With rising horror, he looked again at the crumbling bricks. At the dark hole they enclosed, a black void upon the moonlit sand. It was the well down which he’d been callously thrown centuries ago to be drowned and remade, his soul enslaved by the ifrit now casually spinning his helmet on one finger.
Dara jerked back, clutching his head. None of this made any sense, but it all suggested something unfathomable. Unconscionable.
Desperate, he reached for the first person on his mind. “N-nahri,” he stammered. He’d left her screaming his name upon the burning boat, surrounded by their enemies.
Aeshma rolled his eyes. “I did tell you he would ask for her first. The Afshins are like dogs for their Nahids, loyal no matter how many times they’re whipped.” He turned his attention back to Dara. “Your little healer is in Daevabad.”
Daevabad. His city. His Banu Nahida. The betrayal in her dark eyes, her hands on his face as she begged him to run away.
A choked cry came from his throat, and heat consumed him. He whirled around, not certain where he was going. Only knowing that he needed to get back to Daevabad.
And then in a crack of thunder and flash of scalding fire, the desert was gone.
Dara blinked. Then he reeled. He stood upon a rocky shore, a swiftly coursing river gleaming darkly beside it. On the opposite bank, limestone cliffs rose against the night sky, glowing faintly.
The Gozan River. How he had gotten here from the Dasht-e Loot in the blink of an eye was not a thing Dara could begin to comprehend—but it didn’t matter. Not now. The only thing that mattered was returning to Daevabad and saving Nahri from the destruction he’d wrought.
Dara rushed forward. The invisible threshold that hid Daevabad away from the rest of the world was mere moments from the riverbank. He had crossed it countless times in his mortal life, returning from hunting trips with his father and his assignments as a young soldier. It was a curtain that fell instantly for anyone with even a drop of daeva blood, revealing the misty green mountains that surrounded the city’s cursed lake.
But as he stood there now, nothing happened.
Panic swept him. This couldn’t be. Dara tried again, crisscrossing the plain and running the length of the river, struggling to find the veil.
On what must have been the hundredth attempt, Dara crashed to his knees. He wailed, flames bursting from his hands.
There was a crack of thunder and then the sound of running feet and Aeshma’s annoyed sigh.
A woman knelt quietly at his side. The Daeva woman whose face he’d awoken to, the one who resembled Nahri. A long moment of silence stretched between them, broken only by Dara’s ragged breaths.
He finally spoke. “Am I in hell?” he whispered, giving voice to the fear that gnawed at his heart, the uncertainty that had kept him from taking his sister’s hand to enter the garden. “Is this punishment for the things I’ve done?”
“No, Darayavahoush, you are not in hell.”
The soft assurance in her calm voice encouraged him to continue, and so he did. “I cannot cross the threshold,” he choked out. “I cannot even find it. I have been damned. I have been turned away from my home and—”
The woman gripped his shoulder, the powerful magic in her touch stealing his words. “You have not been damned,” she said firmly. “You cannot cross the threshold because you don’t carry Suleiman’s curse. Because you are free.”
Dara shook his head. “I do not understand.”
“You will.” She took his chin in her hands, and Dara found himself turning to look at her, feeling strangely compelled by the urgency in her dark eyes. “You’ve been granted more power than any daeva in millennia. We will find a way to return you to Daevabad, I promise.” Her grip tightened on his chin. “And when we do, Darayavahoush … we are going to take it. We’re going to save our people. We’re going to save Nahri.”
Dara stared at her, desperate for the chance her words offered. “Who are you?” he whispered.
Her mouth curved in a smile familiar enough to break his heart. “My name is Banu Manizheh.”
Nahri closed her eyes, lifting her face to the sun and enjoying its heat on her skin. She inhaled, savoring the earthy smell of the distant mountains and the fresh breeze off the lake.
“They’re late,” Muntadhir complained. “They’re always late. I think they like the sight of us waiting in the sun.”
Zaynab snorted. “Dhiru, you haven’t been on time for a single event in your life. Is this truly a fight you wish to pick?”
Nahri ignored their bickering, taking another deep breath of the crisp air and reveling in the stillness. It was rare she was allowed such freedom, and she intended to savor what she could of it. She’d learned the hard way that she had no other choice.
The first time Nahri had attempted sneaking out of the palace had been shortly after the night on the boat. She had been desperate for a distraction, aching to wander parts of the city she’d yet to visit, places where thoughts of Dara wouldn’t haunt her.
In response, Ghassan had her maid Dunoor brought out before her. He hexed the girl’s tongue for not reporting the Banu Nahida’s absence, stealing her ability to ever speak again.
The second time, Nahri had been moved by a surge of defiance. She and Muntadhir were soon to be wed. She was the Banu Nahida. Who was Ghassan to lock her away in her ancestor’s city? She had taken better care, making sure her companions had alibis and using the palace itself to cloak her in shadows and guide her through the most unused of corridors.
Still, Ghassan had found out. He dragged in the sleeping gate guard she’d tiptoed past and had the man scourged before her until there was not a strip of unbloodied skin on his back.
The third time, Nahri hadn’t even been sneaking around. Newly married to Muntadhir, she had merely decided to walk back to the palace from the Grand Temple on a sunny day, instead of taking her guarded litter. She’d never imagined Ghassan—now her father-in-law—would care. On the way, she’d stopped inside a small café in the Daeva Quarter, passing a lovely few moments chatting with its surprised and delighted proprietors.
The following day Ghassan had the couple brought to the palace. This time, he didn’t have to harm anyone. Nahri had no sooner seen their frightened faces than she dropped to her knees and swore never to go anywhere without permission again.
Which meant she now never turned away a chance to escape the palace walls. Aside from the royal siblings’ squabbling and the cry of a hawk, the lake was entirely silent, the air wrapping her in a blessed, heavy peace.
Her relief didn’t go unnoticed.
“Your wife looks like someone just released her from a century in prison,” Zaynab muttered from a few paces away. She kept her voice low, but Nahri had a talent for listening to whispers. “Even I’m starting to feel bad for her, and one of the vines in her garden ripped my cup from my hand the last time we had tea.”
Muntadhir shushed his sister. “I’m certain she didn’t mean it. Sometimes that just … happens when she’s around.”
“I heard one of the shedu statues bit a soldier who slapped her assistant.”
“Maybe he shouldn’t have slapped her assistant.” Muntadhir’s whisper turned sharper. “But enough of such gossip. I don’t want Abba hearing things like that.”
Nahri smiled beneath her veil, pleasantly surprised by his defense. Despite