They ran, Nahri dragging Ali through the dark palace, her only thought to put as much distance as possible between the two of them and whatever it was that Dara had become. Her ancestors’ magic pulsed through her blood, offering ready assistance in their flight: stairs rising with their strides and narrow passageways bricking up behind them, removing their trail. Another time, Nahri might have marveled at such things.
But Nahri wasn’t certain she’d ever marvel at anything in Daevabad again.
At her side, Ali stumbled. “I need to stop,” he gasped, leaning heavily against her. Blood was dripping from his broken nose. “There.” He pointed down the corridor toward an unassuming wooden door.
Her dagger at the ready, Nahri shoved the door open, and they tumbled into a small sunken courtyard of mirrored fountains and jewel-bright lemon trees. She slammed the door behind them and sank down to catch her breath.
And then it all caught up with her. Nahri squeezed her eyes shut, but she could still see him. His haunted green eyes above her, the swirl of smoky magic and the defiant set of his features right before she brought the ceiling down on him.
Dara.
No, not Dara. Nahri could not think of the Afshin she’d known and the fiery-visaged monster who’d struck down Muntadhir and arrived in Daevabad on a wave of death as the same man.
And Muntadhir … Nahri pressed a fist to her mouth, choking back a sob.
You can’t do this right now. Her husband had put himself before the deadly Afshin to buy his wife and brother time. Nahri would honor that sacrifice. She had to.
At her side, Ali had fallen to his knees. A glimmer of copper caught her eye.
“Oh my God, Ali, give me that.” Nahri lunged for the relic in his ear, pulling it out and flinging it at the trees. She shuddered, horrified to realize he’d had it in the entire time they were running. Had they come upon the vapor …
Pull yourself together. Neither she nor Ali could afford another mistake.
She laid her hands lightly on his brow and left shoulder. “I’m going to heal you.”
Ali didn’t respond. He wasn’t even looking at her. His expression was dazed and vacant, his entire body shivering.
Nahri shut her eyes. Her magic felt closer than usual, and the veil between them, the odd cloak of salty darkness that the marid possession had drawn over him, immediately dropped. Underneath, he was a mess: his nose shattered, a shoulder sprained and badly punctured, and two ribs broken between the innumerable gashes and bites. Nahri commanded them to heal, and Ali caught his breath, grunting as his nose cracked into place. Her power, the healing ability that had denied her twice today, swept out bright and alive.
She let go of him, fighting a wave of exhaustion. “Nice to know I can still do that.”
Ali finally stirred. “Thank you,” he whispered. He turned to her, tears glistening in his lashes. “My brother …”
Nahri violently shook her head. “No. Ali, we don’t have time for this … we don’t have time for this,” she repeated when he turned away to bury his face in his hands. “Daevabad is under attack. Your people are under attack. You need to pull yourself together and fight.” She touched his cheek, turning him back to face her. “Please,” she begged. “I can’t do this alone.”
He took one shuddering breath, and then another, briefly squeezing his eyes shut. When he opened them again, there was a touch more resolve in their depths. “Tell me what you know.”
“Kaveh unleashed some sort of poisonous vapor similar to what nearly killed you at the feast. It’s spreading fast and targets Geziri relics.” She lowered her voice. “It’s what killed your father.”
Ali flinched. “And it’s spreading?”
“Fast. We came upon at least three dozen dead so far.”
At that, Ali jerked upright. “Zaynab—”
“She’s fine,” Nahri assured him. “She and Aqisa both. They left to warn the Geziri Quarter and alert the Citadel.”
“The Citadel …” Ali leaned against the wall. “Nahri, the Citadel is gone.”
“What do you mean, it’s gone?”
“We were attacked first. The lake … it rose up like some sort of beast—like what you said happened to you at the Gozan when you first came to Daevabad. It pulled down the Citadel’s tower and ripped through the complex. The majority of the Guard is dead.” He shivered, silvery drops of liquid beading on his brow. “I woke up in the lake.”
“The lake?” Nahri repeated. “Do you think the marid are involved?”
“I think the marid are gone. Their … presence … feels absent,” he clarified, tapping his head. “And the lake’s curse was broken. Not that it mattered. The few of us who didn’t drown were set upon by ghouls and archers. We were taking the beach when that ifrit grabbed me, but there were fewer than two dozen of us left.” Grief swept his face, tears again brimming in his eyes. “The ifrit killed Lubayd.”
Nahri swayed. Two dozen survivors. There had to have been hundreds—thousands of soldiers in the Citadel. Scores of Geziris in the palace. All dead in a matter of moments.
It’s true what they say about you, isn’t it? About Qui-zi? About the war? Nahri closed her eyes.
But it wasn’t heartbreak coursing through her right now. It was determination. Clearly, the man Nahri knew as Dara was gone—if he’d ever truly existed in the first place. This Dara was the Afshin first, the Scourge. He’d brought a war to Daevabad’s doorstep and declared himself a weapon of the Nahids.
