Nahri sank to her knees as Ali vanished beyond the trees. Dara’s dagger was heavy in her hands. No, like this, she remembered him correcting her when he taught her how to throw it. Dara’s hot fingers grazing her skin, his breath tickling her ear. His laugh on the wind when she swore in frustration.
Tears blurred her eyes. Her fingers curled around the hilt, and she pressed her other fist hard against her mouth, fighting the sob rising in her chest. Ali was probably still close and she’d be damned if he was going to hear her cry.
I should have buried this in his heart anyway. Leave it to Alizayd al Qahtani to intrude upon her one sanctuary in Daevabad and upend all her emotions. She was as angry at his nerve as at her own reaction; Nahri rarely lost her composure so badly. She argued plenty with Muntadhir, she looked forward to the day Ghassan burned on his funeral pyre with open relish, but she didn’t weep before them like some sad little girl.
But they hadn’t tricked her. Ali had. Despite Nahri’s best intentions, she’d fallen for his friendship. She’d liked spending time with someone who shared her intellect and her curiosity, with someone who didn’t make her feel self-conscious about her ignorance of the magical world or her human skin. She’d liked him, his endearing exuberance when he rattled on about obscure economic theory, and the quiet kindness with which he’d treated the palace’s shafit servants.
It was a lie. Everything about him was a lie. Including what he’d just been spouting about the marid. It had to be.
She took a deep breath, unclenching her fist. The stones on the dagger’s hilt had left an impression in her palm. Nahri had never expected to see Dara’s blade again. In the wake of his death, she’d once asked Ghassan about the dagger, and he said he’d had it melted.
He’d lied. He’d given it as a prize to his son. His Afshin-slaying son.
She wiped her eyes with trembling hands. She hadn’t known that Ali was already back. In fact, she’d been making a conscious effort to avoid hearing news of him. Muntadhir’s stress—and the increasingly shaky grip he had on his wine consumption—had been all the information she’d needed about his brother’s progress toward the city.
Footsteps approached on the other side of the grove. “Banu Nahida?” a female voice squeaked. “Lady Nisreen asked me to retrieve you. She said Jamshid e-Pramukh is waiting.”
Nahri sighed, glancing at the book she’d been studying before Alizayd had interrupted her. It was a Nahid text on curses that were said to prevent healing. One of the novitiates at the Grand Temple had found it while sorting their old archives, and Nahri had it brought immediately to her. But the Divasti was so confusing and archaic, she feared she was going to have to send it right back for translation.
Not that Jamshid would wait. He’d been pleading with her for weeks to try healing him again, his desperation mirroring Muntadhir’s spiral. Nahri didn’t have to ask why. She knew not being able to personally protect Muntadhir as the captain of his guard was killing Jamshid.
She took a deep breath. “I’ll be right there.” She set the book aside—on top of an Arabic volume about hospitals. Or at least Nahri thought it was about hospitals; she hadn’t actually had time to read it. Muntadhir might have shot down her nascent dreams of restoring her ancestors’ hospital, but Nahri wasn’t ready to give up.
She rose to her feet, slipping the dagger’s sheath in her waistband, beneath her gown. She forced herself to put Ali out of mind. To put Dara out of mind. Her first responsibility was to her patients, and right now it might be a relief to let work swallow her.
THE INFIRMARY WAS ITS USUAL LIVELY SELF, CROWDED and smelling of sulfur. She passed through the patient area and behind the curtain that sectioned off her private work space. The curtain was slippery in her hands, its silk enchanted to dampen noise on both sides. She could step back here and talk frankly with Nisreen about a poor diagnosis without someone overhearing them.
The curtain could also hide the sounds of a man screaming in pain.
Jamshid and Nisreen were waiting for her, Jamshid lying on a pallet, looking pale but determined.
“May the fires burn brightly for you, Banu Nahida,” he greeted her.
