Once, twice, and then he howled, smashing it again and again with a cry that didn’t sound like anything she knew, as if it were being ripped from him. Finally he dropped the rock, falling back against the parapet and gasping for breath.
But he wasn’t done. Dara clawed at the contraption on his wrist, ripping the wires out and wrenching the plates from his skin, blood and fire pouring from him in equal measure. When it was free, he flung it away with another wail, the shackle sailing toward the lake.
Trembling, Nahri forced herself to her feet. Blood was still falling from the sky, and when she looked down upon the palace’s heart, she saw Manizheh’s beasts and ghouls running even more rampant.
This wasn’t over yet.
But then Dara let out a frightened hush of breath that stilled everything inside her.
His face was going paler by the moment, ash beading on his brow. The smoldering lines that snaked over his skin like lightning were snuffing out, turning a dull iron gray.
The next minute, she was at his side. Dara swayed, seeming to have a hard time focusing on her face. Golden blood gushed from his wrist, with more blossoming from an unseen wound on his thigh.
“Nahri,” Dara murmured, “I think we have done this dying thing before.”
Her heart broke all over again at his words. Nahri wanted to slap him and strangle him. She wanted to clutch him and save him.
Instead, Nahri swallowed hard. “What did Manizheh do to you? Dara—” She turned his cheek to face her when he started to drift off. “Talk to me,” she begged. “Tell me how to fix you.”
He blinked. “Iron,” he whispered. “They poisoned me. I was dying, and she … and she …” Tears filled his eyes. “I killed my Nahid.”
“You saved us. You did the right thing. The poison—what do you mean? How did they administer it?” She laid her other hand on his wrist, pulling for her healing magic.
It didn’t come. Nahri tried again, and then yelped, an icy jolt of pain rushing through her hand.
The seal ring was freezing.
Frosty patterns traced over the black pearl, winding around the gold band. And not just the ring, but the very ground. The air. Her breath steamed as snow began to fall, and Dara’s green eyes brightened in fevered wonder.
“Nahri.” It was Jamshid. He’d laid his mother on the ground and closed her eyes. A storm of hurt raged in his expression, but the alarm with which he spoke Nahri’s name cut through all that. “You made a deal with them.”
“I don’t care!” Nahri reached for Dara again.
This time, the punch of air was enough to knock her back.
You promised. Angry screeches in her head, icy pinpricks stabbing her skin. You promised.
The peris.
“Manizheh is already dead!” she yelled.
In response, a viciously cold wind spun across the pavilion, hurling bricks and debris. Hail the size of her fist plummeted through the sky, ricocheting around her.
Because it had never been about Manizheh, not truly. Or Daevabad. The peris themselves had confessed to not caring about the “squabbles” of her people. It was about Dara. The abomination, they’d called him. A daeva whose power threatened theirs.
They wanted him dead.
Dara touched the snow gathering on his face. “Peris,” he said just as knowingly.
Jamshid pulled free the icy dagger from Manizheh’s belt. “They aided us on the condition … on the condition we got rid of you,” he confessed.
“Oh.” A kind of weary despair, like he’d known all along how this was going to end, like he’d stopped even hoping, swept Dara’s ashen face. “I suppose I should not have said all those things about burning down the wind.”
Jamshid swallowed loudly. “I can do it. I’ll be quick.”
Dara shivered. “No, Baga Nahid, I cannot ask that of you. I—”
“Will you two shut up? I can’t hear myself think!” Nahri snatched the peris’ dagger out of Jamshid’s hands and shot to her feet.
The wind tore at her clothes, whipping her face with stinging needles of ice. The peris’ words from the mountain—the promise they’d made her swear—swirled in her head. As she had flown over Daevabad, this had all seemed so simple, so just. Dara was a killer. He needed to be brought to justice.
This was not justice, though. It was murder. And it wouldn’t end at Dara. What was to keep the peris from “correcting” again? From sticking their beaks in her people’s business and selecting yet another djinn to toy with?