But he had no idea what kind of Nahid he’d just set himself against.
Nahri rose to her feet. “We need to retrieve Suleiman’s seal,” she declared. “It’s our only hope of defeating them.” She glanced down at Ali, reaching out her hand. “Are you with me?”
Ali took a deep breath but then clasped her hand and climbed to his feet. “Until the end.”
“Good. We’ll need to find your father’s body first,” she said, trying not to think about what they’d need to do after that. “Last I saw him, we were on the platform where you took me stargazing.”
“We’re not far, then. We can take a shortcut through the library.” He ran a hand anxiously over his beard and then recoiled, dropping his hand to pull the emerald ring off his thumb.
“Ali, wait!” But Ali had yanked it off and tossed it away before Nahri could finish her protest. She braced herself as it clattered on the tiled floor, half expecting Ali to turn to ash. But he stayed solid, staring at her in surprise.
“What?” he asked.
“What?” She threw up her hands and then crossed to retrieve the ring. “What if part of the slave curse is still lingering between you and this, you idiot?”
“It’s not,” Ali insisted. “They’d barely gotten it on my thumb when you arrived. I think they were arguing about it.”
Arguing about it? God, she almost hoped so. She never could have imagined Dara giving another djinn to the ifrit that way. Not even his worst enemy.
“I’d still like to keep it close,” she said, slipping the ring into her pocket. She pulled free the zulfiqar she’d awkwardly laced into her belt. “You should probably take this.”
Ali looked ill at the sight of the zulfiqar that had struck down his brother. “I’ll fight with another weapon.”
She leaned forward and pressed it into his hands. “You’ll fight with this. It’s what you’re best at.” She met his eyes. “Don’t let Muntadhir’s death be for nothing, Ali.”
Ali’s hand closed over the hilt, and then they were moving, him leading her through a door that opened into a long, narrow passageway. It sloped downward, the air growing colder as they descended. Floating balls of conjured fire hissed overhead, setting Nahri’s nerves on edge.
Neither of them spoke, but they hadn’t been walking long when a boom sounded and the ground shook slightly.
Ali held out a hand to stop her, putting a finger to his lips. There was the unmistakable noise of a heavy object dragging along the dusty stone somewhere behind them.
Nahri tensed. That wasn’t all she heard: from beyond the library’s silver door at the end of the passageway, a shriek sounded.
“Maybe we should find another way,” she whispered, her mouth dry as dust.
The door burst open.
“Zahhak!” A Sahrayn scholar ran at them, his eyes wild, his robes flaming. “Zahhak!”
Nahri broke apart from Ali, each of them flattening against the wall as the scholar raced by. The heat from his burning robes seared her face. Nahri turned back, opening her mouth to shout for him to stop …
Just in time to see a smoky snake, its body nearly as wide as the corridor, come around the bend. The scholar didn’t even have a chance to scream. The snake swallowed him whole, revealing glittering obsidian fangs longer than Nahri’s arm.
“Run!” she shrieked, pushing Ali toward the library.
They ran full bore, diving through the door. Ali slammed it shut behind them, shoving himself against the metal as the massive snake crashed against it, rattling the frame.
“Tell your palace to do something about this!” he shouted.
Nahri quickly pressed her hands against the door’s decorative metal studs, hard enough to break her skin. She had yet to succeed in completely mastering the palace’s magic; it seemed to have its own mind, responding to her emotions with its own distinctive quirk.
“Protect me,” she pleaded in Divasti.
Nothing happened.
“Nahri!” Ali cried, his feet slipping as the snake rammed the door again.
“PROTECT ME!” she shouted in Arabic, adding a few choice curses that Yaqub would have lectured her for using. “I command you, damn it!”
Her hands began smoking, and then the silver melted, spooling out to meld the door into the wall. She turned and fell back against the frame, breathing hard.
Her eyes shot open. A creature the size of the Sphinx was careening through the air toward them.
This had to be a nightmare. Not even in enchanted Daevabad did smoky beasts capable of devouring a village fly free. The creature soared on four billowing wings, crimson fire flashing beneath glimmering scales. It had a fanged mouth large enough to swallow a horse and six limbs ending in sharp claws. As Nahri watched, it shrieked, sounding lost as it dived for a fleeing scholar. It caught him in its claws and then flung him hard into the opposite wall as a surge of flames burst from its mouth.
Nahri felt the blood drain from her face. “Is that a dragon?”
At her side, Ali gulped. “It … it looks like a zahhak actually.” His panicked eyes met hers. “They are not usually that big.”
“Oh,” Nahri choked out. The zahhak shrieked again and set the lecture alcove next to them ablaze, and they both jumped.
Ali raised a shaking finger at a row of doors on the other side of the massive library. “There’s a book lift just beyond there. It goes to the pavilion we want.”
