“Are you sure this leads back to the outer wall?” Nahri whispered as she and Muntadhir crept through the twisting servants’ passage. Save for a bit of fire she’d conjured, it was entirely dark.
“I’ve told you twice,” Muntadhir replied snippily. “Which of us spent our entire life here again?”
“Which of us used this to sneak into random bedrooms?” Nahri muttered back, ignoring the annoyed look he threw her. “What, am I wrong?”
He rolled his eyes. “This passage ends soon, but we can take the next corridor all the way to the east end and access the outer steps there.”
Nahri nodded. “So, Suleiman’s seal …,” she started, trying for a light tone. “How do we retrieve it? Do we have to carve it from your father’s face or—”
Muntadhir made a choking sound. “My God, Nahri, really?”
“You were the one who got all queasy when you first brought it up!”
He shook his head. “Are you going to stick a dagger in my back and run off the moment I tell you?”
“If you keep saying things like that, very possibly.” Nahri sighed. “Can we try being on the same side for one night?”
“Fine,” Muntadhir grumbled. “I suppose someone else should know, all things considered.” He took a deep breath. “It has nothing to do with his cheek; the mark shows up there once the ring is taken.”
“The ring? Suleiman’s seal is on a ring?” Nahri thought back to the jewels she’d seen adorning Ghassan over the past five years. Quietly assessing the valuables another person was wearing was a bit of her specialty. “Is it the ruby he wears on his thumb?” she guessed.
Muntadhir’s expression was grim. “It’s not on his hand,” he replied. “It’s in his heart. We have to cut it out and burn it. The ring re-forms from the ash.”
Nahri stopped dead in her tracks. “We have to do what?”
“Please don’t make me repeat it.” Muntadhir looked ill. “The ring re-forms, you put it on your hand, and that’s that. My father said it can take a few days to recover from the magic. And then you’re trapped in Daevabad forever,” he added darkly. “Now do you see why I was in no hurry to be king?”
“What do you mean, you’re trapped in Daevabad?” Nahri asked, her mind racing.
“I didn’t ask.” When she stared at him in disbelief, he threw up his hands. “Nahri, I don’t think I was older than eight when he told me all of this. I was more preoccupied with trying not to be sick in terror than with interrogating him about the exact strings attached to wearing a ring I was supposed to pull from his bloody corpse. What he told me was that the ring can’t leave the city. So unless someone is willing to leave their heart behind …”
“How poetic,” she muttered as they continued moving down the dim passageway.
He stopped outside the grimy, barely visible contours of a door. “We’re here.”
Nahri hovered at his shoulder as he gently eased it open. They stepped into the darkness.
Her face fell. A Geziri woman in a steward’s robe lay dead on the stone floor, blood running from her ears.
“The poison has been through here,” she said softly. This wasn’t the first body they’d found. Though they’d been able to warn a handful of Geziri nobles, they were finding far more dead than alive: soldiers with their zulfiqars still sheathed, a scholar with scrolls scattered around her, and—most heartbreaking—a pair of young boys in feast clothing, clutching unlit sparklers in their hands, tendrils of the hazy copper vapor still clinging to their small feet.
Muntadhir closed the woman’s eyes. “I’m going to give Kaveh to the karkadann,” he whispered savagely. “I swear on my father’s name.”
Nahri shivered; she couldn’t argue with that. “Let’s keep going.”
They’d no sooner stood up than Nahri heard footsteps. At least three people were approaching from around the bend. With no time to duck back inside the passage, they swiftly pressed into a darkened niche in the wall. Shadows rushed over them, a protective response from the palace, just as several figures came around the bend.
Her heart dropped. Daevas, all of them. Young and unfamiliar, they were clad in uniforms of mottled gray and black. They were also quite well-armed, looking more than capable of taking on the emir and his wife. It was a conclusion Muntadhir must have come to as well, for he made no move to confront them and stayed quiet until they had vanished.
Finally, he cleared his throat. “I think your tribe is conducting a coup.”
Nahri swallowed. “It does seem that way,” she said shakily.
Muntadhir looked down at her. “Still on my side?”
Her gaze fell on the murdered woman. “I’m on the side that doesn’t unleash things like that.”
