Her magic, Jamshid’s magic, everything instantly fell. The water splashed down from Ali’s fingers, and then he screamed, a raw, wrenching howl as his entire body spasmed. His hands flew toward his open chest, and Nahri grabbed them before he could hurt himself, dropping her scalpel and the seal ring to the ground in her haste.
Ali’s eyes were already rolling up, the lids fluttering shut as he slumped back against the table. But the movement had jarred his chest, the trickle of blood giving way to thicker gushes.
She fought panic, quickly stanching the blood with gauze and reaching for her suture supplies. “Jamshid, get that damn thing on your finger.” It seemed like the passing of Suleiman’s seal to a Nahid for the first time in centuries should have been marked by something a bit more ceremonious than the last Baga Nahid scrambling on the floor while his sister desperately pinched shut a heart membrane, but the time for that was lost. Jamshid bumped the table, cursing as he crawled after the rolling ring. He did as she asked, though, grabbing and shoving it on his finger without a second’s pause.
Ali’s heart was slowing. Nahri bent over his bloody chest, carefully pulling through her first suture. If she could just close the incision … “Jamshid, what’s happening?” she called over her shoulder.
“Nothing! It’s—it’s just staying on my finger. It’s not vanishing like you said it would.”
“What?” Her own heart dropped. “Can you feel your magic?”
“No, I don’t feel—”
Every flame in the room soared higher. Jamshid cried out, and Nahri risked a glance back to see him fall to his knees.
“Suleiman’s eye, this burns.” He raised his hands, fire swirling through them. “I can’t control this.”
“I need you to try.” Nahri added a second stitch. Why in God’s name was Ali’s heart still slowing? The bleeding was under control, and it was only the outer membrane she’d pierced. “Can you use Nahid magic?” she asked, switching to Arabic. “Can you understand me?”
“Aywa,” Jamshid responded automatically and then gasped. “Oh, that’s strange.”
Ali’s heart gave a gentle push beneath her fingers. Still holding the membrane closed, Nahri drew her needle through a third suture. Ali, please hang on. “Test your healing abilities on yourself.”
“But there’s nothing wrong with me.”
“Then make something wrong with you. We’re in a room full of knives!”
Jamshid muttered something rude but then plucked up another of her razor-sharp medical tools. He pierced his skin, drawing a deep cut on his forearm.
It healed instantly.
Her brother’s eyes went wide. “Oh.”
“Now get over here.”
Jamshid staggered to her side. “I feel like I just ate a firebird and washed it down with a dozen bottles of wine,” he said, clutching his head. “I … everything is so loud. The hearts of everyone in the castle, your breathing … I feel like my brain is going to explode.”
“Just breathe.” Nahri finished her stitch and then glanced up to see Jamshid squeezing his eyes shut, his face creased with pain. “Jamshid? Take a deep breath, all right, and try to shut the rest of it out. I know it’s overwhelming, but we don’t have much time.”
He managed a nod. With a quick prayer, Nahri removed one of her hands from Ali’s chest and reached out to take Jamshid’s. Like he said, the ring was still there, bloody and glittering from his pinky. Nahri pressed her thumb against the band.
She felt nothing but the metal. There wasn’t even a hint of her magic sparking to life.
Ali’s heart shuddered against her other hand, the faintest pulse yet, driving her to another decision. “Jamshid, I need you to heal him. I still can’t use my magic.”
His eyes shot open. “But your sutures …”
“It’s not working. I’ll walk you through the healing magic, I promise. But we need to be fast.” Her voice cracked in fear. “Jamshid, I can’t lose him. Please.”
“Tell me what to do.”
“Place your hands on his heart. Gently,” she added, guiding his fingers. “And try to open your mind. Tell me what you see.”
Jamshid was trembling. “I don’t know. I feel like I’m seeing ten things at once. There’s his heart in front of me, but there’s also liquid beneath and movement and buzzing—”
“Concentrate on his heart. His pulse is failing. Tell me what’s going on with the blood.”
Jamshid shut his eyes again. “It’s coming through here,” he whispered, gesturing to the right side of Ali’s heart. “Then going out to—to something billowing open and shut …”
“His lungs,” Nahri explained. “What then?”
“It pumps back through here.” Jamshid’s finger moved across Ali’s heart, hovering just over the membrane she’d stitched closed. “And then …” He frowned. “It slows. There’s some sort of block, a clot.”
“Can you dissolve it?” she urged. “Visualize it falling apart, and then command it to heal. It’s like any other magic; you need to focus. You can even say the words aloud.”
He swallowed loudly. “I’ll try.” He shifted his hands. “Heal,” he whispered in Divasti. Ash beaded from his furrowed brow. “Heal … I think it’s working—”
Ali’s heart abruptly shuddered and swelled, and then the membrane Nahri had carefully sutured shut burst apart with a spray of black blood that drenched them both.
“No!” Jamshid cried, reaching with both hands for Ali’s heart. “Creator, no! I didn’t mean to do that!”
Blood was gushing from Ali’s chest with each pulse, filling the cavity and obscuring his heart as it poured over the table.
“Nahri, I don’t know what to do!”
Nahri stared at the bloody table, her brother’s shouts suddenly distant. But it wasn’t a patient she was looking at, a body that needed fixing and one where she could divide her head and her heart.
It was Ali. The obnoxious young prince she’d fought with on her first day in Daevabad and the man who’d held her as she wept on the beach and made her feel like she could be open in a way she was with no one else. It was the Geziri elder in the infirmary, the first patient