Nahri eyed the distance. They were several stories up and the floor of the library was in complete chaos, a maze of broken, burning furniture and fleeing djinn, the zahhak diving at everything that moved.
“That thing will kill us—no,” she said, seizing Ali’s wrist when he went to lunge in the direction of a young scribe the zahhak had just snatched up. “You run out there now and you’re no good to anyone.”
A crack drew her attention. The serpent was still bashing the barricaded door and the metal was starting to strain.
“Did anything in your Citadel training prepare you for fighting giant monsters of smoke and flame?”
Ali was staring intently at the eastern wall. “Not at the Citadel …” He looked pensive. “What you did to the ceiling back there … do you think you can do it to that wall?”
“You want me to bring down the library wall?” Nahri repeated.
“The canal runs behind it. I’m hoping I can use the water to extinguish that thing,” he explained as the zahhak veered a little too close.
“Water? How do you expect to control …” She trailed off, remembering the way he’d summoned his zulfiqar while fighting Dara and registering the guilt in his expression now. “The marid did nothing to you, right? Isn’t that what you told me?”
He groaned. “Can we fight about this later?”
Nahri gave the shelves on the eastern wall a forlorn last look. “If we live, you’re taking the blame for destroying all those books.” She took a deep breath, trying to focus and pull upon the palace’s magic like she had in the corridor. It had been a surge of rage and grief over Muntadhir that had finally pushed her abilities.
Across the room, a knot of scholars hiding behind an overturned table on the second floor caught her eye. Entirely innocent men and women, many of whom had fetched her books and patiently instructed her in Daevabad’s history. This was her home—this palace now filled with the dead she hadn’t been able to protect—and she’d be damned if she was going to let that zahhak take another life under her roof.
Her skin prickled, magic simmering through her blood, tickling at her mind. She inhaled sharply, almost tasting the old stone. She could feel the canal, the cold water pressing hard against the thick wall.
Ali shivered as though she’d touched him. “Is that you?” A glance revealed his eyes had once again been swept by the oily dark film.
She nodded, examining the wall in her mind. The process felt suddenly familiar, much like the way she’d examine an arthritic spine for weak spots, and there were plenty here; the library had been built over two millennia ago. Roots snaked through crumbling bits of brick, rivulets of canal water stretching like grasping tentacles.
She pulled, encouraging the weak spots to crumble. She felt the wall shiver, the water churning on the other side. “Help me,” she demanded, grabbing Ali’s hand. The touch of his skin, cold and unusually clammy, sent an icy jolt down her spine that made the entire wall shake. She could see the water fighting its way in and worked to loosen the stone further.
A small leak sprang first. And then, in the time it took for her heart to skip, an entire section of the wall came down in a burst of broken bricks and surging water.
Nahri’s eyes shot open. Had she not been concerned for both her life and the priceless manuscripts being swiftly destroyed, the sudden appearance of a stories-high waterfall in the middle of the library would have been an extraordinary sight. It crashed to the floor, rushing in a turbulent whirlpool of broken furniture and cresting whitecaps.
The spray caught the zahhak as it flew too close. It screeched, aiming a torrent of flames at the thundering water. Ali gasped, lurching back as if the fire caused him physical pain.
His movement attracted the zahhak’s attention. The creature abruptly spun in the air and flew straight for them.
“Move!” Nahri grabbed Ali, pulling him out of the way just as the zahhak vaporized the shelves they’d taken shelter behind. “Jump!”
They jumped. The water was cold and swiftly rising, and Nahri was still struggling to her feet, hampered by her wet gown, when Ali shoved her head back under the water just as another fiery plume shot at them.
She emerged, gasping for breath and ducking a broken wooden beam that rushed by. “Damn it, Ali, you made me break my library. Do something!”
He rose to face the zahhak, moving with a deadly grace, drops of water clinging to his skin like honey. He raised his hands, fixing his gaze on the zahhak as it came flying back at them. With a thunderous crack, the waterfall spun out like a whip across the air and cut the zahhak in two.
Their relief was short-lived. Ali swayed, sagging against her. “The door,” he managed as she sent another burst of her own healing magic through him. “The door!”
They hurried on, wading as fast as they could through the makeshift river. Nahri lunged for the handle as the door came into reach.
A spray of arrows thudded into it, narrowly missing her hand.
“Suleiman’s eye!” She whirled around. A half-dozen riders on smoky steeds were coming through the library’s main entrance, silver bows drawn and ready in their hands.
“Just go!” Ali wrenched open the door and shoved her through. He slammed it shut behind them, piling various pieces of furniture to block it as Nahri caught her breath.
They’d entered a small, perfectly circular chamber. It resembled a well, the ceiling disappearing into the distant gloom. A rickety metal staircase climbed in a spiral around two softly glowing columns of amber light. Baskets overflowing with books and scrolls drifted in their midst, one column taking the baskets up while the other brought them down.
Ali nodded to the steps. “That goes straight to the pavilion.” He unsheathed his zulfiqar. “Ready?”
