“Oh, can I?” She set down the hook, suddenly angry at the presumption in his words. “Because you’ve certainly never made me feel like I could talk about being shafit.”
Jamshid took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I truly am. I would never have said those things about the shafit if I—”
“I don’t just want you not to say them.” Nahri tried to steady the tremor in her voice. “I want you not to think them at all.”
He winced in shame. “Fair. Look, I won’t pretend I know how hard it must have been to be among our people and hear the things we say about shafit. I won’t. But you’re not the only one who’s had to pretend to be different, who’s had to smile politely when people with power insult the parts of you that you never get to wear openly. I wish you had trusted me. But more than that, I wish I had behaved in a way that would have encouraged you to trust me.”
Nahri crossed her arms, trying to muster more anger as her eyes pricked again with tears. “Do you have to do that?” she asked. “Sound all reasonable and kind?”
“I have a lot of experience in loving frustrating people. I can outpatience you any day, little sister.”
“If you make me cry, I’m going to stab you.”
“Then I’m going to take this away,” Jamshid said mildly, moving the tray of instruments. “Why don’t you wash up? You can wring out a rag and pretend it’s my neck while I talk.”
Nahri glared but had to force it as she headed for the washbasin.
He continued. “I understand why you didn’t tell me you were shafit. I might not like it, but I understand. But you should have told me about the marid, especially if you knew how entwined they were in all this. Do you have any idea how many references to Tiamat I’d read and set aside? We need to be able to trust each other if we’re going to fight back.”
If we’re going to fight back. Only a small change in phrasing, and yet didn’t that say it all? In many ways, Ali had been the glue holding this fragile alliance of djinn and Daeva and shafit together in Ta Ntry, and his possible loss was a setback they were all still dancing around.
Everything I build gets broken. Nahri gripped the edge of the washbasin. “I don’t want to talk about this right now.”
“Then I’ll keep talking. Because I’m being a bit of a hypocrite. There’s a secret I’ve kept from you.”
“There is?”
Guilt swept over Jamshid’s face. “It was me at the feast,” he confessed. “I was the one who poisoned Ali.”
Nahri’s jaw dropped. “I don’t believe it.”
“I didn’t mean to kill him.” Jamshid flushed. “I wanted to scare him into leaving Daevabad. The poison was a formula from a scrap of old notes that a … friend from my Temple days and I discovered and messed around with when we were young and stupid. It never had that kind of effect when he brewed it.”
“When you were young and stupid? Just to clarify, you mixed up a poison you learned from an old lover and gave it to a prince—to Ghassan’s son—in public, and you think you were stupid when you were young?”
“I think I was a fool. A desperate, arrogant fool who got an innocent servant killed and who knows how many others beaten and terrorized during interrogations. And I’ll answer for that on the day of my judgment. But I didn’t think of any of that when I decided to do it, Nahri. All I saw was Muntadhir. I was convinced Ali came back to replace him. I was convinced he was dangerous. Muntadhir was falling apart, and I knew he didn’t have it in him to protect himself. So I did. It was the worst thing I’ve ever done in my life, and I didn’t blink an eye.”
Nahri studied him with alarm. “I hope you don’t plan on unburdening yourself to anyone else about this. Hatset and Wajed are looking for an excuse to toss you in a cell.”
“I have no intention of returning to a cell in Ta Ntry or anywhere else,” Jamshid declared. “I’m telling you because I want us to be honest with each other. And because I know how hard it is to think clearly when someone you love is in danger.”
Nahri flinched. Jamshid had a courtier’s tongue and he chose his words carefully.
When she spoke again, her voice was quiet. “Nisreen asked me once what my heart wanted. Do you know what I told her?”
Jamshid’s eyes had filled with sorrow upon Nisreen’s name. “What?”
“That I didn’t know. That I feared even thinking about the things that would make me happy would destroy them. And it does,” she whispered. Had she not finally kissed Ali only to send him to his doom? “Even just talking like this …”
“Talking like this what?” he asked.
I’m afraid to get close to you. Nahri lost everyone she loved, everything she wanted. How could she risk Jamshid as well?
But a knock on the door saved her from a reply. “Banu Nahida?” a muffled voice called.
Nahri gripped the washcloth. “Come in.”
It was Musa. “Forgive me,” he greeted her, barely checked worry in his expression. “But we have a visitor from Daevabad.”
THE PAIR OF CREATURES ON THE BEACH MADE EVERY hair on the back of Nahri’s neck rise from ten paces away. From a distance they might have been normal, healthy simurgh, the firebirds Daevas enjoyed racing.
Except nothing about these firebirds was normal. Their brilliant feathers, typically in dazzling shades of crimson, saffron, and gold, were dull, limned with ash and purple-hued boils. Flies buzzed over their glassy, vacant eyes, and foam dripped from their half-open beaks.
“They haven’t moved.” Musa sounded ill. Jamshid was gone, dressing to meet their mysterious visitor. “At first, we thought we might have to corral them, but they haven’t moved. They
