His voice came back to her, already husky from sleep. “Yes?”
“Why wasn’t Ali at the wedding?
Muntadhir’s body instantly tensed. “He’s busy with his garrison in Am Gezira.”
His garrison. Yes, that’s what every Geziri said, almost down to the word, when asked about Alizayd al Qahtani.
But secrets were difficult to keep in Daevabad’s royal harem. Which is why Nahri had heard rumors that Zaynab, Ali and Muntadhir’s sister, had cried herself to sleep every night for weeks after her little brother was sent away. Zaynab, who had looked haunted ever since, even at the wedding festivities this evening.
The real question slipped from her. “Is he dead?” she whispered.
Muntadhir didn’t respond right away, and in the silence Nahri felt a tangle of conflicting emotions settle into her chest. But then her husband cleared his throat. “No.” The word sounded careful. Deliberate. “Though if you don’t mind, I would rather not discuss him. And, Nahri, about what you said before …” He looked at her, his eyes heavy with an emotion she couldn’t quite decipher. “You should know that when it comes down to it, I’m a Qahtani. My father is my king. I will always be loyal to that first.”
The warning was clear in his words, uttered in a voice that had lost all hint of intimacy. This was the emir of Daevabad speaking now, and he turned his back to her without waiting for a response.
Nahri set her glass down with a thud, feeling the slight warmth that had risen between them turn to ice. Annoyance sparked in her chest.
One of the tapestries across the room shuddered in response. The shadows falling across Muntadhir’s form, outlining the palace window, suddenly lengthened. Sharpened.
Neither surprised Nahri. Such things had been happening lately, the ancient palace seeming to awaken to the fact that a Nahid dwelled within its walls again.
DARA
In the crimson light of a sun that never set, Darayavahoush e-Afshin slumbered.
It was not true sleep, of course, but something deeper. Quieter. There were no dreams of missed opportunities and unrequited love, nor nightmares of blood-drenched cities and merciless human masters. He lay on the felt blanket his mother had woven for him as a boy, in the shade of a cedar glen. Through the trees, he caught glimpses of a dazzling garden, one that occasionally tugged at his attention.
But not now. Dara did not entirely know where he was, nor did it seem to matter. The air smelled of his home, of meals with his family and the sacred smoke of fire altars. His eyes fluttered open briefly now and then before the sounds of birdsong and a distant lute lulled him back toward sleep. It was all Dara wanted to do. To rest until the weariness finally slipped from his bones. Until the scent of blood left his memory.
A small hand nudged his shoulder.
Dara smiled. “Coming to check on me again, sister?”
He opened his eyes. Tamima knelt at his side, grinning a gap-toothed smile. A shroud draped his little sister’s small form, her black hair neatly plaited. Tamima looked far different than she had when Dara had first set eyes on her. When he had arrived in the glen, her shroud had been drenched in blood, her skin carved and scored with names written in Tukharistani script. It was a sight that had made him wild; he’d torn the glen apart with his bare hands again and again until he finally collapsed in her small arms.
But her marks had been fading ever since, along with the black tattoo on his own body, the one that looked like rungs on a twisting ladder.
Tamima dug her bare toes into the grass. “They are waiting to talk to you in the garden.”
Apprehension stole through him. Dara suspected he knew all too well the judgment that awaited him in that place. “I am not ready,” he replied.
“It is not a fate to fear, brother.”
Dara squeezed his eyes shut. “You do not know the things I have done.”
“Then confess them and free yourself of their weight.”
“I cannot,” he whispered. “If I start, Tamima … they will drown me. They—”
A burst of heat suddenly seared his left hand, and Dara gasped, the pain taking him by surprise. It was a sensation he’d started to forget, but the burn vanished as quickly as it had come. He raised his hand.
A battered iron and emerald ring was on his finger.
Dara stared at it, baffled. He pushed to a sitting position, the heavy mantle of drowsiness falling from his body like a cloak.
The glen’s stillness ebbed away, a cold breeze sweeping aside the smells of home and sending the cedar leaves dancing. Dara shivered. The wind seemed like a thing alive, pulling at his limbs and tousling his hair.
He was on his feet before he realized it.
Tamima grabbed his hand. “No, Daru,” she pleaded. “Don’t go. Not again. You’re finally so close.”
Startled, he glanced at his sister. “What?”
As if in response, the shadows in the cedar grove deepened, emerald and black writhing and twisting together. Whatever magic this was … it was intoxicating, tugging hard at his soul, the ring pulsing against his finger like a beating heart.
It was suddenly obvious. Of course, Dara would go. It was his duty, and he was a good Afshin.
He obeyed.
He pulled free of his sister’s hand. “I will come back,” he said. “I promise.”
Tamima was weeping. “You always say that.”
But his sister’s sobs grew distant as Dara walked deeper into the grove. The sound of birdsong vanished, replaced by a low humming buzz that set his nerves on edge. The air seemed to close in around him, uncomfortably hot. The tug came again from his hand, the ring smoldering.
And then he was seized. Stolen, an unseen force snatching him like a rukh and dragging him into its maw.
The cedar glen vanished, replaced by utter blackness. Nothingness. A blazing, tearing pain ripped through him, worse than any sensation he could imagine, a thousand knives seeming to shred every fiber of his body as he was pulled, dragged through a substance thicker than mud. Disassembled and reformed from pieces as sharp as broken glass.
A presence thundered to life in his breast, pounding like a drum. Rushing liquid swirled through new veins, lubricating the growing muscles, and a smothering heaviness settled upon his chest. He choked, his mouth reforming to draw air into his lungs. His hearing returned, bringing with it screams.
His screams.
Memories slammed into him. A woman shouting his name, whispering his name. Black eyes and a sly smile, her mouth on his as their bodies pressed together in a darkened cave. Those same eyes filled with shock, with betrayal, in a ruined infirmary. A drowned man covered in scales and tentacles looming over him, a rusting blade in his dripping hand.
Dara’s eyes shot open, but he saw only blackness. The pain was fading but everything felt wrong, his body both too light and yet too real, pulsing in a way he hadn’t experienced in decades. Centuries. He choked again, gasping as he tried to remember how to breathe.
A hand clamped down on his shoulder, and a wave of warmth and calm surged into his body. The pain vanished, his heart slowing to a steady beat.
Relief flooded through him. Dara would know the healing touch of a Nahid anywhere. “Nahri,” he breathed. Tears burned his eyes. “Oh, Nahri, I am sorry. I am so sorry. I never meant—”
The words died in his mouth. He’d caught sight of his hand.