“Nahri,” Ali whispered. His eyes were bloodshot and desperate, water beading down his face. “Nahri, please tell me I’m seeing things. Please tell me this isn’t what it looks like.”
Still numb, Nahri glanced past his shoulder. She couldn’t look away from the Egyptian countryside, not after aching for it for so long. A warm breeze played through her hair, and a pair of sunbirds twittered as they climbed through a patch of thick brush that had swallowed a crumbling mudbrick building. It was flood season, a thing the inundated banks and water lapping at the roots of the palms made clear to any Egyptian in a moment.
“It looks like home.” Her throat was horribly strained, her healing magic still blocked by Suleiman’s seal blazing on Ali’s cheek. “It looks like Egypt.”
“We cannot be in Egypt!” Ali stepped back, falling heavily against the minaret’s crumbling inner wall. There was a feverish flush to his face, and hazy heat rose from his skin. “W-we were just in Daevabad. You pulled me off the wall … did you mean to—?”
“No! I just wanted to get away from Manizheh. You said the curse was off the lake. I figured we’d swim back to shore, not rematerialize on the other side of the world!”
“The other side of the world.” Ali’s voice was hollow. “Oh my God. Oh my God. We need to go back. We need to—” His words slipped into a pained hiss, one hand flying to his chest.
“Ali?” She grabbed him by the shoulder. Closer now, Nahri could see that he didn’t just look upset—he looked sick, shivering and sweating more than a human in the death throes of tuberculosis.
Her training took over. “Sit,” she ordered, helping him to the ground.
Ali squeezed his eyes shut, pressing the back of his head into the wall. It looked like it was taking all his strength not to scream. “I think it’s the ring,” he gasped, pressing a fist to his chest—or to his heart rather, where Suleiman’s ring should now be resting, courtesy of Nahri’s sleight of hand back in Daevabad. “It burns.”
“Let me see.” Nahri grabbed his hand—it was so hot it felt like plunging her own into a simmering kettle—and pried it away from his chest. The skin beneath looked completely normal. And without her magic, there was no examining further—Suleiman’s eight-pointed mark still blazed on Ali’s cheek, blocking her powers.
Nahri swallowed back her fear. “It’s going to be okay,” she insisted. “Lift the seal. I’ll take the pain away and be able to better examine you.”
Ali opened his eyes, bewilderment swirling into the pain in his expression. “Lift the seal?”
“Yes, the seal, Ali,” Nahri repeated, fighting panic. “Suleiman’s seal. I can’t do any magic with it glowing on your face like that!”
He took a deep breath, looking worse by the minute. “I … okay.” He glanced back at her, seeming to struggle to focus on her face. “How do I do that?”
Nahri stared at him. “What do you mean, how? Your family has held the seal for centuries. Don’t you know?”
“No. Only the emir is allowed—” Fresh grief ripped across Ali’s expression. “Oh God, Dhiru …”
“Ali, please.”
But already dazed as he was, the reminder of his brother’s death seemed too much. Ali slumped against the wall, weeping in Geziriyya. Tears rolled down his cheeks, cutting paths through the dust and dried blood on his skin.
The sound of birdsong came, a breeze rattling through the bristling palms towering over the broken mosque. Her own heart wanted to burst, the sweet relief of being home warring with the nightmarish events that had ended in the two of them appearing here.
She sat back on her heels. Think, Nahri, think. She had to have a plan.
But Nahri couldn’t think. Not when she could still smell the poisoned edge of Muntadhir’s blood and hear Manizheh cracking Ali’s bones.
Not when she could see Dara’s green gaze, pleading from across the ruined palace corridor.
Nahri took a deep breath. Magic. Just get your magic back, and this will all be better. She felt horribly vulnerable without her abilities, weak in a way she’d never been. Her entire body ached, the metallic smell of blood thick in her nose.
“Ali.” She took his face in her hands, trying not to worry at the frighteningly unnatural—even for a djinn—heat in his clammy skin. She brushed the tears from his cheeks, forcing his bloodshot eyes to meet hers. “Just breathe. We’ll grieve him, we’ll grieve them all, I promise. But right now, we need to focus.” The wind had picked up, whipping her hair into her face. “Muntadhir told me it could take a few days to recover from possessing the ring,” she remembered. “Maybe this is normal.”