Nahri took a deep breath, and they started climbing. Her heart raced with every shuddering groan of the staircase.
After what seemed like hours but was surely only minutes, they drew to a stop in front of a small wooden portal. “I hear voices,” she whispered. “It sounds like Divasti.”
He pressed an ear to the door. “At least three men,” he agreed softly. “And trust me when I say the Afshin trained his soldiers well.”
Nahri quickly considered their options. “Take me captive.”
Ali looked at her as though she’d gone mad. “Excuse me?”
She shoved herself into his arms, bringing his khanjar to her throat. “Just play along,” she hissed. “Give them a rant about fire worshippers and sin. Your reputation precedes you with my people.” She kicked open the door before he could protest, dragging him with her. “Help me!” she cried pitifully in Divasti.
The Daeva warriors whirled around to stare at them. There were three, dressed in the same dark uniforms and armed to the teeth. They certainly looked like men Dara might have trained; one had an arrow aimed at them in a second flat.
Thankfully, Kaveh was nowhere to be seen. “Drop your weapons!” she begged, writhing against Ali’s arm. “He’ll kill me!”
Ali reacted a bit more smoothly than Nahri found comfortable, pressing the blade closer to her throat with a snarl. “Do it, fire worshippers!” he commanded. “Now! Or I’ll gut your precious Banu Nahida!”
The closest Daeva gasped. “Banu Nahri?” he asked, his black eyes going wide. “Is that really you?”
“Yes!” she cried. “Now put down your weapons!”
They glanced at each other uncertainly until the archer swiftly lowered his bow. “Do it,” he ordered. “That’s Banu Manizheh’s daughter.”
The other two instantly complied.
“Where is my father?” Ali demanded. “What have you done with him?”
“Nothing, sand fly,” one of the Daevas spat. “Why don’t you let go of the girl and face us like a man? We threw the bodies of your father’s men in the lake, but you still have time to join your Abba.”
He stepped aside to reveal the dead king, and Nahri recoiled in horror. Ghassan’s body had been abused, bloody boot marks staining his clothes, his jewelry and royal turban stripped away. His glassy, copper-hued gray eyes stared vacantly at the night sky, his face coated in blood.
Ali abruptly released her, and a look of rage unlike any she’d seen from him before, twisted his face.
He’d thrown himself at the Daeva soldiers before she could think to react, his zulfiqar bursting into flames. They moved fast, but they could not quite match the speed of the grief-stricken prince. With a cry he cut through the man who had spoken, yanking the blade free and swinging back to behead the archer who had recognized her.
And with that, Nahri was catapulted back into the night of the boat. The night she’d seen firsthand what Dara was truly capable of, the way he’d torn through the men surrounding him like some instrument of death, impervious to the blood and screams and brutal violence that surrounded him.
She stared at Ali in horror. She couldn’t see anything of the bookish prince, the man who was still sometimes too shy to meet her eyes, in the raging warrior before her.
Is this how it starts? Was this how Dara had been undone, his soul stripped away as he watched the slaughter of his family and his tribe, his mind and body forged into a weapon by fury and despair? Is this how he’d been made into a monster who would visit that same violence on a new generation?
And yet Nahri still found herself lunging forward when the last Daeva raised his sword, preparing to strike. Nahri grabbed the man’s arm, throwing him off balance as he spun to look at her, his expression one of utter betrayal.
Ali plunged the zulfiqar into his back.
Nahri stepped away, her hand going to her mouth. Her ears were ringing, bile choking her.
“Nahri!” Ali took her face in his hands, his own now wet with the blood of her tribesmen. “Nahri, look at me! Are you hurt?”
It seemed a ludicrous question. Nahri was beyond hurt. Her city was collapsing and the people dearest to her were dying or turning into creatures she couldn’t recognize. And suddenly she wanted more than anything to flee. To race down the steps and out of the palace. To get on a boat, a horse, any damn thing that would take her back to the moment in her life before she decided to sing a zar song in Divasti.
The seal. Retrieve the seal and then you can sort all this out. She jerked back from his hands, pulling free one of her daggers as she moved automatically toward Ghassan’s body.
Ali followed her, kneeling at his father’s side. “I should have been here,” he whispered. Tears came to his eyes, and something of the friend she knew returned to his face. “This is all my fault. He was too busy trying to deal with my rebellion to anticipate any of this.”
Nahri said nothing. She had no assurances to offer right now. Instead, she cut a slit in Ghassan’s bloody dishdasha, straight across the chest.
Ali moved to stop her. “What are you doing?”
“We have to burn his heart,” she said, her voice unsteady. “The ring re-forms from the ash.”
Ali dropped his hand as if he’d been burned. “What?”
She was able to summon up enough pity to soften her voice. “I’ll do it. Between the two of us, I’ve a bit more experience carving into people’s bodies.”
