Agony, the kind of pain Dara hadn’t felt since being dragged back to life, was the first thing he was aware of. Crushed limbs and broken teeth, torn flesh and a throbbing in his head so strong he nearly wanted to succumb back to the blackness.
He twitched his fingers, feeling the rough stone and splintered wood beneath them. His eyes blearily winked open, but Dara saw nothing but darkness. He grunted, trying to free the arm twisted painfully underneath him.
He couldn’t move. He was pressed in, crushed from all sides.
Nahri. She brought the ceiling down on me. She actually brought the ceiling down on me. He’d been shocked by the sight of her looking like some sort of wrathful goddess, smoke twisting around her hands, her black curls blowing wildly in the scorching wind she’d summoned. She’d looked like a Nahid icon he might have bowed to in the Temple.
But the hurt in her eyes, the betrayal … that was the woman from Cairo.
You are going to be risking the woman you actually serve if you do not get out of here. The thought of Manizheh and his mission was enough to get Dara moving again, pain be damned. The fate of Daevabad hung in the balance. He inhaled, catching the smoky scent of blood as he struggled to free himself.
His blood. Creator, no. Dara closed his eyes, reaching out, but there was nothing.
He’d lost his hold on the conjured blood beasts. Suleiman’s eye, there’d been half a dozen. Karkadann and zahhak and rukh. They were mindless, destructive things when they escaped his control, a lesson he’d learned early in his training with the ifrit. And now they were wild at the side of his warriors and Manizheh.
Swearing under his breath, Dara tried to wrench free but only succeeded in shaking the debris nearest him and making his body ache worse.
Embrace what you are, you fool. The brief moments he’d spent in his other form had been an instant balm. Dara needed that power.
The fire sparked in his blood, flushing through his skin. His senses sharpened, claws and fangs sprouting. He touched the crumbling bricks above his head, and they exploded into dust.
He climbed out far more slowly than he liked, his body stiff and the pain still present. It was a frightening reminder: Dara was strong but not invincible. He finally hauled himself out of the ruin, coughing on dust and trying to catch his breath.
An arrow tore through his arm. Dara yelped in surprise, hissing as his hand flew to the wound.
The arrow jutting out of it was one of his own.
A second one flitted past his face, and Dara jerked back just before it went through his eye. He flung himself behind a ruined piece of masonry, peering through the rubble.
Muntadhir al Qahtani was shooting at him with his own bow.
Dara spat in outrage. How dare that lecherous, dishonorable wretch—
An arrow flew at his hiding spot.
Dara ducked, cursing out loud. Had he not struck Muntadhir with the zulfiqar? And since when did some sand fly know how to handle a Daeva bow that way?
Gritting his teeth, Dara broke the fletch off the arrow in his arm and then yanked it out, biting back a grunt of pain. His fiery skin closed over the wound, leaving a black scar like a line of charcoal. That it healed was a small relief, but Dara tipped his arrows in iron, and he’d just had a very necessary reminder of the limits of his body. He didn’t want to learn what would happen if Muntadhir managed to catch him somewhere more vulnerable than his arm.
Why don’t you try shooting in the dark, djinn? Dara pressed his hands to the pile of debris, urging the wood to burst into flame. It burned dark, the oily paints and ancient masonry sending up a choking wall of thick, black smoke that Dara directed toward the emir.
He waited until he heard coughing and then shot to his feet, staying low as he charged. Muntadhir sent another arrow spinning in his direction, but Dara ducked and was wrenching the bow from the other man’s hands before he could shoot a second. He used it to backhand the emir across the face, sending him to the floor.
Dara was on him the next second. He banished the smoke. The front of Muntadhir’s dishdasha was ripped open and his stomach bloodied, the dark green lines and cracking ash around the wound grisly confirmation that Dara had indeed struck him with the zulfiqar.
Nahri and Alizayd were nowhere to be seen. “Where are they?” Dara demanded. “Your brother and the Banu Nahida?”
Muntadhir spat in his face. “Fuck you, Scourge.”
Dara put a knee against Muntadhir’s wound, and the emir gasped. “WHERE ARE THEY?”
Tears were rolling down the other man’s face, but Dara had to give him his due—he held his tongue even as his eyes blazed in pain.
