“Where were you when my people were slaughtered?” he howled into the wind. “I thought the mighty peris did not interfere, did not care what the lowly daevas did to each other?” He threw out his fists, fire bursting from his hands. “Go on! Break your rules, and I will return to destroy you as I did the marid! I have flown to your realms—I will do so again and set fire to your skies. I will leave you nothing but smoke to choke on!”
The chill immediately left the air, the ground beneath him warming. Dara shoved himself to his feet. He would not be intimidated by a damn breeze.
But it pulled at him even as he stalked away, the wind flowing through his hair and tugging at his clothes. It felt like a warning, and when combined with the sight of the diseased trees across the Gozan, the mountains concealing an even more broken city, it created a ripple of undeniable fear that crept down Dara’s back. The peris didn’t interfere. It was their most sacred code.
So what did it mean when they sent a warning?
8
NAHRI
The reeds tore at Nahri’s legs as they hurried through the flooded marsh. She burst into fresh tears, burying her face in the warm neck of the woman carrying her.
“Shush, little love,” the woman whispered. “Not so loud.”
They climbed down into the narrow canal that watered the fields. Nahri peeked up as they passed the shadoof, the wooden beams of the irrigation tool jutting up against the night sky like massive claws. The air was thick with the smoke and screams of the burning village behind them, the curtain of papyrus doing nothing to conceal the horror they’d narrowly escaped. All she could see of their village now was the shattered top of the mosque’s minaret above a sea of sugarcane.
She dug her small fingers into the woman’s robe, clutching her closer. The smoke burned Nahri’s lungs, nothing like the pleasantly clean scent of the tiny flames she liked to sing into creation. “I’m scared,” she whimpered.
“I know.” A hand rubbed her back. “But we just need to get to the river. El Nil. Do you see it?”
Nahri saw it. The Nile, flowing fast and dark ahead. But they’d only just crashed into its shallows when she heard the voice again—the stranger who’d arrived speaking the musical language Nahri was never permitted to use outside their small home, the words that whispered and burned in her mind when her scraped knees healed and when she breathed life anew into the tiny kitten crushed by a reckless trader’s cart.
“Duriya!” the stranger yelled.
The woman wasn’t listening. Transferring Nahri to her hip with one arm, she bit deep into her other hand until it bled and then thrust it into the water.
“I CALL YOU!” she cried. “Sobek, you promised!”
A heavy stillness stole across the air, silencing the dying cries of Nahri’s blazing village and freezing the tears rolling down her cheeks. Her skin prickled, the hair on the back of her neck standing up as though in the presence of a predator.
On the opposite bank, a shadowy form slipped into the water.
Nahri tried to jerk back, but the arms around her were strong, pushing her into the river.
There was arguing. “I will get you your blood!” A brow pressed against hers, a pair of warm brown eyes, flecked with gold, locking on Nahri’s eyes, the eyes neighbors whispered were too dark. A kiss upon her nose.
“God will protect you,” the woman whispered. “You are brave, you are strong, and you will survive this, my darling, I swear. I love you. I always will.” The next words came in a blur, the woman weeping as her gaze turned to the water. “Take this night from her. Let her start anew.”
Teeth clamped around Nahri’s ankle, and then, before she could scream, she was dragged under the water.
“Nahri?” A hand shook her shoulder. “Nahri.”
Nahri started awake, blinking in the dark storeroom. “Ali?” she murmured, thrown from the nightmare. She sat up, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. Her cheeks were wet, streaked with tears.
Ali was crouched next to her, looking worried. “I’m sorry. I heard you crying, and you sounded so upset …”
“It’s all right,” she said, shucking her blanket free. It had twisted around her body like she’d been fighting it. Nahri was drenched in sweat, her gown sticking to her skin and her hair plastered to her neck. “I was having a nightmare … about that village, I think.” The details were already drifting away in the fog of waking. “There was a woman …”
“A woman? Who?”
“I don’t know. It was just a dream.”
Ali looked unconvinced. “Last time I had ‘just a dream,’ it was the marid putting visions in my head two days before the lake rose up to tear down the Citadel.”
Fair point. She wiped her face with her sleeve. “What are you doing up? You should be resting.”
He shook his head. “I’m tired of resting. And of having nightmares as well.”
Nahri gave him a sympathetic look—she’d heard Ali screaming Muntadhir’s name in his sleep just the other night. “It’ll get easier.”
Another time, she knew he would have nodded with genuine earnestness—or, more likely, Ali would have been the one telling Nahri it was going to get better.
Now he did neither. Instead, he pressed his lips in a obviously forced expression of agreement and said, “Of course.” The lie seemed to age him, the optimistic prince she’d known gone. He rose to his feet. “If you’re not going back to sleep, I made some tea.”
“I didn’t know you knew how to make tea.”
“I didn’t say it was good tea.”
Nahri couldn’t help but smile. “I’ll take a glass of not-very-good tea over returning to nightmares.” She reached for her shawl, draping it around her shoulders to fight the chill, and followed him.
She blinked in surprise when she entered the apothecary. The tins and glass vials on the shelves had been neatly reorganized and