He looked sick but didn’t argue. “Thank you.” He shifted away, taking his father’s head in his lap, closing his eyes as he began to softly pray.
Nahri let the quiet Arabic words wash over her—reminding her of Cairo, as always. She worked quickly, cutting through the flesh and muscle of Ghassan’s chest. There wasn’t as much blood as she would have expected—perhaps since he’d already lost so much.
Not that it mattered. Nahri had been bathed in blood today. She expected its stain would never completely fade.
Even so, it was grim work, and Ali looked ready to pass out by the time she finally plunged her hand into Ghassan’s chest. Her fingers closed around his still heart, and Nahri would be lying if she said she didn’t feel a small twinge of dark pleasure. The tyrant who had toyed with lives as though they were pawns on a game board. The one who had forced her to marry his son because her own mother had denied him. The one who had threatened her brother’s life—more than once.
Unbidden, a burst of heat bloomed in her palm, the dance of a conjured flame. Nahri quickly pulled her hand free, but his heart was already ash.
And clenched in her hand was something hard and hot. Nahri uncurled her fingers, her own heart racing.
The seal ring of the Prophet Suleiman—the ring whose power had reshaped their world and set their people at war—glistened in her bloody palm.
Ali gasped. “My God. Is that really it?”
Nahri let out a shaky breath. “Considering the circumstances …” She stared at the ring. As far as jewels went, Nahri wouldn’t have necessarily been impressed by this one. There were no fancy gems or worked gold; instead a single battered black pearl crowned a thick dull gold band. The pearl had been carefully carved, something she didn’t think possible, the eight-pointed star of Suleiman’s seal gleaming from its surface. Etched around it were minuscule characters she couldn’t read.
She trembled and she’d swear the ring vibrated in return, pulsing in time with her heart.
She wanted nothing to do with it. She shoved it at Ali. “Take it.”
He leapt back. “Absolutely not. That belongs to you.”
“But you … you’re next in line for the throne!”
“And you’re Anahid’s descendant!” Ali pushed her fingers back over it, though she saw the flash of longing and regret in his eyes. “Suleiman gave it to your family, not mine.”
A denial so strong it neared revulsion ran through her. “I can’t,” she whispered. “I’m not Anahid, Ali, I’m a con artist from Cairo!” And Cairo … Muntadhir’s warning flashed through her mind. He said the ring couldn’t leave Daevabad. “I have no business touching something that belonged to a prophet.”
“Yes, you do.” His expression turned fervent. “I believe in you.”
“Have you met you?” she burst out. “Your belief is not a mark in my favor! I don’t want this,” she rushed on, and suddenly it was damnably clear. “If I take that ring, I’ll be trapped here. I’ll never see my home again!”
Ali looked incredulous. “This is your home!”
The door crashed open. Nahri had been so focused on her warring heart that she hadn’t heard anyone approaching. Ali yanked his father’s robe over the ghastly hole in his chest, and Nahri stumbled back, slipping Suleiman’s ring into her pocket just before a group of Daeva warriors burst in.
They abruptly stopped, one holding up a fist as he took in the sight before him: the dead king and the very bloody young people at his feet. “He’s up here!” he shouted in Divasti, directing his words to the staircase. “Along with a couple of djinn!”
A couple of djinn … no, Nahri supposed right now there was little to mark her out. She rose to her feet, her legs wobbly beneath her. “I am no djinn,” she declared as another pair of warriors emerged. “I’m Banu Nahri e-Nahid, and you’ll put your weapons down right now.”
The man didn’t get to respond. Her name was no sooner uttered than a slight figure pushed through the door. It was a Daeva woman, her eyes locked on Nahri. Dressed in a dark uniform, she made for an arresting sight, a silky black chador wrapping her head underneath a silver helmet. A steel sword, its edge bloodied, was tucked into her wide black belt.
She pulled the cloth away from her face, and Nahri nearly crumpled to the ground. It was a face that could be her own in another few decades.
“Nahri …,” the woman whispered, black eyes seeming to drink her in. She brought her fingers together. “Oh, child, it has been too long since I’ve looked upon your face.”
THE DAEVA WOMAN CAME CLOSER, HER GAZE NOT leaving Nahri’s. Nahri’s heart was racing, her head spinning …
The smell of burning papyrus and cries in Arabic. Soft arms pulling her into a tight embrace and water closing over her face. Memories that didn’t make sense. Nahri found herself fighting for air, tears that she didn’t understand brimming in her eyes.
She raised her dagger. “Don’t come any closer!”
She immediately had four bows trained on her. She stepped back, stumbling against the stone parapet, and Ali grabbed her wrist before she lost her balance. The parapet was low here, the knee-high stone wall all that kept her from plunging into the lake.
“Stop!” The woman’s curt command snapped like a whip, belying the softness in her voice when she’d spoken to Nahri. “Stand down. You’re frightening her.” She glared at the warriors and then jerked her head toward the door. “Leave us.”
