even if he refused to stop altogether. I tugged harder to get his attention. “What exactly are you hoping to accomplish here?”

With a glance back at the others, he leaned in to whisper, “I’d like to talk to one.”

I frowned. A human? Why? Glancing up at his feverishly bright eyes, I could tell there’d be no arguing with him.
Still I tried. “We won’t blend in.” I waved toward Miriam, Phillipa, and myself with our short skirts and sandals that laced all the way up our bare calves, then at the village ahead. “The human women dress much more conservatively than the Jinn.”

Phillipa and Miriam nodded sagely, attempting to hide
their relief as they slowed to a stop.

“That’s fair. You can wait here, if you’d like,” Asher said over his shoulder, not pausing in his stride. I stuffed down my disappointment yet again. He could be stubborn when he was focused on something.

“We should probably make a plan first,” Simon tried, when I glanced over at him in desperation.

Finally, Asher stopped pressing forward. Turning to face us, he waved his hands wide. “Why must you all make everything so difficult? We’re just going to talk to them.”

“But what about the Unbreakable Laws?” Phillipa asked in her high, reedy voice.

“You think I somehow forgot about them?” Asher snapped, fists clenched at his sides. “We’re not going to use our Gifts to steal from anyone, deceive anyone, or harm anyone, because none of us has any real Gifts in the first place.”

The reminder dulled the pulsing excitement in the air for a moment. Technically, we all had more Gifts than him except for Miriam, but he was sensitive to that, so none of us mentioned it.

I pondered the advantages of the human world as I searched their faces. What if I didn’t even worry about talking to a human at all, but instead found a safe place to finally explore my Gift outside of the tiny boundaries of my bedroom at night? I flexed my fingers tentatively. What if I could test my limits? See what else I could do? The others never needed to know. The freedom that had always been out of my reach tempted me like a rare dessert.

“Fine,” I pulled away from the uneven circle toward the town. “We’ll all talk to a human. Meet back here by midnight.”

“Wait, Bel,” Asher hissed as he caught up to me. “I, uh, I kind of thought we’d all talk to a human together.”

“We can’t,” I said, ignoring the other’s nods and my own little thrill at him admitting he wanted me there—even if he did lump the others in too. “If we all show up in one place, it’ll be far too suspicious.”

Not to mention it’d ruin my half-formed plans. “We must each go alone. Avoid any crowds, only talk to a human if they’re on their own, and make sure you have an escape route if it goes poorly. Understand?”

“Who put you in charge?” Miriam muttered, but she didn’t seem to expect an answer, and I didn’t bother to give one. It felt good to lead for once.

[ END OF EXCERPT ]

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Happy reading!
❤️ Bethany