They knew she was the kind of person who would strike a deal.
So this was what it had come to, then. For all Nahri’s efforts, she was still caught beneath the thumbs of more powerful brokers. A queen who would keep her as a vulnerable guest, a mother who would lock her away. Or a pawn, a well-rewarded weapon.
And it was still a wildly impossible goal. Kill Dara—Dara, a man who would have been worshipped as a war god in an earlier era. Even with a legendary mount and a celestial weapon, it seemed a ludicrous proposition.
But it’s not.
Nahri remembered Dara in the palace corridor where it had all gone wrong, clutching her hands as he begged for understanding. You weren’t supposed to see it. He had wanted so desperately to save her. He loved her.
It was his weakness. And it might be the only thing that made him an easy mark.
Nahri stared at the dagger, but no one moved. “You must take it for yourself,” the ruby peri explained. “We cannot put it in your hands.”
“Of course not. You wouldn’t want to interfere.” But Nahri knelt, picking up the dagger from the soft snow. The hilt was so cold that it stung her hands, and she found herself quietly checking her healing magic. The pain felt deserved.
You won’t pick yourself up from this. Nahri had lost her mentor and her best friend. If she went back to Daevabad to murder her Afshin, the charismatic warrior who’d once stolen her heart—smiling and feigning affection as she plunged a dagger into his chest at the behest of these meddling creatures—it would break Nahri in a way she didn’t think she’d recover from. If she survived, she’d have her brother, her Daevas. She might oversee the rebirth of her city.
But she’d have sold a part of her soul.
And that, apparently, was exactly the sacrifice she was being asked to make.
Nahri straightened up and slid the peri’s dagger into the folds of her belt. She reached for the shedu, trying to take some assurance in the cozy heat of its fur. By the time she spoke again, she made sure her voice were steady.
“You should take me back to Ta Ntry now. There is not much time.”
40
DARA
Fiza did not seem thrilled with Ali’s transformation.
“Aghhh!” The pirate captain scrambled backward on the riverbank, drawing her pistol and pointing it in his face. “Demon! What did you do to him?”
Ali dodged the pistol. “Nothing! Fiza, it’s me, I swear!”
She didn’t lower the weapon, her hand shaking. “What the fuck is wrong with your eyes?” Her gaze darted to his arms, the silver-scaled lines dazzling in the early morning light as they traced wild patterns across his bare skin. “What is wrong with your everything?”
Ali paused. Sobek had taken them from Tiamat’s realm back to the Nile, but it wasn’t the winding desert river he and Nahri had sailed. Instead, they sat at the foot of a lush green plateau, the mighty river plunging over in a wall of waterfalls that stretched into the distance. Between the mist and the churning water, Ali hadn’t gotten a good look at his reflection.
My eyes. His eyes had been an exact mirror of Ghassan’s, the most visible sign of his Geziri heritage.
Gone now, apparently. “I had to make some choices. But forget all that. Are you okay?” he asked worriedly, nodding at her black eye. “It looks like you took a bad blow to the head.”
“Yes, the ocean rising around us and punching me in the face left a mark.” Fiza finally lowered the pistol and then groaned as seawater poured from it. “Damn, I was fond of that! Where are we? And what happened? The last thing I remember is the ship getting gobbled up.”
Ali hesitated again, having no idea how to describe what had happened at the bottom of the sea without alarming Fiza further. Between getting chased by a massive scorpion-man, participating in a forced gladiatorial match with his literal pagan past, or having a thousand memories dumped into his brain as part of a pact with a colossal chaos spirit, he didn’t know where to start.
So he just said, “I met Tiamat. We didn’t really get along.”
Fiza gave him an incredulous look. “You didn’t really get along? That’s not an encouraging statement, prince.” She glanced around. “Where’s the boat? Where’s the ocean? Where’s—” She screamed again, the pistol reappearing. “What is that?”
Sobek had rejoined them.
The Nile marid had emerged from the muddy water in his less frightening form, but he didn’t need to be gnashing crocodile teeth to be unsettling—the green of his rough hide and dappled yellow-and-black eyes were enough.
Ali quickly stepped between them, lowering Fiza’s hand. “This is Sobek. My … great-grandfather. In a way. He’s not going to hurt you, I promise.” He glanced at Sobek. “Right?”
Sobek’s unearthly stare didn’t waver. “I have already eaten.”
Fiza closed her eyes. “I never again want to hear that shafit are the source of our world’s problems. Never.”
Sobek’s gaze narrowed on Ali. “Are you ready?”
Ali’s heart skipped, but he’d already paid Tiamat’s price. He might as well claim the knowledge that had cost him so dearly. “Will you be okay here for a little while?” he asked Fiza.
“With him? No!”
“He’s coming with me.”
“Where are you going?”
“To deal with some family history.”
THE GLADE SOBEK LED HIM TO WAS BEAUTIFUL, ONE of the loveliest places Ali had ever seen. Despite a waterfall that cascaded down a flower- and vine-covered cliff, the river was remarkably still, and there was a quiet to the air that seemed sacred. The lush scene could have been plucked from Paradise—a dragonfly lazily dipping over a water lily, a heron stalking the shallows, and a slender antelope drinking from the edge. The animals had all briefly frozen when Sobek appeared, the instinctual response of prey, before relaxing and continuing as if they weren’t in the presence of a marid and a djinn who’d recently tried to kill each other.
“This is one
