Nahri choked back a sob. “But you’ll be alone.”
“Oh, Nahri …” Dara shuddered, but his voice stayed steady. “I will be all right. I won’t have to hide as I once did. I can visit the places of my childhood, tell the Daevas out on the border to go pay a visit to their new Nahids.” He broke away enough to look at her; his eyes were shining with his own unshed tears. “There is a whole world to explore. Kingdoms beyond our realm and so very many ifrit and peris to frighten. I am off to have adventures.” He gave her a shattered half smile. “You’re the one who has to stay behind with bureaucrats.”
Nahri let out a weeping laugh. “Infuriating man. You don’t get to make me laugh when you’re breaking my heart.”
“But then how would I see you smile one last time?” Dara slipped his fingers into hers, bringing them to his lips. “I will be all right, Nahri, I promise. And if Daevabad ever truly needs me—if you need me—my other vow remains. I will find a way back. I can go bully the marid again or perhaps your weird prince can take me through his waters.”
“He would hate that.”
“All the more appealing.”
Nahri shut her eyes, grief charging over her. Falling back into their teasing—to his hands on her face and his lips on her fingers—only made this so much worse. There had to be a way around it.
You told him to choose. Back on the roof, Nahri had given Dara his freedom. She’d promised to honor his choice. Now he had made it.
Let me earn a place in the garden with my family. Nahri had no right to take that away from him. No one did.
She pulled Dara back into her arms, burying her head into his shoulder. She breathed in the smoky citrus of his skin and summoned every bit of strength she could. Another time Nahri would let herself grieve. She’d let herself mourn everything they could have become.
But right now, she would be the Banu Nahida he deserved. “I’ll learn how to free them,” she whispered in his ear, running her fingers through his hair a final time. “I swear to you, Afshin. Find our people, get them home, and I will free them.”
Then Nahri forced herself to let him go. To unclench her fingers, untangle her arms, and stand tall.
Dara brushed the edge of her chador and then slowly, purposefully released it. “The cave alongside the Gozan. The cave where we …” His voice hitched. “It is well-protected from the elements. I will leave the vessels there as I find them. Send people to check every few years.” He hesitated, looking like he didn’t want to continue, and when he did, Nahri knew why. “Teach your children to do the same. Tell them to teach their children and the generations that come after.”
Nahri swayed on her feet, seeing the centuries spill out before him. The millennia in which she would no longer be there. “I will. I swear.”
Dara stepped back toward the veil, and Nahri instantly moved for him, realizing he meant to leave now.
“You don’t have any supplies,” she protested. “No weapons. How will you protect yourself?”
The half smile he gave her, amused and brokenhearted, would follow her to the end of her days. “I can become the wind. I think I can manage.”
She wiped her eyes. “Still so arrogant.”
“Still so rude.” Dara’s smile vanished. “May I ask you something?”
You can ask me anything if it means you stay another moment. But Nahri only nodded.
Fear lit his expression. “Back at the Euphrates, when I asked if you wanted to continue, and you took my hand … would you do it again? Should I have stopped, returned you to Cairo—”
Nahri instantly reached for his hand. “I would do it again, Dara. I would take your hand a thousand times over.”
Dara brought her hand to his lips one last time, kissing her knuckles again. “Find your happiness, little thief. Steal it and do not ever let it go.”
I won’t. Nahri plucked a twig from the nearest tree and burned it in her hand. Dara wordlessly bowed, and she marked his brow with ash, fighting to keep her voice steady.
“May the fires burn brightly for you, Afshin.”
Dara straightened up, holding her gaze another moment. She drank him in, memorizing his brilliant eyes and wine-dark hair. This was the man she would remember.
Then her Afshin stepped back and was gone.
Nahri waited a long moment, the noise of the forest—the hoopoe’s song and rustle of leaves the only sounds.
There was a tickle at her wrist. A delicate vine, green with new growth, teased her fingers. As she watched, a jewel-bright purple flower unfurled its petals.
Nahri brought it to her face and burst into tears.
But she wasn’t alone. Not in Daevabad. And she hadn’t been weeping long when there was the heavy pad of a large beast, then a brilliant rainbow wing curling around her.
Nahri pressed her wet face into her shedu’s silky mane. “Let’s go home, Mishmish. I don’t think he’s coming back.”
47
ALI
The lake was still once again.
Ali sat in the shallows of his river delta, submerged to his waist, his toes digging in the mud. The air was thick with fog, so moist it was hard to tell where the lake ended and the sky began. Sheets of misty rain drifted overhead. Though it was midday, the sun shining brightly overhead on the other side of the green mountains, here the light was muted to a pale glow.
He didn’t mind. It was overwhelmingly peaceful, and Ali closed his eyes as he leaned against the boulder upon which Sobek lounged. The creatures of Ali’s new domain, the minnows nibbling at his shins and the water snake twining around his waist, seemed to embrace him, the cool rush of mountain springs cascading over his lap.
Sobek
