Ali glanced around his old quarters, dazed. The room looked untouched, books laying haphazardly on the desk where he’d left them five years ago, the clothes he’d rifled through while packing for Am Gezira still strewn across the floor. A crumpled sheet of paper—a letter he’d intended to write Nahri and then abandoned for lack of words—was balled up next to his favorite quill and the nub of candle wax he remembered meaning to replace. Though everything was dusted and freshly swept, it was otherwise clear nothing had changed.
Nothing except Ali. And if Ghassan thought to slip his youngest son back into his old life so easily, he was wrong.
Ali took a deep breath, and as he did, smelled a hint of frankincense and the sour tamarind wine his father preferred. A well-worn cushion sat on the floor where Ali once performed his prayers, and Ali recognized one of his caps laid neatly on its surface. He picked it up, and his father’s particular scent came more strongly. The cap was well worried, with creases marring the linen from where it had been repeatedly folded.
He shivered as he continued into the inner room, his sleeping area still as sparse now as it had been five years ago. It was beginning to feel like he was visiting his own grave. He glanced at the bed. He blinked.
Resting on the neatly folded quilt was his zulfiqar.
Ali was across the room in the next moment, dropping the Afshin’s knife box to the bed. The zulfiqar was indeed Ali’s, the heft and hilt as familiar as his own hand. And if he’d had any doubts, the contracts he’d signed had been resting beneath it.
Marked by a royal scribe nullifying them.
Ali collapsed on the bed as though his knees had been cut out from under him. He scanned the pages, hoping he was wrong, but the evidence was spelled out in clear legal terms before him. The shafit father and daughter had been returned to the Geziri trader.
He shot to his feet. No. Those people had been innocent. They weren’t Tanzeem fighters, they were no threat to anyone. But as he reached for his zulfiqar, his father’s warning came back to him. Ghassan had done this to teach him a lesson. He’d destroyed the lives of two shafit because Ali had dared to interfere.
What would he do if Ali fought?
Ali closed his eyes, nausea rising in his chest as the little girl’s tear-streaked face sprang to his mind. God forgive me. But it wasn’t just her. Sheikh Anas and Rashid, Fatumai and her orphans. The auction block erected from the ruined mosque.
Every person I try to help, he breaks. He breaks us all.
He jerked his hand away from the zulfiqar. His skin was crawling. Ali couldn’t stay here. Not in this carefully preserved room. Not in this deadly city where every wrong move of his got someone else hurt.
Abruptly, he thought of Zaynab. Ali dared not get further entangled with his mother, but surely his sister could help him. She could get him out of this.
Muntadhir’s warning echoed in his ears, and the flicker of hope that had sparked in his chest at the thought of his sister sputtered out. No, Ali could not risk her. He squeezed his eyes shut, fighting despair. Water was pooling in his hands, a thing that hadn’t happened in years.
Breathe. Pull yourself together. He opened his eyes.
His gaze fell on the box.
Ali was across the room in the next breath. He threw open the box, grabbed the dagger, and slipped it into his belt.
To hell with his father’s commands.
HE WAS HALFWAY TO THE INFIRMARY BEFORE HE started to wonder if he wasn’t being a bit rash.
Ali slowed on the path, one of the many that meandered through the heart of the harem garden. It wasn’t as though he was actually planning to visit Nahri, he reasoned. Ali would wait for a servant outside the infirmary and then ask to speak to her assistant, Nisreen. He could give Nisreen the dagger and a message, and if Nahri didn’t want to see him, that was fine. Completely fine. Hell, maybe Muntadhir would find out and murder him for trying to speak to his wife, and then Ali would no longer have to worry about staying in Daevabad through Navasatem.
He took a deep breath of the humid air, rich with the smell of rain-soaked earth and dew-damp flowers, and his chest unknotted slightly. The mingled sounds of the rushing canal and the water dripping off leaves were as soothing as a lullaby. He sighed, taking a short moment to watch a pair of small, sapphire-colored birds dart through the dark trees. If only the rest of Daevabad could be so peaceful.
A surge of cool moisture wove through his fingers. Startled, Ali glanced down to find a ribbon of fog swirling around his waist. As he watched, it curved over his shoulder like the embrace of a long-missed friend. His eyes went wide. This had certainly never happened in Am Gezira. And yet he grinned, enchanted by the sight of the water dancing upon his skin.
His smile vanished as quickly as it had come. He glanced quickly at the greenery around him, but thankfully the path was deserted. The whispers on the boat came back to him, the strange tug of the lake and the speed with which water had beaded from his skin in his room. Ali had not given thought to how much harder it might be to hide his new abilities in misty, water-rich Daevabad.
Then you’d better figure it out. He couldn’t get caught. Not here. The villagers of Bir Nabat might be willing to overlook his occasional strangeness—Ali had saved them, after all—but he couldn’t take the risk with Daevabad’s far more mecurial population. The marid were feared in his world. They were the monsters djinn parents evoked in frightening bedtime stories, the unknowable terror djinn travelers wore amulets to ward against. Growing up, he’d heard a dark tale of a distant Ayaanle relative who’d been thrown in the lake after being unjustly accused of sacrificing a Daeva child to his supposed marid lord.