Ali was shivering so hard it looked like he was seizing. His skin had taken on a grayish tone, his lips cracking. “I don’t think this is normal.” Steam was rising from his body in a humid cloud. “It wants you,” he whispered. “I can feel it.”
“I-I couldn’t,” she stammered. “I couldn’t take it. You heard what Manizheh said about me being a shafit. If the ring had killed me, she would have murdered you and then taken it for herself. I couldn’t risk that!”
As if in angry response, the seal blazed against his cheek. Where Ghassan’s mark had resembled a tattoo, blacker than night against his skin, Ali’s looked like it had been painted in quick-silver, the mercury color reflecting the sun’s light.
He cried out as it flashed brighter. “Oh, God,” he gasped, fumbling for the blades at his waist—miraculously, Ali’s khanjar and zulfiqar had come through, belted at his stomach. “I need to get this out of me.”
Nahri ripped the weapons away. “Are you mad? You can’t cut into your heart!”
Ali didn’t respond. He suddenly didn’t look capable of responding. There was a vacant, lost glaze in his eyes that terrified her. It was a look Nahri associated with the infirmary, with patients brought to her too late.
“Ali.” It was killing Nahri not to be able to simply lay hands upon him and take away his pain. “Please,” she begged. “Just try to lift the seal. I can’t help you like this!”
His gaze briefly fixed on hers, and her heart dropped—Ali’s eyes were now so dilated the pupils had nearly overtaken the gray. He blinked, but there was nothing in his face that even indicated he’d understood her plea. God, why hadn’t she asked Muntadhir more about the seal? All he’d said was that it had to be cut out of Ghassan’s heart and burned, that it might take the new ringbearer a couple of days to recover, and that …
And that it couldn’t leave Daevabad.
Cold fear stole through her even as a hot breeze rushed across her skin. No, please, no. That couldn’t be why this was happening. It couldn’t be. Nahri hadn’t even asked Ali’s permission—he’d tried to jerk away, and she’d shoved the ring on his finger anyway. Too desperate to save him, she hadn’t cared what he thought.
And now you might have killed him.
A scorching wind blew her hair straight back, sand whipping past her face. One of the swaying trees across from the ruined mosque suddenly crashed to the ground, and Nahri jumped, realizing only then that the air had grown hotter, the wind picking up to howl around her.
She glanced up.
In the desert beyond the Nile, orange and green clouds were roiling across the pale sky. As Nahri watched, the river’s glistening brightness vanished, turning a dull gray as clouds overtook the gentle dawn. Sand swirled over the rocky ground, branches and leaves cartwheeling through the air.
It looked like the storm that brought Dara. Once, that might have given Nahri comfort. Now she was terrified, shaking as she rose to her feet, Ali’s zulfiqar in her grip.
With a howl, the sandy wind rushed forward. Nahri cried out, raising an arm to protect her face. But she needn’t have. Far from being lashed and torn to pieces, she blinked to find herself and Ali inside a churning funnel of sand, an eye of protection inside the storm.
They weren’t alone.
A darker shadow lurked, vanishing and reappearing with the movement of the wind before it landed on the edge of the broken minaret, like a predator who’d caught a mouse in a hole. The creature came to her in unbelievable pieces. A tawny, lithe body, muscles rippling beneath amber fur. Clawed paws the size of her head and a tail that cut the air like a scythe. Silver eyes set in a leonine face.
And wings. Dazzling, iridescent wings in what seemed all the colors in the world. Nahri nearly dropped the zulfiqar, a startled gasp leaving her mouth. She’d seen renderings of the beast too many times to deny what was before her eyes.
It was a shedu. The near-mythical winged lion her ancestors were said to have ridden into battle against the ifrit, one that remained their symbol long after the mysterious creatures themselves had vanished.
Or so everyone thought. Because feline eyes were fixed on her now, seeming to search her face and size her up. She’d swear she saw a flicker of what might have been confusion. But also intelligence. Deep, undeniable intelligence.
“Help me,” she begged, feeling half mad. “Please.”
The shedu’s eyes narrowed. They were a silver so pale it edged on clear—the color of glittering ice—and they traveled over Nahri’s skin, taking in the zulfiqar in her hands and the injured prince at her feet. The mark on Ali’s temple.
