Nahri’s heart shot into her throat. “You were the most infuriating, arrogant creature I’d ever encountered. You deserved every cutting remark.”
“Fair.” He took another step nearer, drinking her in. “But I hope you will not feel it is necessary to ‘take me down.’ At least not yet. I wished to speak with you.”
“In the forest alone?”
“I thought it might be better if you were not seen with me. And it did not feel right to return to the hospital again. Not after …”
“I heard.” Nahri knew all about Dara’s attack on the hospital and the path of death he’d carved while trying to escape. She knew because she’d heard it from his victims themselves, many still in the hospital, including soldiers and civilians left crippled and children left without parents.
And that didn’t even touch on the Geziris who’d died at the hands of Manizheh’s poison. The soldiers and young cadets of the Royal Guard who’d been drowned, crushed, or devoured by ghouls the night of the attack. The thousands of innocent civilians who’d been killed when Manizheh had him pulverize the city.
Nahri glanced up at Dara’s face—his earnest, uncertain, mesmerizingly beautiful face—and asked a question she hoped against hope had a different answer from the one she suspected.
“Were you … have you been under her control this whole time?”
“No,” Dara answered simply.
She gazed at him. Alone in the forest, Dara seemed so much like the daeva who’d plucked her from Egypt. The exasperating, brooding warrior who had wanted so much for his people. For her. For both of them.
But he wasn’t only that. He never would be. Nahri couldn’t look at Dara and not see death and devastation. His anguished explanation about the women of Qui-zi … that would live in her forever.
“You rip me apart,” she blurted out, the words slipping from the battle she was waging with her heart. “I’ve spent every day since the attack replaying your words in my head and trying to reconcile the man I knew with the merciless weapon you claimed to be. I was ready to kill you. And then you had to go and do the right thing.”
Dara bit his lip, looking like he was close to both tears and a smile. “I am sorry. It does seem our time together has always been a source of much frustration for you.”
“Not always, Dara. Not always.”
He exhaled noisily and then looked away. They were both staying out of arm’s reach as if by silent agreement, the shared fear that getting any closer would be to invite more pain.
After a moment, he gestured to a narrow path that wound through the tall grass. “Would you … would you walk with me?”
Nahri nodded silently, and they set off. Dara set the pace, seeming to glide gracefully over the uneven ground. It reminded her of their original journey, of passing through deserts and frozen plains, the long days upon their horses and barbed conversations under the stars. She’d always thought herself clever and experienced, but Nahri looked back now and realized how young she’d been. How naive about how haunted her companion truly had been.
So they walked. Through fields of pink clover and over rocky hills, along a meandering brook, and underneath the canopy of massive old cedar trees whose gnarled trunks would have taken five men to encircle. Nahri suspected much of this wilderness had originally overlooked the lake, but was hidden now by a belt of thickly forested mountains and Ali’s new river, the boundary the marid wanted between their sacred waters and the djinn city. Either way, it was lovely, healthy and healed, and Nahri thought it might be time to pull down the city walls. The quiet peace and natural beauty of Shefala had impressed her, and it would be nice to let her people breathe fresh air and wander beneath the trees.
Dara spoke again, pulling Nahri from her thoughts. “When I was very young, we used to play with the Nahid children in these woods and scare ourselves silly with stories of ifrit and ghouls and all sort of beasts that would gobble us up. My cousins and I would gather fighting sticks while the Nahids healed our scrapes.” His tone grew wistful. “It did not last, of course. I grew up hearing whispers from my father and uncles about the ways the Nahid Council was changing, but it took me centuries to understand.”
“I suppose that’s what happens when you’re taught to worship your rulers.”
“You were willing to sacrifice your life for Daevabad. You hold the power of a prophet in your heart, power you used to reshape the land itself and restore magic to hundreds of thousands across the world. Do you not think yourself worthy of worship?”
“I think worship sounds exhausting. I’ve got enough responsibilities—I don’t need expectations of perfection and divinity on top of them.”
Dara regarded her, the light filtering through the canopy dappling his black hair. “Then what do you want, Nahri?”
What do you want? How many times now had Nahri been asked versions of that question? How many times had she demurred, fearing that to voice her dreams would be to destroy them?
So instead she envisioned them. She saw Daevabad rebuilt and thriving, the walls surrounding the city and dividing the tribal quarters tumbling down. The hospital filled with eager, brilliant students from all over the magical world, Subha’s daughter grown enough to be doing schoolwork in the garden and quizzing Kartir and Razu on history. She saw Jamshid working hand in hand with a shafit surgeon, magic and human techniques complimenting each other in a perfected dance.
Nahri saw herself happy. Sitting in the Temple garden with chattering Daeva children and playing backgammon in a shafit café with Fiza. Ali grinning at her from across an unreasonable number of scrolls as, together, they rewrote the rules of their world.
“What I’ve always wanted,” she finally answered. “I want to be a doctor. I want to fix