They kept walking, following the deserted corridor. Nahri’s heart was racing, and she didn’t dare speak, especially since it was now clear there were enemies creeping through the palace. An occasional scream or abruptly cut-off warning broke the air, carried through the echoing halls of the labyrinthine royal complex.
A strange buzz swept her skin, and Nahri shivered. It was an oddly familiar feeling, but she couldn’t place it. She moved her hand to one of her daggers as they continued. She could hear the beat of her heart in her head, a steady pounding. Like the tap-tap-tap of a warning.
Muntadhir threw out his arm. There was a muffled cry in the distance.
“Get off me!”
He gasped. “Nahri, that sounds like—”
But she was already running. There was the sound of arguing, another voice, but she barely heard it. She threw up her arm as they rounded the corner; the sudden light was blinding after so much time stealing through the dark.
But the light wasn’t coming from torches or conjured flames. It was coming from two ifrit who had Ali pinned to the ground.
Nahri jerked to a halt, stifling a scream. Ali was a bloody wreck, lying too still beneath a large ifrit inexplicably dressed in the same uniform as the Daeva soldiers and holding a knife to the prince’s throat. A skinnier ifrit in a bronze chest plate was clutching Ali’s hand, holding the prince’s wrist at what must have been a painful angle.
Both ifrit turned to stare at the royal couple. Nahri gasped when she spotted the green gem gleaming on one of Ali’s fingers.
A ring. An emerald slave ring.
The ifrit dressed in Daeva clothing opened his mouth, his eyes flashing brighter. “Nah—”
She didn’t let him finish. Fury flooding through her, she dragged her dagger hard across her palm, breaking the skin. Then she charged forward, throwing herself on him without hesitation.
She and the ifrit tumbled backward together, Nahri landing on his chest. She raised the bloody dagger, trying to plunge it into his throat, but he easily knocked it out of her hand, his own knife still in one of his.
She scrambled for it, but he was stronger. He let the knife go and it clattered to the floor as he grabbed her wrists and then rolled her over, pinning her beneath him.
Nahri screamed. The ifrit’s fiery eyes met hers, and she caught her breath, startled by what looked like grief swirling in the depths of their alien color.
And then the scorching yellow vanished, his eyes turning the shade of green that haunted her dreams. Black curls sprouted from his smoky scalp, and the fiery light was snuffed from his face, leaving his skin a luminescent light brown. An ebony tattoo marked his temple: an arrow crossed with the wing of a shedu.
Dara stared back at her, his face inches from hers. The scent of cedar and burnt citrus tickled her nose, and then he spoke one word, one word that left his lips like a prayer.
“Nahri.”
NAHRI HOWLED, SOMETHING RAW AND SAVAGE RIPPING through her. “Stop!” she screamed, writhing underneath him. “Get rid of that face or I’ll kill you!”
He held her hands tight as she attempted to claw at his throat. “Nahri, stop!” the ifrit cried. “It’s me, I swear!”
His voice shattered her. God, it even sounded like him. But that was impossible. Impossible. Nahri had watched Dara die. She’d raked her hands through his ashes.
This was a trick. An ifrit trick. Her skin crawling at his touch, Nahri tried to twist free again, spotting her bloody dagger near her feet.
“Zaydi!” Muntadhir flew to his brother’s side only to be promptly thrown across the corridor by the second ifrit. He smashed hard into one of the delicate fountains, water and glass bursting around him.
Thinking fast and desperate to get the ifrit off her, Nahri brought her knee up hard where his legs met his body.
He gasped, his still-green eyes lighting with pain and surprise, and jerked back enough for her to scramble free. A glance revealed Muntadhir back on his feet, running for Ali as the younger prince slowly rolled over, blood streaming down his face. The second ifrit reached for the war ax hanging across his back …
“STOP!” The corridor trembled, echoing with the first ifrit’s command. “Vizaresh, stand down,” he snapped as he climbed to his feet. The second ifrit instantly did so, stepping back from the Qahtani brothers with a splash, the water from the broken fountain puddling at his feet.
The ifrit wearing Dara’s guise turned back to Nahri, his gaze imploring. “Nahri,” he choked out, her name leaving his mouth like it caused him pain. He took a step toward her, reaching out like he wanted to take her hand.