The creature ruffled its wings like a discontented bird, a rumbling growl coming from its throat.
Nahri instantly tightened her grip on the zulfiqar, not that it would do much to protect them against such a magnificent beast.
“Please,” she tried again. “I’m a Nahid. My magic isn’t working, and we need to get back to—”
The shedu lunged.
Nahri dropped to the ground, but the creature simply soared over her, its dazzling wings throwing the minaret into shadow. “Wait!” she cried as it vanished into the golden wave of sand. The storm was pulling away, rolling into itself. “Wait!”
But it was already gone, dissipating like dust on the wind. In a moment, it was as if there had been no storm at all, the birds singing and the sky bright and blue.
Ali let out a single sigh—a hush of breath like it was his last—and then crumpled to the ground.
“Ali!” Nahri fell back to his side, shaking his shoulder. “Ali, wake up! Please wake up!” She checked his pulse, relief and despair warring inside her. He was still breathing, but the beat of his heart was wildly erratic.
This is your fault. You put that ring on his hand. You pulled him into the lake. Nahri swallowed a sob. “You don’t get to die. Understand? I didn’t save your life a dozen times so you could leave me here.”
Silence met her angry words. Nahri could shout all she liked. She still had no magic and no idea what to do next. She didn’t even know how they were here. Rising to her feet, she glanced at Cairo. She was no expert, but she’d guess it was a few hours distant by boat. Clustered closer to the city were more villages, surrounded by flooded fields and tiny boats gliding over the river.
Nahri looked again at the broken mosque and what appeared to be a scorched pigeon coop. Cracked foundation stones outlined what might once have been homes along a meandering, overgrown path that led to the river. As her eyes traced the ruined village, a strange sense of familiarity danced over the nape of her neck.
Her gaze settled on the swollen Nile, Cairo shimmering in the distance across from the mighty Pyramids. There was no trace of the shedu, no hint of magic. Not in the air, nor in her blood.
Its absence made her angry, and as she stared at the Pyramids—the mighty human monuments that had been ancient before Daevabad was even a dream—her anger only burned hotter. She wasn’t waiting around for the magical world to save her.
Nahri had another world.
ALI WAS EERILY LIGHT IN NAHRI’S ARMS, HIS SKIN scorching where it touched hers, as if half his presence had already burned away. It made it easier to drag the overly tall prince down from the minaret, but any relief Nahri might have felt was dashed by the awful suspicion that this was not a good sign.
She eased him to the ground once they were out, taking a moment to catch her breath. Sweat dampened her forehead, and she straightened up, her spine cracking.
Again came the unnerving sensation she’d been here before. Nahri glanced down the path, trying to let whatever teasing pieces of familiarity drifted through her mind settle, but they refused. The village looked like it had been razed and abandoned decades ago, the surrounding greenery well on its way to swallowing the buildings entirely.
I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that of all the places in Egypt two fire-blooded djinn could have been magically whisked to, a creepy, burnt-down village was it.
Throughly unsettled, Nahri picked Ali back up, following the path to the river as though she’d walked it a hundred times. Once she was there, she laid him along the shallows.
The water instantly lapped forth, submerging the line of dried grass underneath Ali’s unconscious body. Before she could react, tiny rivulets were creeping over his limbs, racing across his hot skin like watery fingers. Nahri moved to pull him away, but then Ali sighed in his sleep, some of the pain leaving his expression.
The marid did nothing to you, really? Nahri recalled Ali’s zulfiqar flying to him on a wave and the way he’d controlled the waterfall in the library to bring down the zahhak. Just what secrets was he still harboring about the marid’s possession?
And were they secrets that were dangerous now? A flying lion everyone believed long gone had just checked up on them. Were some river spirits next?
You do not have time to puzzle all this out. Ali was sick, Nahri was powerless, and if Manizheh somehow found a way to follow them, Nahri didn’t intend to be an easily spotted target in an abandoned village.
She was ruthless in taking stock of their circumstances, banishing thoughts of Daevabad and slipping into the cold pragmatism that had always ruled her life. It almost felt good to do so. There was no conquered city, no calculating mother who should have been dead, no warrior with pleading green eyes. There was only surviving.