Dara thought fast. Nahri and Alizayd were clever. Where would they go?
“Suleiman’s seal,” he whispered. Dara immediately drew away his knee, remembering his mission. “Is that where they went? Where is it?”
“In hell,” Muntadhir choked out. “Why don’t you go look for it? You must be a frequent visitor.”
It took all of Dara’s self-control not to throttle the other man. He needed Muntadhir’s help. And Qahtani or not, Muntadhir had stayed behind with a painful, fatal wound so his little brother and wife could escape.
He leaned closer to Muntadhir. “Your people have lost; I will be catching up with your brother either way. Tell me how to retrieve Suleiman’s seal and Alizayd dies quickly. Painlessly. On my honor.”
Muntadhir laughed. “You have no honor. You brought an ifrit into our city. There are Geziri children who should be lighting fireworks now lying dead in the palace because of you.”
Dara recoiled, trying to reach for the justifications Manizheh had offered. “And how many Daeva children died when your people invaded? Far more than the Geziri children who will be lost tonight.”
Muntadhir stared at him in shock. “Do you hear yourself? What sort of man plots that calculus?” Hate filled his gray eyes. “God, I hope it’s her in the end. I hope Nahri puts a goddamned knife through whatever passes for your heart.”
Dara looked away. Nahri had certainly seemed capable of that, glaring at him from across the corridor with flames whipping around her hands as if he were a monster.
She was wrong. She doesn’t understand. This mission had to be right, it had to succeed. Everything Dara had done for his people, from Qui-zi through tonight’s attack, could not be for nothing.
He refocused on Muntadhir. “I know you know what happened to my little sister when Daevabad fell. You took pains to remind me when last we met. Give your little brother an easier death.”
“I don’t believe you,” Muntadhir whispered, but Dara’s words seemed to have an effect, worry creasing the emir’s face. “You hate him. You’ll hurt him.”
“I’ll swear on Nahri’s life,” Dara replied swiftly. “Tell me how to retrieve Suleiman’s seal, and I’ll grant Alizayd mercy.”
Muntadhir didn’t speak, his eyes searching Dara’s face. “All right,” he finally said. “You’ll have to get the ring first.” His breathing was becoming more ragged. “The palace library. Go to the catacombs beneath. There’s a—” He gave a shuddering cough. “A staircase you’ll need to take.”
“And then?”
“Follow it. It’s quite deep; it will go for a long time. You should feel it getting warmer.” Muntadhir grimaced, curling in slightly on his stomach.
“And after?” Dara prompted, growing impatient and a little panicked. He wasn’t going to lose time going after Nahri and Alizayd only to have Muntadhir die before giving him an answer.
Muntadhir frowned, looking slightly confused. “Is that not the way back to hell? I assumed you wanted to go home.”
Dara’s hands were at Muntadhir’s throat the next moment. The emir’s eyes shone feverishly, locking on Dara’s in a last moment of defiance.
Of triumph.
Dara instantly let go. “You … you are trying to trick me into killing you.”
Muntadhir coughed again, blood flecking his lips. “Astonishing. You must have been quite the brilliant tactician in your—ah!” he screamed as Dara kneed his wound again.
But Dara’s heart was racing, his emotions a mess. He didn’t have time to waste torturing a dying man for information he was loath to give up.
He drew back his knee, looking again at the smoking green-black edges of Muntadhir’s wound. This was not the fatal strike that had felled Mardoniye so quickly. It was the zulfiqar’s poison that would take the emir, not the cut itself.
How fortunate then, that Muntadhir had been delivered to a man who knew intimately how long such a death could take. Dara had nursed more friends than he cared to recall through their last moments, easing their seizing limbs and listening to their suffering last gasps as the poison slowly consumed them.
He reached out and snatched Muntadhir’s turban, shaking the cloth loose.
“What the hell are you doing?” Muntadhir panted as Dara began binding the wound. “God, can you not even let me die in peace?”
“You’re not dying yet.” Dara hauled the emir to his feet, ignoring how he shook with pain. “You might not tell me how to retrieve Suleiman’s seal. But there is another, I suspect, who can make you tell her anything.”