“But, my lady, the Afshin won’t be happy to learn—”
“It is I you take orders from, not Darayavahoush.”
Nahri did not know men could move so fast. They were gone in an instant, clattering down the steps.
Ali pressed closer. “Nahri, who is that?” he whispered.
“I … I don’t know,” she managed. She also didn’t know why every Cairo-honed instinct in her was screaming at her to get away.
The woman watched the warriors leave with the sharpness of a general. She shut the door behind them and then pricked her finger on the sharp metal screen.
It surged together, instantly locking.
Nahri gasped. “You’re a Nahid.”
“I am,” the woman replied. A soft, sad smile came to her lips. “You’re beautiful,” she added, seeming to take Nahri in again. “Marid curse be damned—you still have his eyes. I wondered if you would.” Grief filled her face. “Do you … do you remember me?”
Nahri wasn’t sure what she remembered. “I don’t think so. I don’t know.” She knew she shouldn’t be confessing anything to the woman who claimed to be in command of the forces attacking the palace, but the fact that she claimed to be a Nahid wasn’t doing much for Nahri’s wits. “Who are you?”
The same broken smile, the look of someone who’d been through far too much. “My name is Manizheh.”
The name, both unbelievable and obvious, punched through her. Manizheh.
Ali gasped. “Manizheh?” he repeated. “Your mother?”
“Yes,” Manizheh said in Djinnistani. She only now seemed to realize Ali was there, her gaze leaving Nahri’s for the first time. Her dark eyes scanned him, lingering on his zulfiqar. She blinked, looking taken aback. “Is this Hatset’s son?” she asked Nahri, returning to Divasti. “The prince they call Alizayd?” She frowned. “You were to be in the infirmary with Nisreen. What are you doing with him?”
Nahri opened her mouth, still reeling. Manizheh. My mother. It seemed even more impossible than Dara rising from the dead.
She fought for words. “He … he’s my friend.” It was a ridiculous answer and yet it was the first that came to her. It also seemed wiser than admitting they were here stealing Suleiman’s seal. “What are you doing here?” she demanded, feeling a little of her sharpness return. “I was told you were dead. Kaveh told me he found your murdered body decades ago!”
Manizheh’s expression turned solemn. “A necessary deception and one I pray you can eventually forgive. You were taken from me as a child by the marid, and I feared I’d lost you forever. When I learned you’d fallen into Ghassan’s hands … the things I’m sure he has subjected you to … I am so sorry, Nahri.” She stepped forward as if she wanted to take Nahri’s hand and then stopped as Nahri cringed. “But I promise you—you’re safe now.”
Safe. The word echoed inside her head. My mother. My brother. Dara. In the space of a few hours, Nahri had gone from being the only living Nahid to having a whole family of relatives to form a council again, with a damned Afshin to boot.
Her eyes were wet, the constant loneliness she carried in her chest expanding to the point where it was difficult to breathe. This couldn’t be possible.
But the brutal evidence was before her. Who else but a Nahid would be capable of creating the poison dealing death to the Geziri tribe? Who else but the Banu Nahida rumored to be the most powerful in centuries would be able to bring Dara back from the dead, to make him obey completely?
Suleiman’s seal ring burned in her pocket. It was the only ace Nahri had. Because no matter what this woman said, Nahri did not feel like they were on the same side. She had meant what she said to Muntadhir: she wasn’t on the side of anyone who’d arranged for the deaths of so many innocents.
Manizheh raised her hands. “I mean you no harm,” she said carefully. She switched to Djinnistani, her voice cooling as she addressed Ali. “Put down your weapons. Surrender yourself to my men, and you won’t be hurt.”
That had the predicted response, Ali’s eyes flashing as he raised his zulfiqar. “I won’t surrender to the person who orchestrated the slaughter of my people.”
“Then you will die,” Manizheh said simply. “You have lost, al Qahtani. Do what you can to save those Geziris left.” Her voice turned persuasive. “You have a sister in the palace, and a mother I once knew in Ta Ntry, do you not? Believe me when I say I would rather not inform another woman of her children’s deaths.”
Ali scoffed. “You mean to make us into pawns.” He raised his chin defiantly. “I would rather die.”
Nahri had absolutely no doubt that was true; she also had no doubt most of the surviving Geziris would feel similarly. Which meant they needed to get off this damned wall and away from Manizheh.
Take the ring, you fool. She could thrust her hand into her pocket and claim Suleiman’s seal for herself in the same time it would take Manizheh to lunge for it.
And then? What if she couldn’t call upon it correctly? Nahri was guessing the prophetically granted abilities of a magical ring likely had a learning curve. She and Ali would still be stuck on this pavilion with a vengeful Banu Nahida and a swarm of warriors below.
She stepped between Ali and Manizheh. “And that’s what you’re after?” she demanded. “If we surrendered … could you contain the poison?”
