Nahri didn’t share their excitement. She’d been sweating since she entered the room, and the mask kept sticking to her damp skin. She pulled it slightly loose, trying to let the breeze cool her flushed cheeks. She caught the reflection of her movement in the massive bronze-edged mirror across the room and averted her eyes. However fine the clothes and mask, they were Geziri, and Nahri had no desire to see herself in the garb of her enemy.
They’re not your enemy, she reminded herself. “Enemy” was Dara’s word, and she was not going to think about Dara. Not tonight. She couldn’t. It would break her—and the last Banu Nahida of Daevabad was not going to break. She’d signed her wedding contract with a steady hand and toasted Ghassan without trembling, smiling warmly at the king who’d threatened her with the murder of Daeva children and forced her to disown her Afshin with the crudest of charges. If she could handle all of that, she could handle whatever happened in this room.
Nahri turned to cross the bedroom again. Muntadhir’s vast apartment was located on one of the upper levels of the enormous ziggurat at the heart of Daevabad’s palace complex. It was filled with art: paintings on silk screens, delicate tapestries, and finely wrought vases, all of which had been carefully displayed and all of which seemed to carry an aura of magic. She could easily envision Muntadhir in this wondrous room, lounging with a cup of expensive wine and some cosmopolitan courtesan, quoting poetry and bantering about the useless pleasures of life that Nahri had neither the time nor inclination to pursue. There was not a book in sight. Not in this room, nor in the rest of the apartment she’d been guided through.
She stopped to stare at the closest painting, a miniature of two dancers conjuring flamelike flowers that sparked and flashed like hearts of ruby as they twirled.
I have nothing in common with this man. Nahri couldn’t imagine the splendor in which Muntadhir had been raised, couldn’t imagine being surrounded by the accumulated knowledge of millennia and not bothering to learn how to read. The only thing she shared with her new husband was one awful night upon a burning ship.
The bedroom door opened.
Nahri instinctively stepped back from the painting, pulling her hood low. There was a soft crash from outside, followed by a curse, and then Muntadhir entered.
He wasn’t alone; indeed, she suspected he might not have made it alone, for he was leaning heavily on a steward, and she could practically smell the wine on his breath from across the room. A pair of female servants followed, and Nahri swallowed as they helped him out of his robe, unwinding his turban with a number of what sounded like teasing jests in Geziriyya, before leading him to the bed.
He sat heavily on the edge, looking drunk and somewhat stunned to find himself there. Heaped with cloudlike linens, the bed was big enough to fit a family of ten—and given the rumors she’d heard whispered about her husband, she suspected he’d filled it on many an occasion. Frankincense smoldered in a corner burner beside a chalice of sweetened milk mixed with apple leaves—a traditional Daeva drink brewed for new brides hoping to conceive. That, at least, would not be happening—Nisreen had assured her. One did not assist Nahid healers for two centuries without learning a number of nearly foolproof methods to prevent pregnancy.
Even so, Nahri’s heart beat faster as the servants left, closing the door softly behind them. Tension filled the air, thick and heavy and at awkward odds with the sounds of celebration in the garden below.
Muntadhir finally glanced up, meeting her eyes. Candlelight played on his face. He might not have had Dara’s literally magical beauty, but he was a strikingly handsome man, a charismatic man, she’d heard, one who laughed easily and smiled often … at least with people who weren’t her. His thick black hair was cut short, his beard stylishly trimmed. He’d worn his royal regalia for the wedding, the gold-trimmed ebony robe and patterned blue, purple, and gold silk turban that were the hallmarks of the ruling al Qahtani family, but he was dressed now in a crisp white dishdasha edged with tiny pearls. The only thing detracting from his careful appearance was a thin scar dividing his left eyebrow—a remnant from Dara’s scourge.
They stared at each other for a long moment, neither one moving. She saw that beneath the edge of drunken exhaustion, he too looked nervous.
Finally he spoke. “You’re not going to give me plague sores, are you?”
Nahri narrowed her eyes. “Excuse me?”
“Plague sores.” Muntadhir swallowed, kneading the embroidered covering on the bed. “That’s what your mother used to do to men who looked at her too long.”
Nahri hated that the words stung. She wasn’t a romantic—on the contrary, she prided herself on her pragmatism and her ability to set aside her emotions—that’s what had led her to this room, after all. But it was still her wedding night, and she might have hoped for a word of kindness from her new husband; for a man eager to touch her, rather than one worried she would curse him with some sort of magical disease.
She let her robe drop to the floor without ceremony. “Let’s get this over with.” She approached the bed, fumbling with the delicate copper fixtures holding her marriage mask in place.
“Be careful!” Muntadhir’s hand shot out, but he jerked it back when he brushed her fingers. “Forgive me,” he said quickly. “It’s just—the mask clips were my mother’s.”
Nahri’s hands stilled. No one in the palace ever spoke of Muntadhir’s mother, Ghassan’s long-dead first wife. “They were?”
He nodded, taking the marriage mask from her hands and deftly unhooking the clips. In comparison to the opulent room and the glittering jewelry they were both wearing, the clips were rather plain, but Muntadhir held them as if he’d just been handed Suleiman’s seal ring.
“They’ve been in her family for centuries,” he explained, running his thumb over the fine filigree work. “She always made me promise to have my own wife and daughter wear them.” His lips quirked into a sad smile. “She said they brought good fortune and the best of sons.”
Nahri hesitated and then decided to press forward; long-lost mothers might be the only topic they had in common. “How old were you—”
“Young,” Muntadhir cut in, his voice a little raw, as if the question caused him pain. “She’d been bitten by a nasnas out in Am Gezira when she was a child, and the poison stayed with her. She’d have the occasional reaction, but Manizheh could always treat it.” His expression darkened. “Until one summer Manizheh decided dawdling in Zariaspa was more important than saving her queen.”
Nahri tensed at the bitterness lingering in his words. So much for a connection between them. “I see,” she said stiffly.
Muntadhir seemed to notice. A flush came to his cheeks. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that to you.”
“It’s fine,” Nahri replied, though in truth she was regretting this marriage more with each passing moment. “You’ve never hid how you feel about my family. What was it you called me to your father? The ‘lying Nahid whore’? The one who seduced your brother and ordered my Afshin to attack your men.”
Muntadhir’s gray eyes flashed with regret before he dropped his gaze. “That was a mistake,” he said, defending himself weakly. “My best friend and my little brother were at death’s door.” He rose to his feet, moving toward the wine. “I wasn’t thinking straight.”