“Don’t touch me!” The sound of his voice was physically painful; it was everything she could do not to cover her ears. “I don’t know who you are, but I’ll blood-poison you if you don’t change your appearance.”
The ifrit fell to his knees before her, bringing his hands up in the Daeva blessing. “Nahri, it’s me. I swear on my parents’ ashes. I found you in a Cairo cemetery. I told you my name in the ruins of Hierapolis.” The same hollow grief swirled into his eyes. “You kissed me in the caves above the Gozan.” His voice broke. “Twice.”
Her heart twisted, fierce denial running through her. “It’s not.” A sob tore from her chest. “You’re dead. You’re dead. I watched it happen!”
He swallowed, sadness rippling across his face as his haunted eyes drank her in. “I was. But no one seems content to leave me in that state.”
Nahri swayed on her feet, jerking back when he moved to help her. Too many pieces were coming together in her head. Kaveh’s careful treachery. The well-armed Daeva soldiers.
Dara. The dashing warrior who’d taken her hand in Cairo and spirited her away to a land of legend. Her broken Afshin, driven to destruction by the crushing politics of the city he couldn’t save.
He spoke again. “I’m sorry, Nahri.” That he seemingly registered whatever little change was in her expression—for Nahri didn’t easily give up her mask—was its own proof.
“What are you?” she whispered, unable to conceal the horror in her voice. “Are you … are you one of them now?” She jerked her head toward the ifrit, almost afraid to hear the answer.
“No!” Dara closed the distance between them and took her hands, his fingers hot against hers. Nahri did not have it in her to pull away; it looked like it was costing Dara everything not to grab her and run away. “Creator, no! I … I am a daeva,” he said faintly, as though the words made him ill. “But as our people once were. I am free of Suleiman’s curse.”
The answer made no sense. None of this made any sense. Nahri felt as though she’d stumbled upon a mirage, a mad hallucination.
Dara drew her closer, reaching for her cheek. “I am sorry. I wanted to tell you, to come straight away—” His voice turned desperate. “I could not cross the threshold. I could not come back for you.” He rushed on, his words growing more incomprehensible. “But it is going to be okay, I promise you. She is going to set it all right. Our people will be free and—”
“Fuck,” Muntadhir swore. “It is you. Only you would come back from the dead a second time and immediately start another damn war.”
Dara’s eyes flashed, and ice stole into Nahri’s heart. “You’re working with Kaveh,” she whispered. “Does that mean …” Her stomach twisted. “The poison killing the Geziris …” No, please no. “Did you know?”
He dropped his gaze, looking sick with regret. “You were not supposed to see it. You were supposed to be with Nisreen. Safe. Protected.” He said the words frantically, as though trying to convince himself as much as her.
Nahri jerked free of his grip. “Nisreen is dead.” She stared at Dara, aching to see a glimmer of the laughing warrior who’d teased her on a flying carpet and sighed as she kissed him in the quiet dark of a secluded cave. “The things they say about you are true, aren’t they?” she asked, her voice thick with rising dread. “About Qui-zi? About the war?”
She wasn’t sure what she expected: denial, shame, perhaps overly righteous anger. But the flicker of resentment that flared in his eyes—that took her by surprise.
“Of course they are true,” he said tonelessly. He touched the mark on his brow, a grim salute. “I am the weapon the Nahids made me. Nothing more, nothing less, and apparently for all of eternity.”
With his usual poor timing, Ali chose that moment to speak. “Oh, yes,” he croaked from where he sat on the floor, leaning heavily against his brother. His gray eyes were wild with grief, standing out starkly against his blood-covered face. “You poor, pitiful murdering—”
Muntadhir clapped a hand over Ali’s mouth, but it was too late.
Dara whirled on the Qahtani princes. “What did you say to me, you filthy little hypocrite?”
“Nothing,” Muntadhir said quickly, clearly struggling to keep his brother’s mouth shut.
But Ali had drawn their attention … though it wasn’t his words that held it.
The water from the broken fountains was rushing for him. It streamed across the floor, surging into his bloody clothes, tiny rivulets dancing over his hands. Ali seemed to suck for breath, dipping his head as the air abruptly cooled.