Manizheh spread her hands, stepping closer. “But of course.” Her gaze returned to Nahri. “But I’m not after your surrender, daughter. Why would I be?” She took another step toward them, but stilled as she spotted Ghassan’s body.
Her entire expression changed as her eyes swept his face. “Suleiman’s mark is gone from his brow.”
Nahri glanced down. Manizheh spoke the truth; the black tattoo that had once marked Ghassan’s face had vanished.
“Did you take the seal?” Manizheh demanded. Her voice had shifted, barely concealed desire evident beneath her words. “Where is it?” When neither one of them responded, she pursed her mouth in a thin line, looking like she was growing exasperated with their defiance. The expression was almost maternal. “Please do not make me ask again.”
“You’re not getting it,” Ali burst out. “I don’t care who you claim to be. You’re a monster. You brought ghouls and ifrit into our city; you have the blood of thousands on your—”
Manizheh snapped her fingers.
There was an audible pop, and then Ali cried out, collapsing as he clutched his left knee.
“Ali!” Nahri spun, reaching for him.
“If you try to heal him, I’ll break his neck next.” The cold threat sliced the air, and Nahri instantly dropped her hand, startled. “Forgive me,” Manizheh said, seeming sincere. “This is not at all how I wanted our first meeting to go, but I will not have you interfere. I have planned too many decades for this.” She glanced again at Ali. “Do not make me torture you before her eyes. The ring. Now.”
“He doesn’t have it!” Nahri shoved her hand in her pocket, her fingers running over the two rings there before plucking one out. She thrust her fist over the parapet, letting the ring dangle precariously from her finger. “And unless you’re willing to spend the next century searching the lake for this, I’d leave him alone.”
Manizheh drew back, studying Nahri. “You won’t do it.”
Nahri raised a brow. “You don’t know me.”
“But I do.” Manizheh’s tone was imploring. “Nahri, you’re my daughter … do you imagine I’ve not sought stories of you from every Daevabadi I’ve met? Dara himself can hardly stop speaking of you. Your bravery, your cleverness … In truth a more devoted man I’ve rarely met. A dangerous thing in our world,” she added delicately. “To make plain your affections. A truth Ghassan was always too willing to make cruelly clear to me.”
Nahri didn’t know what to say. Manizheh’s words about Dara felt like salt on a wound, and she could feel the other woman reading her, evaluating her every flinch. Ali was still clutching his knee, breathing heavily against the pain.
Her mother came nearer. “Ghassan’s done that to you as well, hasn’t he? It’s the only way he had to control women like us. I know you, Nahri. I know what it’s like to have ambitions, to be the cleverest in the room—and have those ambitions crushed. To have men who are less than you bully and threaten you into a place you know you don’t belong. I’ve heard of the extraordinary strides you’ve made in just a few years. The things I could teach you; you’d be a goddess. You’d never have to lower your head again.”
Their gazes met, and Nahri could not deny the surge of longing in her heart. She thought of the countless times she’d bowed to Ghassan while he sat on her ancestors’ throne. The way Muntadhir had dismissed her dreams for the hospital and Kaveh had condescended to her in the Temple.
The smoky binds Dara had dared conjure to hold her. The magic that had raged through her blood in response.
Nahri took a deep breath. This is my home.
“Why don’t we compromise?” she suggested. “You want the Nahids in charge again? Fine. I’m a Nahid. I’ll take Suleiman’s seal. Surely, I can negotiate a peace more effectively than a woman who abandoned her tribe and returned only to plot the slaughter of another.”
Manizheh stiffened. “No,” she said. “You can’t.”
“Why not?” Nahri asked archly. “This is about what’s best for the Daevas, isn’t it?”
“You misunderstand me, daughter,” Manizheh replied, and Nahri inwardly swore because try as she could to read it, there was nothing in this woman’s face that gave her thoughts away. “You cannot take the seal yourself because you are not—entirely—daeva. You’re shafit, Nahri. You have human blood.”
Nahri stared at her in silence. Because with those words—those utterly confident words—Nahri knew the woman before her was not lying about being her mother. It was a secret only Ghassan had known, the truth he said Suleiman’s seal made clear.
“What do you mean, she’s shafit?” Ali gasped from the ground.
Nahri didn’t respond; she didn’t know what to say.
“It’s all right,” Manizheh assured her gently as she approached them. “It’s not a thing anyone else need ever know. But you cannot take that seal. Possessing it will kill you. You simply aren’t strong enough.”
Nahri jerked back. “I’m strong enough to use Nahid magic.”
“But enough to wield Suleiman’s seal?” Manizheh pressed. “To be the bearer of the object that reshaped our world?” She shook her head. “It will tear you apart, my daughter.”
Nahri fell silent. She’s lying. She has to be. But by the Most High, if Manizheh hadn’t struck doubt into her soul.
“Nahri.” It was Ali. “Nahri, look at me.” She did, feeling dazed. This was all too much. “She’s lying. Suleiman himself had human blood.”
