No. Nahri made a strangled sound of protest, more blood dripping from her mouth.
The sound must have caught Manizheh’s attention, for her aunt briefly glanced away from her Afshin, to the niece she’d accused of betraying her. The woman Dara had loved, now bleeding on the dirty ground for having tried to attack her.
When Manizheh looked at Dara again, the doubt in her gaze was gone.
“Save the city, Afshin,” Manizheh said softly. “Save our people.”
Dara’s eyes glimmered with new wetness. “Thank you, my lady.” He drew back the arrow.
And then he plunged it through Manizheh’s throat.
Nahri choked, not believing her own eyes.
But Dara was already reaching for the knife at his waist, his sorrow-filled gaze for Manizheh alone.
“I am sorry,” he whispered as Manizheh rocked back, her hands going to her gushing throat. “I truly am.”
He thrust the knife through the side of her chest, a clean blow straight to the lungs.
Manizheh didn’t make a sound. She looked bewildered, her black eyes wide with pain.
Then she fell. The smoke holding Jamshid burst and he rushed over, just in time to catch Manizheh as she collapsed.
“Mother, wait … just wait.” Jamshid was frantic, reaching to stem the wound.
And now Dara was coming for Nahri.
Still not comprehending what was going on, knowing only that someone who had hurt her was growing nearer, Nahri tried to crawl back and let out a guttural moan as the motion jarred the arrow still speared through her shoulder.
“Forgive me, little thief. I knew not of another way.” Dara knelt at Nahri’s side, placing one hand on her shoulder and the other on the arrow. “Close your eyes. It will be fast.”
Entirely uncertain whether he meant to kill her or save her, Nahri gritted her teeth as Dara snapped off the silver fletching as though it were made of kindling. But she couldn’t help the scream that tore from her mouth as he pulled the arrow out of her chest.
“I am sorry,” he said again, his hushed words a mirror of what he’d just told Manizheh, bleeding to death in Jamshid’s arms. “She was unraveling, and I saw an opportunity …”
“… to trick her,” Nahri finished, understanding the intent behind Dara’s brutal denouncement. And what better way than by tearing down Manizheh’s enemy and appealing to the most vicious things she believed? Tears rolled down Nahri’s cheeks, not all due to physical pain. Her wound was already healing. “Okay.” She didn’t know what else to say.
“Nahri …” It was Jamshid, his panicked gaze darting to hers. “Nahri—I can’t heal her! I don’t know how.”
Nahri didn’t move. This was all too surreal. And yet there was one thing she still clung to. Nahri was a Nahid, and Daevabad was her responsibility.
She would not save its foe. “No,” she said simply.
Her brother—her cousin—gave Nahri a look torn between anguish and understanding, and then Manizheh reached out with a shaking hand to touch his face. Jamshid turned back to her, still cradling her body, seeming to think if he prayed enough, he could save her.
But it had been some of the first advice Dara had given Nahri—the throat and lungs, a sure way to kill a daeva. And he was a weapon.
It was what he did best. Nahri could sense Manizheh’s heart slowing, one lung already collapsed. Her hand fell from her son’s face, leaving a smear of blood on his cheek.
Then she was gone, the most powerful of them since Anahid, dead at the hand of her Afshin.
Dara moved again, stumbling for Manizheh’s body like a drunk. He took her hand. He did so gently, reverently, still bowing his head, but there was no denying the urgency with which he removed his ring from Manizheh’s finger and then picked up one of the broken chunks of stone.
“Dara,” Nahri started to speak, trying to find her words. “I don’t think—”
He smashed the ring.
Once, twice, and then he howled, smashing it again and again with a cry that didn’t sound like anything she knew, as if it were being ripped from him. Finally he dropped the rock, falling back against the parapet and gasping for breath.
But he wasn’t done. Dara clawed at the contraption on his wrist, ripping the wires out and wrenching the plates from his skin, blood and fire pouring from him in equal measure. When it was free, he flung it away with another wail, the shackle sailing toward the lake.
Trembling, Nahri forced herself to her feet. Blood was still falling from the sky, and when she looked down upon the palace’s heart, she saw Manizheh’s beasts and ghouls running even more rampant.
This wasn’t over yet.
But then Dara let out a frightened hush of breath that stilled everything inside her.
His face was going paler by the moment, ash beading on his brow. The smoldering lines that snaked over his skin like lightning were snuffing out, turning a dull iron gray.
The next minute, she was at his side. Dara swayed, seeming to have a hard time focusing on her face. Golden blood gushed from his wrist, with more blossoming from an unseen wound on his thigh.
“Nahri,” Dara murmured, “I think we have done this dying thing before.”
Her heart broke all over again at his words. Nahri wanted to slap him and strangle him. She wanted to clutch him and save him.
Instead, Nahri swallowed hard. “What did Manizheh do to you? Dara—” She turned his cheek to face her when he started to drift off. “Talk to me,” she begged. “Tell me how to fix you.”
He blinked. “Iron,” he whispered. “They poisoned me. I was dying, and she … and she …” Tears filled his eyes. “I killed my Nahid.”
“You saved us. You did the right thing. The poison—what do you mean? How did they administer it?” She laid her other hand on his wrist, pulling for her healing magic.
It didn’t come. Nahri tried again, and then yelped, an icy jolt of