She glanced out at the battling city. Nahri could hear death cries, the screams of those who were suffering for no good reason and the moans of ghouls and monsters. She tried to reach for the ring. With their powers restored, she knew the people below might have a fighting chance.
But nothing happened. Nahri felt no closer to granting anyone else magic. The peris had spoken of an act to bond the ring to herself, snobbishly declaring she was no Anahid.
In the distance, a tornado spun out of the sky, tearing across the terraced fields. Nahri stared at her broken home, made the plaything once again of overly powerful beings, and then she ran a finger down the icy edge of the peri’s dagger.
It was so very sharp, immediately drawing a drop of blood. She stared at the dark crimson blood, at the color that unfairly defined so much.
Her lesser blood.
“Nahri …” Concern filled Jamshid’s voice. “Nahri, what are you doing?”
Nahri looked again at her city. She gripped the dagger. “Calling a mark.”
She plunged the icy blade toward her chest.
THERE WAS A SHRIEK ON THE AIR, A DOZEN BIRDLIKE voices crying out, and then taloned hands tugging at her. No! they shouted. Do not! Cold, invisible fingers grabbed hers mid-thrust.
Nahri’s own quick hand still whipped forward—years of snatching purses keeping her reflexes sharp—dragging the peri with her as she shoved its blade into her heart.
The pain drove her to her knees, and then blood was gushing over her hands, pouring from her mouth. Suleiman’s ring scorched on her hand, her magic going wild as her body frantically tried to save itself, tissue trying to close.
But there was no healing with the dagger in her heart.
Jamshid cried out, rushing toward her. “Nahri!”
With her dying strength, she called to the palace once more. The floor bucked up, tossing him away.
The sky changed, the clouds growing so thick it might have been a pit of gray she’d been tossed down into. The stone floor turned slick with snow and ice, wind lashing her face. Spots blossomed across Nahri’s blurred vision, her mind fuzzy. But they were there—wings in dazzling jeweled colors. Angry, chirpy shouts, a great debate.
Save yourself!
A liar, she has deceived us!
This was not foreseen; this is not permissible!
The pearl peri appeared before her, her hand still pinned to Nahri’s on the dagger. “Heal yourself!” she ordered. “We cannot have your blood on our hands!”
Oh, Creator, this hurt. It hurt so much. Nahri knew enough about hearts to be able to keep a bit of blood pumping through her body, but she had only moments before she died.
So she gave herself enough strength to spit in the peri’s face, more blood now than saliva, vividly crimson. “You will have my blood on your hands,” she choked out. “My human and daeva blood. My lesser life. You will be in debt to my people for a thousand years.”
The screeches started up again. God, these creatures were dramatic hypocrites. No wonder Khayzur had chosen to spend time in Dara’s company.
She has ruined us! She has destroyed the balance!
“No.” It was the sapphire peri, appearing at the edge of Nahri’s darkening vision. A cloak of pale blue fog, like a dawn sky, draped their head. “She is waiting for our offer.”
Nahri briefly closed her eyes, grimacing in pain. A half dozen sarcastic responses hovered on her tongue, but not even she was acerbic enough to waste the moments of life she had l
eft spitting them out. “You will remove any debt I have to you—any debt my people have to you. I want our magic restored as it once was, and the veil set over my city to conceal it from humans …” She gasped for breath. The pain was fading, a numbness settling over her limbs. “And Daevabad … the marid, the island …”
Her speech left her. Blackness was closing in, the snowy sky her last sight. But Nahri could still feel the cool wind dancing over her cheeks, the even colder breath when the peri leaned in.
“We agree,” the peri whispered. “But know this, daughter of Anahid … you have made an enemy today.”
The peri drove the dagger deeper.
Nahri arched in pain, her body convulsing. But then the icy blade hit an object with enough force to stop it. Her mind already shut to the world outside, Nahri’s abilities had turned inward, acute to every change in her body—the increasingly sluggish pulses in her brain, her last trickle of fresh blood circulating in her veins …
The bright, hot metal that had vanished from her finger to materialize in her heart and collide with the dagger.