Their possessions were pathetic. Save for Ali’s weapons, they had nothing but the tattered, blood-soaked clothes upon their backs. Nahri usually spent her days in Daevabad wearing jewelry that could have bought a kingdom but had been wearing none in deference to the traditions of the Navasatem parade, which dictated plain dress. She’d been taken from Cairo barefoot and dressed in rags and had returned the same—an irony that would have made her laugh if it didn’t make her want to burst into tears.
Worse, she knew they looked like easy marks. Their clothing might be destroyed, but it was djinn cloth, strong and luxurious to any eye. Nahri and Ali were visibly well-nourished and groomed, and Ali’s glimmering zulfiqar looked exactly like what it was: a stunningly crafted weapon more suited for a warrior from an ancient epic than anything a human traveler would be carrying. Ali and Nahri looked like the wealthy nobles they were, dragged through the mud but clearly no local peasants.
Considering her options, Nahri studied the river. No boats had come by and the nearest village was a smudge of buildings in the distance. She’d probably manage the walk in half a day, but there was no way she could carry Ali that far.
Unless she didn’t walk. Nahri eyed the fallen palm, an idea forming in her head, and then she reached for Ali’s khanjar, thinking it would be a more manageable blade than his zulfiqar.
Her hand stilled on the dagger’s jeweled handle. This wasn’t Ali’s khanjar—it was his brother’s. And like everything Muntadhir had fancied, it was beautiful and ridiculously expensive. The handle was white jade, banded with worked gold and inlaid with a floral pattern of tiny alternating sapphires, rubies, and emeralds. Nahri’s breath caught as she mentally calculated the value of the khanjar, already separating out the valuable gems in her mind. She had no doubt Muntadhir had given this to his little brother as a remembrance. It was perhaps cruel to contemplate bartering bits away without Ali’s permission.
But that wouldn’t stop her. Nahri was a survivor, and it was time to get to work.
It took her the entire morning, the hours melting by in a haze of grief and determination, her tears flowing as readily as her blood did when she gashed her fingers and wrists trying to pull together a makeshift skiff of lashed branches. It was just enough to keep Ali’s head and shoulders above the waist-high water, and then she waded in, mud sucking at her bare feet, the river pulling at her torn dress.
Her fingers were numb by midday, too useless to hold the raft. She used Ali’s belt to tie it to her waist, earning new bruises and welts. Unused to such enduring physical pain, to injuries that didn’t heal, her muscles burned, her entire body screaming at her to stop.
Nahri didn’t stop. She made sure each step was steady. For if she paused, if she slipped and was submerged, she wasn’t certain she’d have the strength to fight for another breath.
The sun was setting when she reached the first village, turning the Nile into a glistening crimson ribbon, the thick greenery at its banks a threatening cluster of spiky shadows. Nahri could only imagine how alarming she must appear, and it didn’t surprise her in the least when two young men who’d been pulling in fishing nets jumped up with surprised yelps.
But Nahri wasn’t after the help of men. Four women in black dresses were gathering water just beyond the boat, and she trudged straight for them.
“Peace be upon you, sisters,” she wheezed. Her lips were cracked, the taste of blood thick upon her tongue. Nahri held out her hand, revealing three of the tiny emeralds she’d pried from Muntadhir’s khanjar. “I need a ride to Cairo.”
NAHRI STRUGGLED TO STAY AWAKE AS THE DONKEY cart made its rumbling way into the city, night falling swiftly and cloaking the outskirts of Cairo in darkness. It made the journey easier. Not only because the narrow streets were relatively empty—the locals busy with evening meals, prayers, and the settling down of children—but because right now Nahri wasn’t sure her heart could take an unencumbered view of her old home, its familiar landmarks lit by the Egyptian sun. The entire experience was already surreal—the sweet smell of the sugarcane littering the floor of the cart and the snatches of Egyptian Arabic from passersby contrasting with the unconscious djinn prince burning in her arms.
Every bump sent a new jolt of pain into her bruised body, and Nahri could barely speak above a murmur when the cart’s driver—the husband of one of the women at the river—asked where next. It was all she could do not to fall apart. To say this was a lean plan was an understatement. And if it failed, she had no idea where to turn next.
Fighting despair and exhaustion in equal measure, Nahri opened her palm. “Naar,” she whispered to herself, hoping against hope as she said the word aloud, as Ali had once taught her. “Naar.”
