Her speech left her. Blackness was closing in, the snowy sky her last sight. But Nahri could still feel the cool wind dancing over her cheeks, the even colder breath when the peri leaned in.
“We agree,” the peri whispered. “But know this, daughter of Anahid … you have made an enemy today.”
The peri drove the dagger deeper.
Nahri arched in pain, her body convulsing. But then the icy blade hit an object with enough force to stop it. Her mind already shut to the world outside, Nahri’s abilities had turned inward, acute to every change in her body—the increasingly sluggish pulses in her brain, her last trickle of fresh blood circulating in her veins …
The bright, hot metal that had vanished from her finger to materialize in her heart and collide with the dagger.
Suleiman’s ring.
The dagger shattered.
The icy fragments instantly melted, all but one that fused with the ring in a flash of sharp pain. The peris’ cavern vanished, replaced by the sight of a crying Jamshid bent over her, his hands pressed against her bleeding chest.
“Nahri!” he begged, packing the wound. “Creator, no! Please!”
Jamshid. Nahri tried to say her brother’s name, but she could barely breathe past the crushing weight in her chest. She inhaled, power rippling out from around her.
“Nahri?” Jamshid looked up from her wound, and then his eyes went very, very wide. “Nahri?”
She didn’t respond. Nahri couldn’t, overwhelmed by the world around her. It was like seeing with a new set of eyes, magic lapping from her in waves. Everyone and everything had opened up, a chaos of competing heartbeats and breaking bones. The palace itself, alive in a different sort of way, the stones heavy with age and accumulated power—the blood and work and sacrifice of centuries of Nahids. And not just Nahids. Nahri could sense the marids’ presence as well—spikes of ancient strength in the scales of Tiamat laid upon the Temple garden, water magic alive and binding in the foundations and streams, in the bodies of tiny aquatic creatures crushed beneath the great building’s feet. She could feel the pain of the lake, the island’s dry presence an open wound.
She all but floated to her feet, glancing around and trying to get her bearings straight.
Dara. If the rest of the djinn and Daevas were bright lights, Dara was a blazing torch, the connection Nahri felt between Suleiman’s ring and the others completely absent. And yet she could see the iron killing him, the tiny particles spread through his blood like a deadly constellation.
She could see how easy it would be to remove them. To drag him back to life once more.
Dara stared at her, his eyes wide and wondrous even as he faded. “Creator be praised,” he said. “Are you … are we …?”
“Dead? No, not quite.” Nahri knelt, taking his hand. It was light to the touch, ash flaking from his skin.
“I think I see it,” he whispered. “The cedar grove. My sister …”
Grief crashed through Nahri. “Do you want to go to her? I can heal you, but I won’t bring you back against your will. Not again.”
Tears brimmed in Dara’s eyes as he stared into a realm Nahri couldn’t yet see. “I do not know.” He blinked, returning his tormented gaze to her. “I do not deserve to choose.”
Nahri was barely checking her own tears. She touched his face. “Your Banu Nahida is telling you to choose. You’re free, Dara. Free to go. Free to stay,” she said, her voice breaking.
Dara’s eyes briefly slid past her shoulder again. Then he closed them, looking anguished as he took a deep breath. When he opened them again, he was focused only on Nahri.
“Save me,” he begged her. “Please.”
She’d been fully prepared to murder him barely an hour earlier, but now Nahri had to fight not to sob with relief. “Oh, thank God.” She immediately positioned her hands, one over his heart and the other on his bleeding thigh.
Then she pulled, dragging the iron backward through his blood. It was something she’d never have been capable of before—something that would have killed another man.
But neither she nor Dara were normal, and so the iron came rushing out in a metallic swarm, thick and vile on the air. Nahri snapped her fingers, and it flew off and disintegrated.
His flesh healed beneath her hand in a surge of fire. His body shifted to his other form, claws and fangs erupting from his fingers and lips. The emerald vanished in his eyes, replaced by a violent swirl of flame. The magic pouring off him was enough to knock her back.
Good. Nahri might need to use it. She staggered to her feet, power nearly ripping her apart. It was only growing stronger, the sensation of magic and heat aching to burst from her skin and stream from her fingers.
Because it wasn’t hers alone. Nahri gripped the parapet, gazing out at her city. At her world, broken and bleeding.
Then she healed it, giving everything she could, everything she had to the people Suleiman had marked so long ago. To Jamshid, her fellow Nahid, gasping as his healing magic shot back through his own injuries. To Fiza and the other shafit, who felt no different to Nahri than the so-called purebloods battling at their side. To the Daevas in her quarter and the Sahrayn on the distant edge of the world. She dismantled the conjured beasts and the cruel blood magic controlling the ghouls as easily as blowing out a candle.
My home. Nahri beckoned, drawing back conjured buildings and tracing the patterns of orchards that had burned and fields struck with rot. A new warmth bubbled up in her soul as she tended to the gardens and forests, the sweet scent of orange blossoms filling her nose.
But as