Suppressing a shudder, Ali continued toward the infirmary. But when he reached the grounds, he stopped short again, amazed at the transformation. The formal gardens for which the Daevas were famous made a beautiful sight, with raised beds of bright herbs bordering trellises heavy with flowers, and fruit trees shading glass birdhouses and gently burbling fountains. At its very center, between two rectangular pools, was a striking orange grove. The trees had been planted close together, the branches carefully manicured and coaxed to intertwine as if to form a ceiling. A little enclosure, he realized, the foliage so thick with plump fruit and snowy white flowers one couldn’t see through it.
Charmed, he kept walking, drawn to the place. Whoever had planted it really had done an extraordinary job. It even had an archway pruned from the leaves to create …
Ali halted so fast, he almost fell backward. Nahri was very much not in the infirmary. She was here, surrounded by books, as though she’d stepped straight out of his fondest memories.
And more—she looked like she belonged here, the royal Banu Nahida in the palace of her ancestors. It had nothing to do with jewels or rich brocade; on the contrary, she was dressed simply in a white tunic that fell to her calves and loose purple trousers. A raw silk chador in shimmering umber was pinned just above her ears with diamond clips, thrown back over her shoulders to reveal the four black braids that fell to her waist.
Are you surprised? What had Ali expected of Nahri? That she’d be a faded version of the sharp woman he’d known, grieving for her lost Afshin, pale from being trapped for long hours in the infirmary? That had not been the Banu Nahida he’d once called a friend.
Ali shut his mouth, suddenly aware that it had fallen open, that he was staring like an addled fool, and that he was very much somewhere he shouldn’t be. A glance revealed neither guards nor servants nearby. Nahri was alone, perched in a wide swing, an enormous volume open in her lap, notes scattered haphazardly on an embroidered rug below her, along with a tray holding an untouched cup of tea. As Ali watched, she frowned at the text as if it had personally offended her.
And suddenly all he wanted to do was step forward and drop down by her side. To ask her what she was reading and resume their bizarrely companionable friendship of hunting through the catacombs of the Royal Library and arguing about Arabic grammar. Nahri had been a light for him during a very dark time, and Ali hadn’t realized until he was standing here quite how much he’d missed her.
Then stop stalking her like a ghoul. Nerves fluttering in his stomach, Ali forced himself to approach. “Sabah el-noor,” he greeted softly in the Egyptian dialect she’d been teaching him.
Nahri jumped. The book fell from her lap as her startled black eyes swept his face.
They locked on the zulfiqar at his waist, and the earth buckled beneath his feet.
Ali cried out, stumbling as a root burst from the grass to snake around his ankle. It jerked forward, and Ali fell hard, the back of his head hitting the ground.
Black spots blossomed across his vision. When they cleared, he saw the Banu Nahida standing over him. She did not look pleased. “Well …,” Ali started weakly. “Your powers have come a remarkably long way.”
The root tightened painfully around his ankle. “What the hell are you doing in my garden?” Nahri demanded.
“I …” Ali tried to sit up, but the root held firm. It twisted up his ankle, disappearing under his robe to snake around his calf. The feeling was far too similar to the weeds that had grabbed him under the lake, and he found himself fighting panic. “Forgive me,” he blurted out in Arabic. “I only—”
“Stop.” The flat word in Djinnistani was like a slap across the face. “Don’t you dare speak Arabic to me. I won’t hear my language on your lying tongue.”
Ali stared at her in shock. “I … I’m sorry,” he repeated in Djinnistani, the words coming more slowly to him. The root was at his knee now, hairy tendrils sprouting and spreading. His skin crawled, a painful prickle shooting down the scars the marid had left on him.
He squeezed his eyes shut, and water beaded on his brow. It’s just a root. It’s just a root. “Please, can you get that thing off me?” It was taking every bit of strength he had not to reach for his zulfiqar and hack it off. Nahri would probably let the earth swallow him whole if he drew his blade.
“You didn’t answer my question. What are you doing here?”
Ali opened his eyes. There was no mercy in Nahri’s expression. Instead, she was slowly spinning one finger, a mirror of the movement the root was making around his leg.
“I wanted to see you.” The words rushed from him as though she’d dosed him with one of her ancestor’s truth serums. And it was the truth, he realized. Ali had wanted to see her, Darayavahoush’s dagger be damned.
Nahri dropped her hand, and the root released. Ali took a shaky breath, embarrassed by how deeply it had frightened him. By the Most High, he could face assassins armed with arrows and blades and yet a root reduced him to near tears?
“I’m sorry,” he said for the third time. “I shouldn’t have come here.”