There was not the slightest hint of heat, let alone the conjured flame she was aching to hold. Tears pricked her eyes, but she refused to let them fall.
They finally arrived, and Nahri shifted in the cart, her limbs protesting. “Can you help me carry him?” she asked.
The driver glanced back, looking confused. “Who?”
Nahri gestured in disbelief to Ali, less than an arm’s length from the driver’s face. “Him.”
The man jumped. “I … Weren’t you alone? I could have sworn you were alone.”
Apprehension darted down her spine. Nahri had been under the vague understanding that humans couldn’t see most djinn—especially not pure-blooded ones like Ali. But this man had helped lift Ali’s body into the cart when they’d started out. How could he have already forgotten that?
She fought for a response, not missing the fear blooming in his eyes. “No,” she said quickly. “He’s been here the entire time.”
The man swore under his breath, sliding from the donkey’s back. “I told my wife we had no business helping strangers coming from that accursed place, but did she listen?”
“The Nile is an accursed place now?”
He shot her a dark look. “You did not just come from the Nile, you came from the direction of … that ruin.”
Nahri was too curious not to ask. “Are you talking about the village to your south? What happened there?”
He shuddered, pulling Ali from the cart. “It is better not to discuss such things.” He hissed as his fingers brushed Ali’s wrist. “This man is burning up. If you brought fever into our village—”
“You know what? I think I can actually carry him the rest of the way myself,” Nahri said with false cheer. “Thanks!”
Grumbling, the driver dumped Ali into her arms and then turned away. Struggling to adjust to the weight of his body, Nahri managed to drape one of Ali’s arms around her neck, then made her laborious way toward the small shop at the end of the dark alley—the small shop upon which she was pinning all her hopes.
The bells still rang when she opened the door, and the familiar sound as well as the aroma of herbs and tonics nearly made her double over with emotion.
“We’re closed,” came a gruff voice from the back, the old man not bothering to look up from the glass vial he was filling. “Come back tomorrow.”
At his voice, Nahri promptly lost the battle with her tears.
“I’m sorry,” she wept. “I didn’t know where else to go.”
The elderly pharmacist dropped the glass vial. It shattered on the floor, but he didn’t appear to notice.
Yaqub stared back at her, his brown eyes wide with astonishment. “Nahri?”
2
DARA
It was shocking, truly, how easy it was to kill people.
Dara stared at the devastated Geziri camp before him. Spread across the manicured grounds of the palace’s public garden, it had been a beautiful place, fit for the honored guests of a king. Towering date palms from their homeland were set in giant ceramic pots among the smaller fruit trees, and glittering mirrored lanterns hung over paths of amber pebbles. Though magic had been stripped from the camp like everywhere else in Daevabad, the silk tents gleamed in the sunlight, and the gentle burble of the water fountains carried through the silence. The aroma of flowers and frankincense contrasted sharply with the acrid smell of burnt coffee and sour meat, meals that had been ruined when the people eating them were all abruptly murdered. There was the heavier smell of blood, of course, clinging to the patches of copper vapor still lingering in the air.
But Dara was becoming so accustomed to the scent of blood that he’d stopped noticing it.
“How many?” he asked quietly.
The steward standing next to him was shaking so badly it was a miracle the man was still standing. “At least a thousand, m-my lord. They were travelers from southern Am Gezira, here for Navasatem.”
Travelers. Dara’s gaze dropped from the tents and the trees—the dreamy setting for a fairy-tale feast—to the carpets so soaked with blood it was running in tiny streams into the surrounding garden. The Geziri travelers—many of whom he assumed had never been to Daevabad, who must have so recently gazed upon the city’s famed markets and palaces with wonder—had died swiftly but not instantly. There had been enough time for many to run, only to die clutching their heads on the pebbled paths. More had died holding each other, and dozens had died in what must have been a panicked stampede to escape a small plaza set up with handicrafts. The vapor Manizheh conjured had not discriminated between young and old, or woman from man, instead killing all with equal brusqueness. Young women with embroidery, old men stringing lutes, children holding sticky sweets.
“Burn them,” Dara commanded, his voice low. He had not been able to raise his voice today, as though if he gave any opening to the part of him that wanted to scream, the part of him that wanted to throw himself in the lake, he would be undone. “Along with any other Geziri bodies found in the palace.”