“And for you,” Nahri returned, bringing her fingertips together. She tied her scarf back to hold her braids and washed her hands in the basin, splashing some cold water on her face.
Nisreen frowned. “Are you all right?” she asked. “Your eyes …”
“I’m fine,” Nahri lied. “Frustrated.” She crossed her arms, deciding to throw the emotions Ali had upset in a different direction. “That book is written in some blasted ancient script I can’t decipher. I’ll have to send it back to the Grand Temple for a translation.”
Jamshid glanced up, his panic clear. “But surely that doesn’t mean we can’t have a session today?”
Nahri paused. “Nisreen, would you leave us for a moment?”
Nisreen bowed. “Of course, Banu Nahida.”
Nahri waited until she was gone to kneel at Jamshid’s side. “You’re rushing this,” she said, as gently as she could. “You shouldn’t be. Your body is recovering. It just needs time.”
“I don’t have time,” Jamshid replied. “Not anymore.”
“You do,” Nahri argued. “You’re young, Jamshid. You have decades, centuries before you.” She took his hand. “I know you want to be at his side again. Capable of jumping on a horse and firing a dozen arrows. And you will be.” She met his gaze. “But you need to accept that it might take years. These sessions … I know how badly they hurt you, the toll they take on your body …”
“I want to do this,” he said stubbornly. “The last time you said you’d gotten close to fixing the damaged nerves you believe are causing most of the weakness in my leg.”
God, how Nahri suddenly wished she had another decade in the infirmary behind her, or a senior healer at her side to guide her through this conversation. The look in her patients’ eyes when they begged her for certainty was difficult enough when they weren’t friends.
She tried another tactic. “Where is Muntadhir? He usually comes with you.”
“I told him I changed my mind. He has enough to worry about without seeing me in pain.”
By the Creator, he really wasn’t making this any easier. “Jamshid—”
“Please.” The word cut through her. “I can handle the pain, Nahri. I can handle being bedridden for a few days. If you think it’s going to do worse than that, we can stop.”
She sighed. “Let me examine you first.” She helped him out of the shawl wrapping his shoulders. “Lie back.” They had done this so many times, the steps came automatically to them both. She took a blunt brass rod from the tray Nisreen had laid out, running it down his left leg. “Same numb burning?”
Jamshid nodded. “But it’s not weak like the right leg. That’s what’s causing me the most trouble.”
Nahri eased him onto his belly. She flinched at the sight of his bare back; she always did. Six scars, the ridged lines marking the spots where Dara’s arrows had plunged into him. One had lodged in his spine, another had punctured his right lung.
You should be dead. It was the uneasy conclusion Nahri came to every time she looked at the evidence of his wounds. At a cruel order from Ghassan meant to goad Kaveh into finding Dara’s so-called accomplices, Jamshid had been left untreated for a week, the arrows still in his body. He should have died. That he hadn’t was a mystery on a par with the fact that he reacted so poorly to her magic.
Her gaze drifted past the small black tattoo on the inside of his shoulder. She had seen it many times, three swirling glyphs. It was a faded ghost of the striking, elaborate tattoos that had decorated Dara’s skin—family sigils and clan marks, records of heroic deeds and protective charms. Jamshid had rolled his eyes when she asked about it. Apparently, the custom of the tattoos had mostly died out in the generations of Daevas born after the war, particularly in Daevabad. It was an old-fashioned superstition, he’d jokingly complained, one that gave away his rural roots.
Nahri touched his back, and Jamshid tensed. “Would you like some wine?” she asked. “It might dull the pain.”
“I downed three cups just to work up the courage to come here.”
Lovely. She took up a length of cloth. “I’d like to bind your hands this time.” She gestured for him to grip the posts of the pallet. “Hold on to this. It will give you something to squeeze.”
He was trembling now. “You have something I can bite?”
She silently handed him a skinny block of opium-infused cedarwood and then laid her hands on his bare back, glancing over to make sure the curtain was fully closed. “Ready?”
