Dara could see unease rippling across the djinn, straining whatever new and fragile bonds had started to knit them together.
The Ayaanle woman was still glaring at him. “And our kin inside the city?”
“No one leaves Daevabad until the Banu Nahida has her daughter back. And she is not the only one to be returned unharmed.” He turned to the Geziris. “You look like soldiers, so let us see if you cannot convey a warning to your Qaid. Should he take vengeance on Jamshid e-Pramukh, we will release a poison into your land that will kill every Geziri within a day.”
The Geziri man recoiled. “You have no such power. Nor does the witch who commands you. That is magic beyond—”
“Sand fly,” Dara interrupted, “how do you think we took the city?”
The man instantly drew back, horror in his gray eyes. “No,” he whispered. “That cannot be … There were thousands of us in Daeva—”
“There were. And there are yet more of you in Am Gezira.” Dara glanced again at the crowd. “Our world is returning to the way things should have been, and I pray this time, your people show the sense your ancestors never did. Surrender.”
Some of the djinn were already edging away, parents grabbing children and people eyeing the supplies as though wondering what they could seize.
But with threats and violence, there would also be mercy, a hint of the pleasures that awaited them if they obeyed. “You need not fear your journey,” Dara declared. “As promised, it will be provided for.”
He spread his hands, concentrating on the sandship. With a burst of magic, it divided into a half dozen smaller ships, silver sails swelling with air, each marked with a different tribal emblem. His head throbbed, but Dara pressed on, visualizing holds filled with food and drink.
He fought the instinct to shape-shift, his body aching to burst into the fiery form that allowed such power. “Go,” he growled, his hands clenching into fists as flames danced through his fingers. He exhaled, heat scorching the air. “Now.”
Dara didn’t need to repeat himself. The djinn fled, clearly too frightened to bid farewell to their companions across tribal lines. Or perhaps they were already cutting those ties, eager to get home and make sure their people were the ones who found and returned Alizayd and Nahri.
Let them be divided. Let them return to their homes with tales of horror and a magic they couldn’t fight. Let everyone know peace was only possible under Banu Manizheh.
But as Dara saw the Daevas retreating with the same speed, he spoke up, his voice still ragged. “Wait,” he called, flagging them down. “You needn’t leave. You are welcome to enter the city.”
That was met with hesitant silence, the other Daevas glancing uncertainly at one another.
Finally, one of the men replied. “Is that an order?”
Dara was taken aback by the question. “Of course not. But we control Daevabad again,” he assured them, baffled by their attitude. “It is ours. We did this for you.”
One of the Daeva children, a little girl, began to cry. A woman quickly picked her up, shushing her with obvious fear.
The grandstanding he’d shown with the djinn went out of Dara in one breath. The last time he’d been among Daeva children, they’d been cheering him as a hero, pushing to show off their little muscles.
“I—I mean you no harm,” he stammered. “I promise.”
The Daeva man seemed to be struggling to conceal his misgivings. “All the same, I think we would like to leave.”
Dara forced a smile. “Then go with my blessings. May the fires burn brightly for you.”
No one replied in kind.
The other djinn ships were already sailing away. He watched as the Daevas did the same, sickness rising in his heart. Only when the horizon was clear did Dara exhale, letting his fiery form sweep over him. The scorching pain vanished as did his exhaustion, a cruel reminder once again that this was what Dara truly was now. And considering how his own people had just fled from him, perhaps he should keep this visage. He certainly felt like a monster.
Dara strode back to his conjured shedu, his warm breath coming in a steamy hush. His boots crunched on the ground. He frowned at the sound and then glanced down.
Fine crystals were racing across the churned earth.
Ice. Dara suddenly realized everything had gone quiet. Cold. The stillness to the chill air was utterly unnatural, as though the wind itself were holding its breath.
Dread rising in his core, Dara moved fast, closing the distance between himself and his winged creation. He reached for its mane.
The wind exhaled.
A blast of frigid air hit him so hard that Dara stumbled back from the shedu, falling to the frozen earth. He covered his head as the remains of the travelers’ camp went hurtling by, flung across the landscape by the howling wind. The shedu disintegrated in a puff of smoke that was gone on the next breeze, the air churning so violently Dara felt as though an invisible assailant were pummeling him.
The storm vanished nearly as soon as it came, leaving behind barely a breeze. The entire landscape had been iced over, glittering in the dying sun.
Dara was shaking, breathing fast. What in Suleiman’s eye had just happened?
But the answer was already coming to him on the stinging breeze. Not fire nor water nor earth.
Air.
The peris.
He shivered again. But of course—this was where Khayzur had been slaughtered by his own people, doomed for the “crime” of saving Dara’s and Nahri’s lives. Because it hadn’t just been the marid who’d toyed with Dara. No, it had been Qahtanis and Nahids, marid and peris.
Anger roiled through him. The accusations he hadn’t been able to shout at Manizheh, Khayzur’s gentle last words, and Nahri’s betrayed eyes. Dara was so sick of despairing over his fate, of guilt eating him alive. Now he was just furious. Furious at being used, at letting himself be used again and again.
These creatures did not get to make