Suleiman’s ring.
The dagger shattered.
The icy fragments instantly melted, all but one that fused with the ring in a flash of sharp pain. The peris’ cavern vanished, replaced by the sight of a crying Jamshid bent over her, his hands pressed against her bleeding chest.
“Nahri!” he begged, packing the wound. “Creator, no! Please!”
Jamshid. Nahri tried to say her brother’s name, but she could barely breathe past the crushing weight in her chest. She inhaled, power rippling out from around her.
“Nahri?” Jamshid looked up from her wound, and then his eyes went very, very wide. “Nahri?”
She didn’t respond. Nahri couldn’t, overwhelmed by the world around her. It was like seeing with a new set of eyes, magic lapping from her in waves. Everyone and everything had opened up, a chaos of competing heartbeats and breaking bones. The palace itself, alive in a different sort of way, the stones heavy with age and accumulated power—the blood and work and sacrifice of centuries of Nahids. And not just Nahids. Nahri could sense the marids’ presence as well—spikes of ancient strength in the scales of Tiamat laid upon the Temple garden, water magic alive and binding in the foundations and streams, in the bodies of tiny aquatic creatures crushed beneath the great building’s feet. She could feel the pain of the lake, the island’s dry presence an open wound.
She all but floated to her feet, glancing around and trying to get her bearings straight.
Dara. If the rest of the djinn and Daevas were bright lights, Dara was a blazing torch, the connection Nahri felt between Suleiman’s ring and the others completely absent. And yet she could see the iron killing him, the tiny particles spread through his blood like a deadly constellation.
She could see how easy it would be to remove them. To drag him back to life once more.
Dara stared at her, his eyes wide and wondrous even as he faded. “Creator be praised,” he said. “Are you … are we …?”
“Dead? No, not quite.” Nahri knelt, taking his hand. It was light to the touch, ash flaking from his skin.
“I think I see it,” he whispered. “The cedar grove. My sister …”
Grief crashed through Nahri. “Do you want to go to her? I can heal you, but I won’t bring you back against your will. Not again.”
Tears brimmed in Dara’s eyes as he stared into a realm Nahri couldn’t yet see. “I do not know.” He blinked, returning his tormented gaze to her. “I do not deserve to choose.”
Nahri was barely checking her own tears. She touched his face. “Your Banu Nahida is telling you to choose. You’re free, Dara. Free to go. Free to stay,” she said, her voice breaking.
Dara’s eyes briefly slid past her shoulder again. Then he closed them, looking anguished as he took a deep breath. When he opened them again, he was focused only on Nahri.
“Save me,” he begged her. “Please.”
She’d been fully prepared to murder him barely an hour earlier, but now Nahri had to fight not to sob with relief. “Oh, thank God.” She immediately positioned her hands, one over his heart and the other on his bleeding thigh.
Then she pulled, dragging the iron backward through his blood. It was something she’d never have been capable of before—something that would have killed another man.
But neither she nor Dara were normal, and so the iron came rushing out in a metallic swarm, thick and vile on the air. Nahri snapped her fingers, and it flew off and disintegrated.
His flesh healed beneath her hand in a surge of fire. His body shifted to his other form, claws and fangs erupting from his fingers and lips. The emerald vanished in his eyes, replaced by a violent swirl of flame. The magic pouring off him was enough to knock her back.
Good. Nahri might need to use it. She staggered to her feet, power nearly ripping her apart. It was only growing stronger, the sensation of magic and heat aching to burst from her skin and stream from her fingers.
Because it wasn’t hers alone. Nahri gripped the parapet, gazing out at her city. At her world, broken and bleeding.
Then she healed it, giving everything she could, everything she had to the people Suleiman had marked so long ago. To Jamshid, her fellow Nahid, gasping as his healing magic shot back through his own injuries. To Fiza and the other shafit, who felt no different to Nahri than the so-called purebloods battling at their side. To the Daevas in her quarter and the Sahrayn on the distant edge of the world. She dismantled the conjured beasts and the cruel blood magic controlling the ghouls as easily as blowing out a candle.