He nodded jerkily.
Nahri closed her eyes.
In seconds, she was there, his body open to her. The beat of his racing heart, pumping simmering ebony blood through a delicate map of veins. The gurgling of stomach acid and other humors. His lungs steadily expanding and contracting like bellows.
Her fingers pressed his skin. She could almost see the nerves of his spine in the blackness of her mind, brilliantly colored, dancing filaments protected by the bony ridges of vertebrae. She moved her fingers lower, tracing the bumpy scar tissue. And not just on the skin, but deeper as well: ruined muscles and frayed nerves.
She took a steadying breath. This much she could do without hurting him. It was only when she acted upon him that his body fought back. Were he anyone else, Nahri could urge those nerves to knit back together, could dissipate the scar tissue that had grown over the muscle, leaving him stiff and in pain. It was powerful magic that exhausted her—she might have needed a few sessions to heal him entirely—but he’d have been back on a horse, bow in hand, years ago.
Nahri concentrated on a small section of the flailing nerves. She steeled herself and then commanded them to reconnect.
Magic slammed into her, raw, protective, and powerful, like a blow to her very mind. Prepared, Nahri fought back, pinning a torn nerve back into place. Jamshid seized beneath her, a grunt escaping his clenched teeth. She ignored it, focusing on the next nerve.
She’d fixed three when he started groaning.
He bucked beneath her, pulling at his bindings. His skin burned under her fingertips, scorching to the touch, every pain receptor firing. Nahri held on, sweat pouring down her face. There were only five nerves left in this particular spot. She reached for another one, her hands shaking. It took strength to fight his body’s reaction and perform the magic, strength she was rapidly losing.
One more nerve melded back into place, glowing faintly in her mind’s eye. She seized the next.
The block fell from Jamshid’s mouth, his shriek cutting the air. Ash was powdering on his skin, and then with a burst of magic, the binds holding his hands erupted into flames.
“Jamshid?” A very unwelcome voice spoke from behind her. “Jamshid!”
Muntadhir rushed inside. The shock of the interruption threw her, and then whatever power was within Jamshid’s body took the opportunity to actually throw her, a surge of energy so fierce that Nahri stumbled back, her connection severed.
Jamshid fell still. Despite the pounding in her head, Nahri flew to her feet to check his pulse. It was fast, but it was there. He’d only passed out. She quickly smothered the flames around his wrists.
Enraged, she whirled on Muntadhir. “What the hell were you thinking?” she snapped. “I was making progress!”
Muntadhir looked aghast. “Progress? He was on fire!”
“He’s a djinn! He can handle a little fire!”
“He’s not even supposed to be here!” Muntadhir argued back. “Did you convince him to try this again?”
“Did I convince him?” Nahri seethed, fighting to control the emotions rising in her. “No, you fool. He’s doing this for you. If you weren’t so selfish, you’d see that!”
Muntadhir’s eyes flashed. His usual grace had deserted him, his movements jerky as he pulled the shawl over Jamshid. “Then you shouldn’t have let him. You’re being reckless, so eager to prove yourself that—”
“I was not being reckless.” It was one thing to fight with Muntadhir about politics and family; she would not have him throwing her doubts about her healing abilities in her face. “I knew what I was doing, and he was prepared. You’re the one who interrupted.”
“You were hurting him!”
“I was healing him!” Her temper broke. “Maybe if you’d shown this concern when your father was willing to let him die, he’d be in better shape!”
The words ripped from her, an accusation that for all their many fights, Nahri had never intended to let slip. She knew too well the fear Ghassan used to keep his people in line, the terror that clawed up in her own throat when she thought of his wrath.
And she knew damn well how Muntadhir felt about Jamshid.
Her husband jerked back like she’d slapped him. Shocked hurt—and a good deal of guilt—flashed across his face, spots of angry color rising in his cheeks.
