Tears blurred her vision. “I couldn’t think of another way.” She crossed the space between them to lift him off the floor. She wouldn’t have him found like this. “It will wear off by tomorrow, I swear.”
Jamshid grabbed her when she tried to pull away, tangling his hands in her shawl as his strength continued fading. “Don’t,” he panted. “Please. You’ll be outnumbered. They’ll kill you!”
“Then I’ll take as many of them with me as I can.” Nahri shoved her brother’s hands away. “Please understand. I’ve lost everyone I’ve dared to love. I can’t lose you. Not you. You’re good, and you’re kind and you’re going to be a great healer …” Her voice broke at the anguish in Jamshid’s expression. He was scrabbling for her skirts, her wrists, but Nahri stepped out of arm’s reach. “If you get back to Daevabad, take the Nahid texts and go to Subha. You can teach each other.”
“Please don’t do this,” Jamshid begged, tears rolling down his cheeks. “Nahri, you’re not alone anymore. You don’t have to do this all by yourself! We could wait.” He tried again, clearly searching for any reason to delay her. “Alizayd might still come back!”
He’d picked the wrong thing to say. If Nahri had been clinging to her last shreds of hope and optimism, the peris’ cynical deal might as well have snatched them from her fingers. She had been foolish to make Ali promise to return; she’d all but sealed his fate the moment she’d opened her heart to him.
“I don’t think Ali’s coming back, Jamshid.”
“Nahri, don’t,” he cried, his voice growing weaker as she turned and walked away. “You’re my sister. We can do this together. I don’t need you to save me!”
I don’t need you to save me.
Had those not been the words—the exact words—she had flung at Dara the night he’d stolen into her bedroom, intent on “rescuing” her from her decision to marry Muntadhir? The night everything had gone so spectacularly wrong?
You’re doing to Jamshid exactly what Dara did to you. And Nahri was doing so just as violently, incapacitating her brother in a callous mirror of the way he’d suffered for years. It was as vicious as Dara putting a sword to Ali’s neck and telling her to choose.
And Jamshid was a warrior. He was clever and brave. He could be an asset, a valuable ally. Nahri could see them flying back to Daevabad together, fighting side by side. She wouldn’t have to be alone; she wouldn’t have to confront this awful task alone.
But then the memories came to her. Dara crumbling to ash and the light leaving Nisreen’s eyes. The slaughtered shafit in the workcamp and the murdered Daevas from the parade. Ali begging her to cut the seal from his heart, with the lips she’d just kissed.
Everything I build gets broken. Nahri stepped back from her brother as if she’d been burned.
“I’m sorry, Jamshid,” she said as she reached for the door. “I really am.”
PART THREE
42
NAHRI
When the sun was at its zenith, burning straight down upon the dusty plains that bordered the Gozan River, Nahri stepped out of the shade of her shedu’s wing and got ready.
First went her shabby clothing: the wool robe she’d worn to protect herself from the chilly air high above the earth. Underneath Nahri was dressed in a sky-blue gown that fell to her shins, patterned with bronze sunbursts. Leggings in the same color were tucked into comfortable riding boots she could run in. She rewrapped her gold-and-green headscarf, taking care to pin the cotton so the wind wouldn’t wrench it away. Nahri had chosen her clothes with care—colors reminiscent of the Nahids’ imperial past, and cuts that would allow her to flee if this all blew up in her face.
She opened her bag, taking a sprig of the sweet basil she’d swiped from the castle kitchen back in Shefala. For luck, Nisreen had told her many years ago, twining a similar sprig in Nahri’s braid before her first day in the infirmary.
I miss you, my friend. I wish your last moments had not been so violent, and I wish that you’d trusted me. Nahri didn’t think she’d ever make peace with the knowledge that her beloved mentor had been a partner in Manizheh’s conspiracy, but she also wasn’t going to waste her life regretting other people’s choices. Especially not when she had a city to save. Instead, Nahri tucked the basil sprig under her headscarf and moved on.
Her shedu was busy rustling through the basket of fruit she’d brought.
“There are no more apricots left, you picky creature.” Despite the rebuke, Nahri reached out to ruffle his mane, scratching behind his ear when he pressed his nose into her chest with a happy grumble. “Maybe I should call you ‘Mishmish’ for how much you love them.”
He tore apart the basket in response. Nahri caught a glimpse of a last apricot, stuck in the straw fiber, before the giant lion ate it, basket and all.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
Steeling herself, Nahri reached deeper into her bag. There was just one more thing she needed.
The peri’s dagger.
She removed it, the blade gleaming silver bright in the sunlight, so razor-sharp that the barest press of her finger drew blood. It had remained icy to the touch and shone wetly. Fairly small, it took little effort to flick the dagger from her belt and shove it upward, an easy motion for a former cutpurse who still liked her knives compact.
The size is probably deliberate. They’ve probably been watching, waiting for years for the right person, the right mark to take him down.
Nahri stared at the knife. A single thrust to the heart, the peri had said.
Dara’s hands on her face, his green eyes pleading. It’s going to be okay, he’d promised as they stood in the palace thick with slaughter. She’s going to set everything right.
“We’ll see about that,” Nahri muttered, sliding