My home. Nahri beckoned, drawing back conjured buildings and tracing the patterns of orchards that had burned and fields struck with rot. A new warmth bubbled up in her soul as she tended to the gardens and forests, the sweet scent of orange blossoms filling her nose.
But as her hands moved and danced, Nahri saw something else.
The curse Sobek had cast upon her appearance clung to her skin in a shining dew. It would be simple to throw it off, to remove from herself the guise that had granted her a life in the human world.
I am who I am because of that human world. It wasn’t the Banu Nahida who’d driven the peris to their knees, it was the con artist of Cairo, and Nahri wouldn’t cast her away. Instead, she turned her attention outward, drawing the veil back over the mountains and hiding their kingdom from the outer world like a mother tucking in a child.
But Nahri wasn’t done. She’d dealt harshly with the peris; however, she knew now the marid deserved a fairer deal.
She reached out with her magic and spotted them immediately. There were only two people in Daevabad that Nahri hadn’t needed to restore power to, the two men whose paths had tangled with hers even as they each went their own way, claimed by opposing factions and families, by the elements themselves. Water and fire and earth. Held in check. Balanced.
Anahid had raised a city from the water. Now it was time for her descendant to raise it even farther. Nahri reached for the city’s bedrock and shifted it as though resetting a spine. The ground roiled beneath her feet.
She gritted her teeth, magic tearing through her. “Dara,” she managed. “The city, the buildings … keep them safe.”
Dara didn’t hesitate. Rejuvenated, he soared off on the next wind.
Nahri reached for the embrace of the mountains, pulling them close as if dragging a boat on a line. A very large boat. She sensed the water of the lake rush up to attack …
… and then it stopped, peace settling over it.
Ali. She knew the familiar touch of his magic and could not help but feel a similar calm as the water began to recede and change, a wild river twisting around the city to bar it off from the lake as the mountains closed between them. Nahri drove the mountains higher, the new boundary between their peoples, their realms. The lake vanished from sight, boats getting caught in new green hills and rocky promontories as the water departed and the mists faded.
The sun k
issed her face, and Nahri swayed, weary beyond measure. “Is the lake gone?” she asked, stars blossoming across her vision once again.
Jamshid let out a choked sound of disbelief. “I … yes. You put a mountain in front of it.”
“Oh, good,” Nahri slurred. “It worked.” And then she fell into her brother’s arms as darkness—denied multiple times now—finally stole her.
PART FOUR
45
DARA
It was remarkable that for a man of fourteen centuries, Dara was acutely certain he’d never been more uncomfortable in his life.
The hospital room was packed, the air stuffy and loaded with more tension than a room had any business containing. It was a group that should not have been together, but for the unconscious woman at its center holding them fast—and perhaps more importantly, keeping them peaceful. Because Dara suspected the only thing preventing him and the Qahtani prince from coming to blows was the fear of Nahri’s wrath.
Alizayd chose that moment to look his way, his newly yellow-dappled eyes eerie and unreadable. Dara glared back, his arms crossed over his chest. He was not leaving. Not even if Razu, Kartir, and Jamshid had all tried taking him aside and suggesting a visit to the Nahid hospital at which he’d gone on a murder spree, in a section of the city he’d pulverized, was perhaps not the most diplomatic gesture to make.
Dara wasn’t budging until Nahri opened her eyes.
Aqisa must have noticed the two men glaring at each other. She leaned closer to Alizayd, whispering in Geziriyya while caressing the handle of the knife at her waist.
But it was Subha who spoke. “I am very close to throwing you all out,” the shafit doctor warned, handing a cold compress to Jamshid. “Don’t think I won’t.” She threw a darker look Dara’s way. “And don’t think I’m impressed by your bluster. I still have my pistol—I know how to make you run.”
Dara bristled, Aqisa laughed, and Zaynab coughed loudly, seeming to try and cover her companion’s troublemaking.
“Aqisa, why don’t we go check on my brother?” the princess suggested, grabbing the other woman’s arm.
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