Dara lunged at the ifrit, who was probably regretting his decision to free him. The sudden movement made his head spin, and he clutched at Vizaresh’s collar. Creator, what had happened to him? Dara had never felt this fractured, like the pathways between his mind and body had been broken and badly pieced back together.
“Where is my ring?” he wheezed, wrapping his hands around the ifrit’s throat.
Vizaresh writhed, spitting fire. “Gone,” he choked out, nodding at Dara’s right wrist. “You’ve that now.”
Dropping him, Dara glanced down. He recoiled at the contraption embedded in his wrist. A brass sheath like an archer’s bracer bordered by raw scar tissue and seeping, gold-flecked black blood. Set in the center was his relic, the amulet hammered out and flattened.
What is that? What has been done to me?
Sick with dread, Dara forced himself to look around. They were in the palace infirmary, but it had been emptied save for him and Vizaresh. Tools he couldn’t recognize, scorched rags, and broken apothecary bottles littered the worktables as though someone had gone into a frenzy.
Dara shoved aside his broken chains. He’d been strapped to a low metal table set over a smoldering fire, and the smoke smelled wrong. He searched for what might have fed the flames, but there were no charred pieces of wood, or any oil. Instead, frayed bits of crumbling linen drifted through the air. Dara swept a hand through the ash lying thick in his lap, examining the crumbling remains. Tiny black shards peppered the pale dust.
Bone.
He reeled. “What is this?” There was so much ash. So much. “What did she do?”
Vizaresh had backed away and was massaging his throat. “You were all but dead by the time Aeshma and I brought you back. One of your traitors injected you with iron solution. A brilliantly ghastly idea, to be honest. It’s still in you. Manizheh said there was no way to extract it from your blood without her magic. So she needed another way to save you.” His gaze met Dara’s, vicious and knowing. “How fortunate she was in possession of her dead kin. You know what they say about the power of the Nahid—”
Dara cried out, heaving away the bone fragments in his hands and trying to scramble out of the burning pit. He stumbled to his knees and sent up more clouds of ash. It was on his tongue, in his eyes, clinging to his skin.
The Nahid bodies from the crypt, oh, Creator. Men and women and children, all who’d died under the Qahtanis’ thumb. His blessed Nahids, denied the peace of death to rot under the lake and then only burned so their sacred flame could bring back an abomination—him. Dara lurched from the ash, landing on the cold tile and retching a molten substance that scorched the floor.
Vizaresh was laughing. “Oh, Afshin, don’t despair! At least she survived. Such a nasty business, coups. I’ve seen my slaves dragged into more than I can count, and they’re always so much more violent than originally planned. When they’re not successful, however?” The ifrit’s eyes glittered. “Nothing quite as vicious as vengeance from those who almost lost power.”
Dara clutched for a stool, trying to climb to his feet. “Where is she?”
“In the arena. It was the only place big enough.”
The only place big enough? Dara moved forward, the entire room swaying. Desperate, he called for his magic, but it came to him in jerky, uneven waves. Fire swept over him in patches, only one hand turning to flame, the pain vanishing down his left side but not his right.
Creator, what is wrong with me? Dara made it to the infirmary door and fumbled as if drunk for the handle.
“You should have flown, Afshin,” Vizaresh said again. “The Nahids do not deserve your loyalty. No one in their world does. Were you a wiser man, you would have seen that before destroying yourself for them.”
“I am part of the reason for their world being the way it is. I will not abandon them.” Dara pulled open the door.
And then he prayed he was not too late to save his Banu Nahida.
THE PALACE WAS EERIE, SILENT AND EMPTY, THOUGH the bright sun streaming through the stone balustrades indicated it was midday. Dara’s heart raced, his breath echoing raggedly in the dusty corridors. Where were all the stewards? The servants and soldiers and scribes? The dozens of people who should have been milling about and hustling between appointments, all involved in the anxious running of a new, haphazard government attempting to stave off civil war and mass starvation?
Manizheh is alive, Vizaresh had said. His Banu Nahida had survived. Dara tried to banish all other thoughts as he rushed forward. They could fix this. He could still fix whatever this was.
The stench of blood hit him when he was still very, very far from the arena.
By the time Dara was staggering through a back passage, the miasma of rot and released bowels was so thick on the air that it choked him. It was the smell of a battlefield, bringing him back to the worst memories of his life. But there should have been no battlefield in the arena, in this palace—in the heart of the Daeva Quarter that Dara had done everything to protect. How could the djinn have broken in? How many people had they killed?
At the sound of a woman’s scream, he broke into an uneven run. Finding the door ahead locked, he kicked it down with a grunt.
Dara had two arrows pointed at him in an instant. And yet the sight brought him relief—their bows were held by his warriors.
“Afshin,” one of the men, Piroz, breathed. “Thank