Nahri instantly regretted her words. “Muntadhir, I only meant—”
He raised a hand, cutting her off as he pointed a shaking finger at Jamshid. “The only reason he’s hurt is because of Darayavahoush. Because of you. Because a lost little girl from Cairo thought she was living in some sort of fairy tale. And because for all her supposed cleverness, she couldn’t see that the dashing hero who saved her was actually its monster. Or maybe she just didn’t care.” His voice grew colder. “Maybe all he had to do was tell one of his sad stories and bat his pretty green eyes, and you were all too happy to do whatever he wanted.”
Nahri stared at him, speechless, the words reverberating in her head. She’d seen Muntadhir drunk before, but Nahri had not known he could be so cruel.
She had not known he could cut her so deep.
She inhaled, shaking with hurt betrayal. This was why she had walls up, why she tried to hide away her heart. Because it was clear she couldn’t trust a damn soul in this city. Her blood boiled. And who was Muntadhir to say such things to her? Her? The Banu Nahida in her own infirmary?
The palace seemed to agree, her ancestors’ magic swirling in her blood. The flames in her firepit soared, licking out like they might seize him, this newest incarnation of the sand flies who’d stolen their home.
Then Nahri’s rage felt different. Purposeful. She could sense Muntadhir as though she were laying hands upon him. The rapid beat of his heart and the flush in his skin. The very delicate vessels in his throat. The bones and joints that could be commanded to break.
“I think you should leave, Emir.” It was Nisreen, standing at the edge of the curtain. When she’d gotten there, Nahri didn’t know, but the older Daeva woman had obviously heard enough to be gazing at Muntadhir with barely concealed contempt. “The Banu Nahida is in the middle of treating your companion, and it is better for him that they not be disturbed.”
Muntadhir’s mouth clamped into a stubborn line. He looked like he had more to say … and he was clearly unaware of how close Nahri had come to doing something she might not have been able to take back. But after another moment, he touched Jamshid’s hand, briefly sliding his fingers through the other man’s. Then, without looking at Nahri or Nisreen, he pushed to his feet, turned, and left.
Nahri exhaled, her entire body shivering as the dark urge left her. “I think … I think I could have just killed him.”
“He would have deserved it.” Nisreen crossed to check on Jamshid, and after another moment, Nahri joined her. His pulse was a little rapid and his skin still hot, but his breathing was slowly returning to normal. “Do not ever let that foul drunk touch you again.”
Nahri felt like she was about to be sick. “He’s my husband, Nisreen. We’re supposed to be working to bring peace between the tribes.” Her voice was weak, the words almost laughable.
Nisreen pulled over the ice-filled bucket that had been left next to the pallet, dampening a cloth in the cool water and placing it on Jamshid’s back. “I would not overly worry about the future of your marriage,” she muttered darkly.
Nahri stared at Jamshid. A wave of despair swept her as she remembered his pleading. She felt so utterly useless. It was all too much: the crush of her responsibilities and her constantly deflected dreams. The deadly dance she was forced to do with Ghassan and the pleading eyes of the Daevas who prayed to her to save them. Nahri had tried, she had. She’d married Muntadhir. But she had nothing left to give.
“I want to go home,” she whispered, her eyes growing wet. It was a completely nonsensical desire to have, a pathetically childish urge, and yet her heart ached with a longing for Cairo so strong it stole her breath.
“Nahri …” Embarrassed, Nahri tried to turn away, but Nisreen reached for her face, cupping her cheeks. “Child, look at me. This is your home.” She pulled her into a hug, stroking the back of her head, and Nahri couldn’t help but sink into her embrace, the tears finally spilling from her eyes. It was a type of physical affection no one here gave her, and she took it gratefully.
So gratefully in fact that she didn’t question the fervor in Nisreen’s voice when she continued speaking. “I promise you, my lady. It is going to be all right. You will see.”