Then he jerked his head back up, the movement unnaturally sharp. An oily black mingled with the gray in his eyes.
There was a moment of shocked silence. “I did try to tell you,” the ifrit spoke up, “that there was something a little different about him.”
Dara was staring at Ali with naked hate. “It is nothing I cannot handle.” He stepped away from Nahri. “Vizaresh, take the emir and the Banu Nahida away. I will join you in a moment.” His voice softened. “They do not need to see this.”
Nahri sprang up to stop him. “No!”
She didn’t even get close. Dara snapped his fingers, and a burst of smoke wrapped her body, tight as rope.
“Dara!” Nahri tripped, falling hard to her knees, stunned that he’d used magic against her. “Dara, stop, I beg you! I order you!” she tried, pulling desperately for her own power. There was a rumble from the ancient bricks. “Afshin!”
Fire licked down Dara’s arms. “I am truly sorry, Nahri,” Dara said, and she could hear it, the heartbreak in his voice. “But yours are not the orders I follow anymore.” He started after Ali.
Ali staggered to his feet, shoving Muntadhir behind him. The oily color flashed across his eyes again, and then his zulfiqar flew to his hand, a burst of water behind it like he’d cut through a wave. Flames licked down the copper blade.
Vizaresh hadn’t moved to follow Dara’s command. He looked between them now, his wary yellow eyes taking in the two warriors.
Then he shook his head. “No, Darayavahoush. You fight this one on your own. I will not quarrel with one the marid have chosen to bless so.” Without another word, he vanished in a crack of thunder.
Ali rushed forward. As Nahri cried out, he raised his zulfiqar …
And then he fell back, as though he’d smashed into an invisible barrier. He stumbled, looking stunned, but without hesitation, gathered himself and sprang forward again.
This time, the barrier knocked him back completely.
Dara hissed. “Yes, your marid masters couldn’t do that either.” He lunged at the prince, ripping the zulfiqar from Ali’s hands. The flames soaring as if he were a Geziri man himself, Dara swung it up. Nahri screamed again, writhing against the smoky binds as the magic of the palace built in her blood.
Muntadhir hurled himself between Ali and the zulfiqar.
There was the smell of blood and burning flesh. A flash of pain in her husband’s eyes and then a wail from Ali, a sound so raw it didn’t seem real.
Rage ripped through her. And just like that, her magic was there. The smoky binds that had dared to confine her—her, in her own damned palace—abruptly burst apart, and Nahri inhaled, suddenly aware of every brick and stone and mote of dust in the building around her. The walls erected by her ancestors, the floors that had run black with their blood.
The corridor shook, hard enough to send the plaster crumbling from the ceiling. Flames twisted around her fingers, smoke curling past her collar. Her clothes flapping madly in the hot breeze spinning out from her body, she raised her hands.
Dara turned to her. She could both see him and sense him, standing bright and furious on the edge of her magic.
Nahri threw him across the corridor.
He hit the wall hard enough to leave a dent in the stone and crumpled to the floor. A piece of her heart broke at the sight, still traitorously linked to the man who kept finding new ways to shatter it.
And then Dara got back up.
Their gazes met. Dara looked stunned. Betrayed. And yet, still grimly determined, a warrior committed. He touched the golden blood dripping down his face and then threw his hand out, a wave of black smoke wrapping his body. There was a glimmer of scales and flash of teeth as it doubled in size.
In an explosion of plaster and stone, Nahri brought the ceiling down on him.
She collapsed as the dust rose around her, the magic draining.
Ali’s screams brought her back. Pushing aside the grief threatening to tear her open, Nahri staggered to her feet. Muntadhir had fallen to his knees, leaning against his brother. Blood was spreading across his dishdasha.
Nahri ran to him, ripping open the cloth. Tears sprang to her eyes. Had he been attacked with anything but a zulfiqar, Nahri would have breathed a sigh of relief; it was a clean gash stretching across his stomach, and though it was bloody, it wasn’t deep.
But none of that mattered. Because the skin around the wound was already a sick blackish green, the color of some awful storm. And it was spreading, delicate tendrils tracing the lines of veins and nerves.
Muntadhir let out a dismayed sound. “Oh,” he whispered, his hands shaking as he touched the wound. “Suppose that’s ironic.”
