But then the monsoon marid rushed forward, an icy, wet chill brushing over her skin. You bluff. You think yourself clever, and yet you’ve turned on your own blood to protect an instrument meant to destroy you.
“That is enough,” Sobek declared. “Tiamat’s envoy will be leaving now.” He returned his glare to the monsoon marid. “I will handle this.”
You have handled nothing. Our patience is gone, Sobek. You and your daeva pet are to submit yourself to Tiamat by the next risen tide.
The Nile marid growled. “She does not command me.”
The other marid rippled through the air as though laughing. River lord, do you believe the Blessed One would have sent me to beg? You and your hatchling will submit yourselves, or she will come personally to this land and pluck him away.
Sobek immediately stilled, his entire demeanor changing. “She would not. There are tens of thousands of mortals on this coast. We are not permitted to hurt—”
The cold laughter again. But we are, don’t you see? He is ours, and we are permitted to hurt him. It is his decision whether to remain among so very many potential victims.
Ali rocked back on his feet. “What does that mean?”
But the monsoon marid’s foggy presence was already rising. I have delivered our message. Were you wise, Sobek, you would heed it. Give yourselves to Tiamat by the next risen tide, or see this land devoured.
In the next second, the monsoon marid was gone. The sky lightened by a fraction, but the rain stayed steady, pattering on the leaves and ground around them.
Ali’s face was ashen. “They … they cannot do that. Surely they cannot do that.”
Sobek moved for him. “You will come with me.”
Nahri stepped between them. “No, he won’t. What does that mean, that Tiamat will devour the land?”
Sobek’s eyes pinned hers, and it took everything Nahri had in her not to crumble. Yet she couldn’t look away from his petrifying, beautiful face. She wanted to move closer as much as she wanted to flee, suddenly seeing herself dragged beneath muddy water, feeling teeth break through her flesh.
“It means that if he is here, a wave higher than your Pyramids is going drown this entire coast by morning.” Sobek spun on Ali with a snarl. “I tried to warn you. I told you to run to your deserts, to avoid my kind!”
“You told me I had a place in my world and should return to it,” Ali shot back, sounding just as enraged. “That’s not a warning. Had you said, ‘attracting their attention will result in an ocean demon killing tens of thousands,’ maybe I would have acted differently!”
Tens of thousands. By God. Nahri stared at the arguing pair, trying to wrap her head around the enormity of the threat. She probably should have told Ali to shut up, to stop fighting with the literal lord of the Nile as if this were some family feud.
A family feud.
“Why did it call him kin?” Nahri demanded, praying she was wrong. Praying the instincts that usually served her so well were wildly off the mark.
Ali stopped yelling at Sobek, glancing at her like she’d lost her mind. “What?”
Sobek growled, flashing dagger-sharp teeth. “This does not concern you, Nahid.”
No. Oh no. But Nahri could see it, the puzzle piece that had been missing falling into place with the others she already knew. The water that had healed Ali’s stab wounds long before the marid on Daevabad’s lake ever touched him. The marid’s careful plans to kill Dara with another daeva falling apart, creating the weapon they feared—the weapon they couldn’t touch.
The weapon Ali hadn’t been able to touch.
Sobek’s hatchling, Sobek’s spawn. The words the monsoon marid had flung at Ali hadn’t just been insults.
Ali was looking between them. “What? What is it?”
Nahri couldn’t speak. Her mouth was dry, her mind shouting a conclusion that should have been impossible. One that could fracture their world and devastate the man before her, the man she’d tried so hard to protect.
And yet they had promised to be honest with each other.
“You’re marid,” she whispered. She didn’t know how else to say it because she could not put words like “family” and “kin” between the Ali she knew and the fog-shrouded crocodile wraith glaring at her. “You’re his.”
The slow ripple of horror across Ali’s face was a terrible thing to witness.
“I’m not,” Ali stammered. “That’s impossible. That’s ridiculous.” But his voice broke with emotion—Nahri could see him putting together the same pieces she had. “I have ancestors. Djinn ancestors! Sobek …” He whirled on the silent marid. “Tell her that’s impossible.”
The Nile marid shifted in the mists, the glistening scales vanishing beneath his skin and leaving him looking slightly less reptilian. When he finally spoke, his voice had softened to the quiet murmur of a gentle stream, water still relentless enough to cave in its banks and destroy its own foundation.
“I have seen much violence in the mortal lands I divide,” he began. “I have watched how they fight, how they plot. How a walled city seen to be safe might be compromised.” His unearthly eyes blinked, the irises flickering. “I could not directly attack Anahid and her ilk. So I created a breach.”
“A breach?” Ali had gone gray.
Sobek hissed. “You have seen my memories, Alizayd al Qahtani. You know how Anahid stole our lake and forced our people into servitude. I narrowly escaped, but I found new daevas in the lands along my river as well. They were transformed; frail, frightened things trying to make sense of their new world. Closer to humans, to the mortal brides I was used to.
“I took a woman of these new daevas. One who was not afraid to enter my waters, who was clever enough to see the promise in such a pact. And then I raised your kin—my kin—from the dust to become one of the most powerful clans in their land. I taught them how to swim the currents and summon palaces from the sea. All I
