“A week, actually,” Nahri pointed out, trying to keep the emotion from her voice. “I was beginning to think you’d forgotten about us at the hospital.”
He kept his gaze on the floor, toying with the tail of his turban. “I knew you’d be busy. I didn’t want to bother you, and I thought—I thought I should give you some space.”
Nahri inclined her head skeptically. “‘Give me space’?”
“Yes.”
“Alizayd al Qahtani, there is no way those are your words.”
“It was Zaynab’s suggestion.” Ali’s voice thickened with embarrassment. “She said I could be smothering.”
And with that, he went from mysterious marid ambassador to the Ali she knew. A genuine smile tugged across Nahri’s face, and she joined him at the door. “I don’t need space from you, my friend,” she said, pulling him into a hug.
Ali clutched her close. “Please don’t ever stab yourself in the heart again,” he begged, his words muffled against the top of her head.
“I’m hoping it was a once-in-a-lifetime event.” Nahri pressed her brow to his chest. Ali felt cooler than usual, though not unpleasantly so. The smell of salt and silt was sharp on his skin, like she’d immersed herself in a stream on a chilly morning. The beat of his heart was different, slower and more drawn out.
He was changed. But it felt so good to be in his arms that Nahri didn’t care. They had survived, and that was all that mattered. She let out a shudder, feeling some of the tension she’d been bottling up for days finally escape.
“Are you okay?” Ali murmured.
“No,” she confessed. “But I think there’s a chance I might be one day, so that’s progress.” Nahri took another deep breath, running her hand down the soft cotton covering his back, and then stepped away. “Come, stay with me awhile—oh, don’t look at the door like that,” she said, fighting a blush. Nahri definitely hadn’t forgotten what happened the last time they were behind closed doors. “I’ll leave it open so the devil can escape, all right?”
Ali looked mortified, but he didn’t object as Nahri pulled him inside. “Your apartments seem to have come through the war in one piece,” he said, seemingly just to be saying something.
“One of the few things that did. I can’t even go into the infirmary here. Not after what Manizheh did in there. I feel like I can still smell the burned bodies of my ancestors.” She sighed. “God, Ali, it’s just all so much. There are so many people dead, so many lives ruined. What you said back in Cairo about it taking lifetimes to make peace—”
“Then let it take lifetimes. We’ll give it a good foundation, the best we can.”
Nahri rolled her eyes. “You always were a reckless optimist.”
Ali clucked his tongue. “Oh no. You don’t get to ever call me reckless again after threatening peris by puncturing your own heart.”
“They annoyed me.” Nahri said the words mildly, but then a hint of her old anger returned. “I won’t be called inferior or lesser again. I won’t have my people—any of them—be called that. Let alone by some meddlesome puffed-up pigeons.”
“And do you think the puffed-up pigeons might return to make us regret that?”
You have made an enemy today, the peri had warned. “They didn’t seem happy,” Nahri admitted. “But I’m hoping their own convoluted rules about interfering keep them away until we’re stronger.”
“God willing.” Uncertainty crept into his voice. “Regarding another overly powerful being, I hear we had an escape.”
Nahri’s stomach flipped. “Something like that.”
Ali held her gaze; despite its new appearance, she could see a dozen questions in his eyes. “There are people demanding justice, Nahri. People who want to send soldiers after him.”
“They would be wasting their time, and we all know it. No one’s going to catch Dara if he doesn’t want to be caught. I know people want justice,” she said. “And I know we’re going to be building a new government, a new world. But he’s something that needed to be settled the old way, the Daeva way. Let Dara spend his millennia recovering the souls stolen by the ifrit. It’s more useful than him wasting away in a dungeon.”
Ali looked unconvinced. “He could raise an army and return.”
He won’t. Nahri had seen the resolve in Dara’s good-bye—it had been just that, a farewell from a man who did not expect to see the woman he loved again. “Ali, you say you trust me,” she said softly. “So trust me. He’s gone.”
He stared at her a moment longer but then managed a small nod. It wasn’t much—Nahri knew the Geziris were within their rights to want vengeance. But their vengeance would be the result of prior vengeance. And the problem was, they weren’t the only ones caught in that cycle.
It was indeed why peace was going to take lifetimes. And why, as much as it hurt, Nahri knew Dara had been right to leave. His presence would have been too divisive—too many Daevas protective of him, too many djinn and shafit rightfully furious to see Manizheh’s weapon living freely among them. There might be a day when he could return—perhaps a distant generation would be removed enough from the war to know Dara as a hero first, as the Afshin who dedicated himself to rescuing enslaved souls, rather than the Scourge.
But Nahri feared that day was very far in the future.
Ali had reached up to rub a spot on his shoulder. His collar tugged away enough for Nahri to glimpse a section of scaled hide covering his skin.
“What’s that?” she asked.
Ali dropped his hand, looking embarrassed. “One of Tiamat’s children stung me.”
“Stung you?”
“You don’t want to know the details, believe me. Sobek healed it, but he left a mark.”
“Can I see?” When Ali nodded, Nahri pushed aside his collar and traced the narrow path of the scaly scar, a ribbon of changed flesh. She didn’t miss the quickened pulse of his heart as she touched him—or the effect that running her fingers over