“Suleiman was a prophet,” Manizheh cut in, echoing with brutal effectiveness the insecurity that Nahri herself had expressed. “And no one asked you to involve yourself in a Nahid matter, djinn. I have spent longer than you’ve been alive reading every text that ever mentioned that seal ring. And all of them are clear on this point.”
“And that’s rather convenient, I’d say,” he shot back. He stared up at Nahri, beseeching. “Don’t listen to her. Take the—ah!” He yelped in pain, his hands wrenching from his shattered knee.
Manizheh snapped her fingers again, and Ali’s hands jerked to the khanjar at his waist.
“What-what are you doing to me?” he cried as his fingers cracked around the dagger’s hilt. Beneath his tattered sleeves, the muscles in his wrists were seizing, the khanjar coming free in shuddering, spasming movements.
My God … Manizheh was doing that? Without even touching him? Instinctively Nahri sought to pull on the magic of the palace.
She didn’t so much as make a stone shiver before her connection was abruptly severed. The loss was like a blow, a coldness seeping over her.
“Don’t, child,” Manizheh warned. “I have far more experience than you.” She brought her hands together. “I do not wish this. But if you don’t hand the ring over right now, I will kill him.”
The khanjar was nearing Ali’s throat. He wriggled against it, a line of blood appearing below his jaw. His eyes were bright with pain, sweat running down his face.
Nahri was frozen in horror. She could feel Manizheh’s magic wrapping around her, teasing at the muscles in her own hand. Nahri was not capable of anything like that—she didn’t know how to fight someone capable of anything like that.
But she knew damned well she couldn’t give her Suleiman’s seal.
Manizheh spoke again. “They have already lost. We have won—you have won. Nahri, hand over the ring. No one else will ever learn you’re shafit. Take your place as my daughter, with your brother at your side. Greet the new generation as one of the rightful rulers of this city. With a man who loves you.”
Nahri wracked her mind. She didn’t know who to believe. But if Manizheh was right, if Nahri took the seal and it killed her, Ali would swiftly follow. And then there’d be no one to stop the woman who’d just slaughtered thousands from gaining control of the most powerful object in their world.
Nahri couldn’t risk that. She also knew that, shafit or not, she had her own skills when it came to dealing with people. In going after Nahri the way she had, Manizheh had made clear what she believed her daughter’s weaknesses to be.
Nahri could work with that. She took a shaky breath. “You promise you’ll let the prince live?” she whispered, her fingers trembling on the ring. “And that no one will ever know I’m a shafit?”
“On our family’s honor. I swear.”
Nahri bit her lip. “Not even Dara?”
Manizheh’s face softened slightly, with both sadness and a little relief. “I’ll do my best, child. I have no desire to cause you further pain. Either of you,” she added, looking as genuinely moved as Nahri had yet seen her. “Indeed, nothing would please me more than to see you find some happiness together.”
Nahri let the words slide past her. That would never happen. “Then take it,” she said, tossing the ring at her mother’s feet.
Manizheh was as good as her word. The ring had no sooner left Nahri’s hand than the khanjar dropped from Ali’s throat. Nahri fell to his side as he gasped for breath.
“Why did you do that?” he wheezed.
“Because she was going to kill you.” As Manizheh bent to retrieve the ring, Nahri swiftly moved as though to embrace him, taking the opportunity to shove his weapons back in his belt. “Are you sure the curse is off the lake?” she whispered in his ear.
Ali stiffened in her arms. “I … yes?”
She pulled him to his feet, keeping her hand on his arm. “Then forgive me, my friend.”
Manizheh was straightening up with the ring in her hand. She frowned, studying the emerald. “This is the seal ring?”
“Of course it is,” Nahri said airily, pulling the second ring—Suleiman’s ring—from her pocket. “Who would lie to their mother?” She shoved the ring onto one of Ali’s fingers.
Ali tried to jerk free, but Nahri was fast. Her heart gave a single lurch of regret, and then—just as Manizheh glanced up—she felt the ancient band vanish beneath her fingers.
Shocked betrayal blossomed in her mother’s eyes—ah, so Manizheh had emotions after all. But Nahri was not waiting for a response. She grabbed Ali’s hand and jumped off the wall.
She heard Manizheh cry her name, but it was too late. The cold night air lashed at her face as they fell, the dark water looking a lot farther away than she remembered. She tried to steel herself, all too aware that she was in for a great deal of pain and some temporarily broken bones.
Indeed, she hit hard, the crash of the water against her body a cold, painful thrust like a thousand sharp knives. Her arms flew out, tangling in Ali’s as she submerged.
She shuddered with pain, with shock, as the memory Manizheh had triggered came briefly again. The smell of burning papyrus, the screams of a young girl.
The sight of a pair of warm brown eyes just before muddy water closed over her head.
Nahri never broke the surface. Darkness whirled around her, the smell of silt and the sensation of being seized.
There was a single whisper of magic and then everything went black.