“You certainly shouldn’t have,” she snapped back. “I have one place in Daevabad that’s mine, one place not even my husband will set foot in, and here you are.” Her face twisted in anger. “But I suppose Alizayd the Afshin-slayer does whatever he likes.”
Ali’s cheeks burned. “I’m not,” he whispered. “You were there. You know what killed him.”
Nahri clucked her tongue. “Oh no, I was corrected. Firmly. Your father said he’d murder every Daeva child in the city if I dared utter the word ‘marid.’” Tears were brimming in her eyes. “Do you know what he made me say instead? What he made me say Dara tried to do? What you supposedly interrupted?”
Her words cut him to the bone. “Nahri …”
“Do you know what he made me say?”
Ali dropped his gaze. “Yes.” The rumors had followed him to Am Gezira—there was a reason, after all, that people had no trouble believing the otherwise mild-mannered prince had killed another man.
“I saved you.” She let out a high, humorless laugh. “I healed you with my own hands. More than once, even. And in return, you said nothing as we got on that boat, though you knew your father’s men would be waiting. My God, I even offered to let you come with us! To escape your father’s wrath, to escape this cage and see the rest of the world.” She hugged her arms around herself, pulling her chador close as if to put a wall between them. “You should be proud, Ali. Not many people can outwit me, but you? You had me believing you were my friend until the very end.”
Guilt crashed over him. Ali had no idea she’d felt that way. Though he’d considered her a friend, Nahri had seemed to keep him at a careful distance, and the realization that their relationship had meant more to her—and that he’d destroyed it—made him sick.
He fought for words. “I didn’t know what else to do that night, Nahri. Darayavahoush was acting like a madman. He would have started a war!”
She trembled. “He wouldn’t have started a war. I wouldn’t have let him.” Her voice was curt, but it looked like she was struggling to maintain her composure. “Is this enough for you, then? You’ve seen me. You’ve intruded upon my privacy to dredge up the worst night of my life. Is there anything else?”
“No, I mean, yes, but …” Ali inwardly cursed. It scarcely seemed the right moment to pull out Dara’s dagger and admit his father had stolen it and kept it as some sort of war trophy. He tried another tack. “I … I tried to write you …”
“Yes, your sister gave me your letters.” She tapped the ash on her forehead. “They made good fodder for my fire altar.”
Ali glanced at the mark. In the shadowy grove, he hadn’t noticed it at first, and it surprised him. In the time he’d known her, Nahri had never seemed all that keen on the religious rituals of her people.
She saw him take it in and her eyes lit with challenge. He couldn’t blame her. He’d been rather … loud when voicing his opinions about the fire cult. A bead of cold sweat dripped down his neck, soaking into the collar of his dishdasha.
Her gaze seemed to trace the movement of the water trickling down his throat. “They’re all over you,” she whispered. “If you were anyone else, I would have heard your heartbeat, sensed your presence …” She raised a hand and he flinched, but thankfully, no plants attacked. Instead, she simply studied him. “They changed you, didn’t they? The marid?”
Ali went cold. “No,” he insisted, to himself as much as to her. “They did nothing.”
“Liar,” she taunted softly, and he couldn’t keep the anger from his face at that. “Oh, do you not like being called a liar? Is that worse than being a man who strikes a bargain with a water demon?”
“A bargain?” he repeated in disbelief. “You think I asked for what happened that night?”
“For aid in killing your people’s greatest enemy? For the fame of finally finishing off the man your ancestor couldn’t?” Scorn filled her eyes. “Yes, Afshin-slayer, I do.”
“Then you’re wrong.” Ali knew Nahri was upset, but she wasn’t the only one whose life had been turned upside down that night. “The marid wouldn’t have been able to use me to kill your Afshin if he hadn’t knocked me into the lake in the first place. And how they took me, Nahri?” His voice broke. “They ripped through my mind and made me hallucinate the deaths of everyone I loved.” He yanked up his sleeve. His scars were stark in the faded sunlight: the ragged marks of triangular teeth and a strip of ruined flesh that twisted around his wrist. “And that’s while they were doing this.” He was shaking, the memory of the awful visions stealing over him. “Some bargain.”
He would swear he saw a flicker of shock on her face, but it lasted only a second. Because between being thrown to the ground and pulling up his sleeve, Ali realized too late what had become visible at his waist.
Nahri’s gaze locked on the distinctive hilt of Darayavahoush’s dagger. The leaves in the grove shuddered. “What are you doing with that?”
Oh no. “I-I meant to give it to you,” Ali said quickly, fumbling to pull the dagger from his waist.
Nahri lunged forward and ripped it from his hands. She ran her fingers over the hilt, gently pressing the carnelian and lapis stones as wetness brimmed in her eyes.
He swallowed, aching to say something. Anything. But no words would erase what was between them. “Nahri …”
“Get out.” She said it in Arabic, the language that had once been the foundation of their friendship, the one with which he’d taught her to conjure flames. “You want to avoid a war? Then get out of my garden before I bury this in your heart.”