“I had a meeting.” Nahri pushed through the doors.
Jamshid was waiting for her.
Her brother looked like he’d been there awhile, notes and books spreading across the low table, but he rose from his couch the moment she entered.
“Nahri.” Jamshid let out a relieved sigh. “There you are. I was starting to worry.”
Nahri closed the door behind her, silently cursing. Jamshid was the last person she wanted to see right now. She had limited time and couldn’t risk her overprotective brother getting even a whisper of what was going on. “Just checking on patients.”
“Ever the devoted healer.” Jamshid smiled, but the expression didn’t touch his eyes. “We need to talk.”
You have no idea. A wave of exhaustion washed over her, and Nahri glanced around, spotting a samovar. “Is that tea hot?”
“It was.”
“Good enough.” Nahri was aching for a cup and could always reheat it in her hands, one of the most genuinely blessed parts of having fire magic.
She crossed to the samovar. It had been crammed onto the same table as her accumulating pharmacy supplies, a tilting stack of tea cups sharing space with her mortar, pestle, and the assorted vials, tins, and herbs she’d gathered to make the paralysis serum for the shafit sailor. Nahri chided herself—she was normally careful about stowing away such dangerous medicines. She was lucky some unfortunate soul hadn’t come through here, topped off their tea with a bit more than sugar, and ended up frozen on the floor.
Nahri stopped, staring at the vial of serum. There was just the smallest amount left. “Jamshid,” she said softly, “would you mind taking down the storm shutters and dragging the couch onto the balcony? I could use some air.”
“Certainly.” Nahri heard him scrape back his chair. Always so eager to please. Her brother might never have the grasp of magical healing that she did, but he would be better at the bedside.
If he survived.
It took Jamshid several minutes to open the shutters and pull the couch out. Enough time for Nahri to prepare two cups of tea. Perhaps the veiling of the sky had been a peri trick, for when Nahri stepped out onto the balcony, she saw stars and a thin moon now, and through the trees, light reflecting on the ocean.
She dropped her gaze. This was the balcony upon which she’d stood with Ali, the monsoon churning in his eyes, and if Nahri never saw the ocean again, it would still be too soon. She handed Jamshid his cup of tea and then sat, taking a sip of her own.
Jamshid mirrored her motion but then made a face. “It’s gone bitter.”
Nahri smiled at him, her heart breaking. “Snob.”
“Refined,” he corrected, setting the cup back on the table. His expression turned serious. “Is the queen’s father all right?”
“He took a pretty bad fall and broke his hip and his wrist. I’ve set the bones, but not even Nahid magic erases old age. I think for now we do what we can while preparing his family.”
Jamshid sighed. “I don’t have much warmth for the queen and her kin since they tossed me in a cell, but Seif seemed a kind man. How did Hatset take the news?”
“Like you’d expect a woman who’s had her husband murdered, her son abducted, and her daughter threatened with imminent execution.”
Jamshid leaned forward on his knees. “I need to go back to Daevabad. We don’t have a choice.”
“We might.”
“Nahri, come on. We’ve discussed—”
“A peri came to me.”
Her brother jerked upright, staring at her with stunned eyes. “I’m sorry, a what?”
“A peri came to me.” Nahri set down her tea, trying to judge the minutes, and then, for one of the first times in her life, she told someone everything without prodding. From being plucked out of the hallway and soaring on the shedu to the vast chamber of snowy clouds and the peris’ infuriating “guidance.”
Jamshid didn’t interrupt. He grew paler as she continued, but there was no despair, no shock—not even when she showed him the icy dagger and explained what was expected of her. He just listened.
A long moment of silence stretched between them when Nahri was done. Jamshid opened and closed his mouth, but it was the trembling in his hands Nahri looked for and the drop in his shoulders.
He finally spoke. “So there’s a shedu on the roof?”
“Waiting for his fruit, yes.”
“Suleiman’s eye.” Jamshid exhaled. “All right, I know this seems bad. But we’ve been searching for a way to take down Dara and Manizheh, right?”
Nahri was already shaking her head. “They said the dagger couldn’t be used on Manizheh. Even if we succeed with Dara, Manizheh and her ifrit will still be there.”
“And considering the things Saman was saying about her and those poor firebirds penned up on the beach—” He grimaced. “She must have some sort of magic.”
The peris’ vague words came back to Nahri. She has taken a step we didn’t anticipate. The half-dead simurgh and the hundreds of slaughtered Daevas … what had Manizheh done to have finally frightened the peris into taking action? “I believe so, yes.”
“Then we go back together,” Jamshid said firmly, his decision obviously made. “We fight together. I can handle the Afshin. You shouldn’t have to—” He reached out as if to touch her shoulder in assurance.
His hand quaked badly and then fell back to his lap.
“I’m sorry, big brother,” Nahri said quietly. “But you won’t be coming with me.”
Jamshid attempted to push himself up from the couch. He had barely taken two staggering steps when he collapsed, his legs giving out.
“The tea …” His voice was already thicker. He looked at her wildly. “You poisoned me?”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “But I mean, you did sort of give me the idea.”
“My legs …” Jamshid’s expression twisted with horror. And not just horror—with utter betrayal. “No.” He grasped for his legs, clearly struggling to drag them up. “How could you do this to me again?” he choked out.
Nahri had not known until that moment how truly