“No. No, no, no,” Ali stammered the word as if the whispered denial would undo the awful scene before them. “Why did you do that? Dhiru, why did you do that?”
Muntadhir reached out to touch his brother’s face, the blood from his hands staining Ali’s skin. “I’m sorry, akhi,” he replied weakly. “I couldn’t watch him kill you. Not again.”
Tears ran down Ali’s face. “It’s going to be okay,” he stammered. “N-Nahri will heal you.”
Muntadhir shook his head. “Don’t,” he said, clenching his jaw as she reached for him. “We all know you’ll be wasting time.”
“Would you let me at least try?” she begged, her voice breaking on the word.
Muntadhir bit his lip, looking like he was struggling to hide his own fear. He nodded, a small motion.
Nahri instantly spread her hands, concentrating on the pulse and heat of her husband’s body, and yet she’d no sooner done so than she realized the futility of it. She couldn’t heal his torn flesh and poisoned blood, because she couldn’t sense the wound. His body seemed to end where the darkening flesh began, its edges pushing back at her consciousness as it advanced. It was worse than her struggles with Jamshid, worse even than her desperate fight to save Nisreen. Nahri—who’d just thrown a man across the room and conjured a sandstorm—could do nothing to fight the zulfiqar’s poison.
Muntadhir gently pushed her hands away. “Nahri, stop. You don’t have time for this.”
“We have time,” Ali cut in. “Just try again. Try harder!”
“You don’t have time.” Muntadhir’s voice was firm. “Zaydi, look at me. I need you to listen and not react. Abba is dead. You need to go with Nahri and retrieve Suleiman’s seal. She knows how.”
Ali’s mouth fell open, but before he could speak, there was a rumble from the pile of debris.
Muntadhir paled. “Impossible. You dropped a damned ceiling on him.”
Another rumble seemed to answer, dust and plaster shivering.
Ali reached for his brother. “We need to get you out of here.”
“That’s not happening.” Muntadhir took a steadying breath and then pushed himself into a seated position. He glanced around, his gaze settling on an object glimmering in the dust.
A silver bow.
A hint of vindictiveness flitted across his face. “Nahri, would you hand me that bow and see if you can’t find the quiver?”
Feeling sick, she nonetheless complied. She knew in her heart whose bow this was. “What are you doing?” she asked as he staggered to his feet holding the bow, determination and pain etched across his features.
Muntadhir swayed, pulling free his khanjar. He beckoned Ali closer and then shoved it in his brother’s belt. “Buying you time.” He coughed, then nodded at the khanjar. “Take that and your zulfiqar, akhi. Fight well.”
Ali didn’t move. He suddenly looked very young. “Dhiru, I … I can’t leave you,” he said, his voice trembling, as if this was something he could argue away. “I’m supposed to protect you,” he whispered. “I’m supposed to be your Qaid.”
Muntadhir gave him a sad smile. “I’m pretty sure that means you have to do as I say.” His expression softened. “It’s okay, Zaydi. We’re okay.” He nocked an arrow, something broken in his face even as he winked. “Hell, I think this means I might even make it to your Paradise.”
Tears were running unchecked down Ali’s cheeks. Nahri quietly picked up his zulfiqar and then stepped forward, taking his hand. She met Muntadhir’s eyes, a look of understanding passing between them. “We’ll get Suleiman’s seal,” she promised. “And I’ll find Jamshid. You have my word.”
At that, Muntadhir’s eyes finally grew damp. “Thank you,” he said quietly. “Please tell him …” He took a deep breath, rocking back slightly, obviously struggling to gather himself. When his gaze met hers again, there was a mix of regret and apology there. “Please tell him I loved him. Tell him I’m sorry I didn’t stand up for him sooner.” He wiped his eyes with his sleeve and then drew up, looking away. “Now go. I can count my short reign a success if I manage to convince the two most stubborn people in Daevabad to do something they don’t want to do.”
Nahri nodded, her own vision clouding as she dragged Ali away.
“Dhiru,” he choked out again. “Akhi, please …”
The rubble gave a giant shake and then a horrible, heart-wrenchingly familiar—and very angry—roar.
“Go!” Muntadhir shouted.
They ran.