“The rule of a woman who plotted their deaths? Who killed their kin and executes her own people?”
“Yes.” Dara threw his hands in the air. “She is hardly the worst person to sit on that throne! Are you living in a fairy tale to imagine this ends another way? I can see you and your companion are thinner. I have heard reports of famine and sickness in your quarter—in all the quarters. The sky rains frogs and shards of ice. Our orchards are blighted, and the forests are rotting. You will starve. You will fall, one by one, leaving more dead. And when Manizheh’s rage finally outweighs her patience and you are weak, we will take with force what you could have simply given.”
Her eyes blazed. “We outnumber you. The other tribes are still holding their own—”
“She has magic.”
Shock crossed Zaynab’s face. “That’s not possible. She would have used it on us by now.”
Everything inside him coiled tight. The awful truth Dara so badly didn’t want to admit, the only one that might make this girl see reason—even saying it seemed blasphemous.
“It is recent,” he finally said. “I myself do not fully understand how—she does not take me into her confidence. But I have seen her use magic. A type of magic. After the executions of the Daeva traitors and in the presence of ifrit.”
Zaynab stared at him. Her face might have been veiled, but he could see her eyes widen in the kind of instinctual fear one couldn’t hide. “What are you saying, Afshin?”
“That you are out of time.” Dara brought his hands up again in the Daeva blessing. “And I am asking—I am begging you to surrender. I do not wish to see more death, princess. Kaveh was not just her grand wazir. He was the love of her life, her closest companion since childhood, and she had to pick pieces of him up in the street. She is not going to show mercy.”
Zaynab stepped back, panic sweeping her face. Good. Dara wanted it there, wanted to stoke it until she saw sense.
“We removed our relics,” she whispered. “Her poison won’t—”
“She will find something else. Do you not understand, al Qahtani? You have lost. Save yourself and what is left of your people before their blood is on your hands.”
“My hands?” Anger spiked her words. “What about your hands? You claim you don’t wish to see more death, you come here whispering of blood magic, painting a picture of a tyrant mad with vengeance, yet if you wanted, you could end this war in a day with a single, well-aimed thrust.”
The true meaning of Zaynab’s words took a moment to land, and when it did, fury roared through Dara’s soul. “You think I would hurt her?” he asked, appalled. “I am her Afshin, she is my Nahid. If she has erred, it is only because your father—”
“My father is dead,” Zaynab cut in. “I’m not going to deny he treated her with violence or that his rule left wounds, but he is gone. And handing Daevabad over to a monster because ‘otherwise she’ll kill us all’ is not a solution.”
A monster. How easy it was for this girl who’d lived barely a few decades to declare such a thing. She hadn’t seen her people suffer for centuries. She hadn’t broken her body and soul trying to set things right, only to see her efforts implode.
And yet …
And yet. The murdered Daevas giving up their names and Aeshma’s coldly triumphant smile. The punch of magic that sent Dara flying from the arena.
I’m sorry, Afshin. But I’m doing things my way now.
Zaynab was still looking at him, and Dara broke away from her stare with a hiss, fixing his gaze on the midnight forest. A tremor of fire crackled through his fingers.
And what would you do? What could Dara do? For the thought alone of hurting Manizheh was unconscionable. She had lost her partner, her children, her magic. She’d tried to reach out to the djinn and nearly had her throne yanked out from underneath her by the Daevas she’d wanted to save.
“You wouldn’t have come here without Manizheh’s knowledge if you trusted her,” Zaynab said, her voice more urgent. “Razu thinks there’s still some good in you. Please help us.”
Manizheh’s hand on his cheek, lifting Dara’s face while he wept at the Gozan and giving him the only hope he’d had since Daevabad’s fall. Watching her as she cared for and inspired her followers in Daevastana, knitting together a ragged band of struggling survivors.
Dara clasped his hands behind his back. “I have given you my warning.”
“And I’ve given you my response. We will not surrender to her. So let me pass along a warning. You want to avoid more bloodshed? Deal with the woman at the root of it.” Zaynab turned on her heel. “We are done here.”
DARA RETURNED TO THE PALACE UTTERLY DISPIRITED. Still healing—or not healing or whatever in creation was going on—he found the hike exhausted him, and by the time he was making his way to the small room he’d claimed near the stables, every part of his body ached.
He clutched his wrist to his chest as he walked. Suleiman’s eye, the damned relic hurt, the weight of the metal tugging at his still-healing skin. Not for the first time did Dara contemplate simply cutting his wrist off and letting the consequences play out where they might. Hell could not be much worse than this.
Two warriors were waiting outside his door. One was Irtemiz, the other a new recruit, some sallow-faced youth whose name Dara could not recall.
He stopped, annoyed. “You are blocking me from my bed.”
Irtemiz looked stressed. “Afshin, where have you been? We’ve been searching for you for hours.”
Dara was suddenly very aware of the dead leaves clinging to his boots. “Walking.”
The young man frowned. “It’s the middle of the night.”
“And?” Dara glared. “In my day, had I spoken to a
