Guilt. She thinks it’s guilt I feel right now?
The door to the back of the platform opened, and his heart dropped further. Irtemiz and one of his newer recruits had a bound and gagged Muntadhir between them. The emir had been beaten; bruises and bloody gashes covered his bare, dirty skin; and his beard was hacked away.
But defiance burned in his eyes even as they shoved him to his knees in front of Manizheh. He glared up at her with open hatred.
We never had a chance with him, Dara realized. The dancer back at the feast who’d tried to warn him about Muntadhir had been right. They had killed his people and his father, so Muntadhir had struck back, planning their destruction the best way he knew how and smiling the entire time.
A new dread stole over Dara. “The djinn representatives …”
“Gone,” Manizheh replied. “They fled to their quarters like rats before the ifrit could catch them. They were in on it. All of them. Do you understand now, Afshin? There is no one we can trust. Not the Daeva nobles. Not the djinn. Not anyone who’s ever paid even lip service to Ghassan. They are poisoned. They are infected.” She reached down, grabbing Muntadhir by his hair. “And you are the disease. Look upon your allies, al Qahtani. Pleased to have more blood on your hands?”
Muntadhir gazed wordlessly upon the dead.
Dara watched more rage burn through Manizheh at the emir’s haughty silence. “Nothing? We really are pawns to you, aren’t we? Seduce one, marry another. Kill us, torture us, crush us, and then when we finally fight back, turn us against one another.” She ripped the cloth from his mouth. “Your companions are all dead. Every single Daeva who enjoyed your company. Every single one rumored to have enjoyed your company. No regrets?”
Muntadhir looked up at her. “I regret not watching you weep as you tried to find all Kaveh’s pieces.”
Dara would swear the palace itself trembled with her anger.
“Ghassan’s son until the end,” she hissed. “A selfish, venomus snake.” Manizheh nodded at the soldiers. “Hold him still. The sand fly thinks tears a weakness, so surely he won’t mind if I relieve him of the ability to have them.”
Some of Muntadhir’s courage seemed to leave at that. He writhed against the soldiers, and Dara did not miss the cruel triumph with which Irtemiz grabbed Muntadhir’s face, clapping a hand over his mouth. Irtemiz’s desire for vengeance didn’t surprise Dara—it was a desire he knew damn well he’d stoked during their years in the wilderness. A desire that would only have grown when she watched her friends and her lover die at the hands of Muntadhir’s brother, and when she’d been threatened with death in the hospital.
But Dara averted his gaze. He didn’t need to watch. Muntadhir’s scream was loud enough from behind Irtemiz’s hand.
Manizheh stepped back, and they dropped him. Muntadhir fell to his knees with an agonized wail in Geziriyya, blood pouring from where his left eye should have been.
“I shall leave you the other for now,” Manizheh said coldly. “For I want you to look upon your sister when I catch her. I want her death to be the last thing you see.”
At that, Dara spoke up again. “Banu Manizheh, if you kill the princess, her mother—”
“I have taken care of Hatset and her message. I have taken care of it all.” She gazed at him. “You should go, Afshin. I do not think you are entirely recovered.”
She lifted a hand. And then, with a beckoning motion, she did something she should not have been able to do.
Manizheh used magic.
The door behind him flew open with a bang, and a gust of wind hit him in the chest, a firm push. Dara stumbled back, shocked and betrayed.
“Forgive me, Afshin. But I’m doing things my way now.”
32
ALI
His mother’s gaze might have been a thousand miles away. “I don’t believe it. It’s not possible. It’s not.”
Jamshid had been pacing the same route along the carpet for so long that it was beginning to make Ali dizzy. “And I’m sure Tiamat will hold off from drowning us all because we declared it impossible.”
“Then you go give yourself to her, Baga Nahid.” Hatset glared at Jamshid. “It was Anahid who stole her lake, Nahids who forced the marid to serve them. Why should my family, my son—who has done nothing to any of them—pay the price?”
Ali stayed silent. He hadn’t spoken since denying Sobek at the river, letting the Nahid siblings fill Hatset, Wajed, and Issa in on what had transpired. He didn’t know what to add that wouldn’t shatter his mother further or make the man he called uncle look as though he hadn’t just aged a hundred years. Ali was supposed to be the reckless optimist, the idealist who never gave up.
But there was no fixing this.
So he said nothing. Instead, he stared at his stinging hands, which were cracked and dry. Ali had scrubbed his skin until it bled upon his return to the castle, scouring away every last bit of moisture, every physical reminder of the monsoon marid that he could.
Not that it mattered. Ali couldn’t undo what had happened or what he’d learned.
It’s not possible. Ali found himself repeating his mother’s desperate words. He’d come to terms with the fact that his father had been ready to turn into a butcher, a man he was required to stand against. But this, oh, God. Sobek was beyond even that. He was a creature from another age, another element. A world that had required blood and rites, which Ali’s had rightfully stomped out.
Those couldn’t be his roots.
The door to his room opened, and Nahri slipped through the sliver of light. Ali dropped his gaze to the floor; he couldn’t look at her.
“Fiza is all right. She took a nasty bump to the head, but she’ll be fine.” Nahri hesitated. “But she said she was leaving.”
Ali closed his eyes.
