“We will never be safe here and neither will anyone around us.” Ali tapped the mark on his brow. “Not with this. For all we know, she’ll send the ifrit after us. After Yaqub. And I don’t want to be safe. Not if my people aren’t. Not if my sister isn’t.”
“Then what? We go to Ta Ntry and build an army so we can fight in another pointless war?” She threw up her hands. “Ali, they turned the lake into a beast and designed a plague capable of killing thousands of djinn in a single night. She’s allied with the ifrit. There’s nothing she won’t do to win.”
“Then we’ll find a way to fight back!”
“Like you fought back?” Ali spun at the challenge in her voice, but Nahri pressed on. She needed to make him see. “How many Daevas did you kill that night?”
A hint of anger blossomed in his face. “The Daevas I killed were soldiers. Soldiers who invaded my home, killed my friends, and meant to slaughter my entire tribe.”
Nahri gave him an even look. “Change ‘Daevas’ to ‘djinn,’ and I bet that’s just what Dara said to himself.”
Ali stepped back like she’d slapped him. “I am nothing like him. I would take a blade to my throat before I’d do the things he’s done.” He blinked, hurt replacing the anger in his eyes. “He killed my brother. How could you say such a thing to me?”
“Because I don’t want that for you!” Nahri exploded. “I don’t want that for me! You looked like him that night on the palace roof and I …” A sick feeling rose in her. “I helped you. I helped you kill three Daevas. And when I cut into your father’s chest, Ali? It felt good. I felt satisfied.”
Shaking, Ali turned away again, crossing the roof as if to put space between them.
She followed, growing more frantic. “But don’t you see? We don’t have to go to war. Let them think we drowned. You and I, we tried, okay? We tried more than most. We built the hospital, and look what happened. The Daevas attacked the shafit, the shafit attacked the Daevas, and your father was ready to start slaughtering people before my mother killed him. Daevabad is a death trap. It corrupts and ruins everyone who tries to fix it. And we could be free of it. Both of us. We could have a life here together. A good one.”
Ali stopped at the roof’s edge, breathing hard. And then Nahri saw it, a flicker of longing in his face. She knew that longing. She was used to spotting it in others and then closing in, using the desire her mark was too foolish to conceal. A half dozen responses hovered at her lips, ways to convince him to stay, to force him to agree.
But Ali wasn’t supposed to be a mark anymore; he was supposed to be her friend.
He turned back around, the ache gone from his expression. No, not just gone—Ali was focused on her like he was about to read a mark himself, and Nahri didn’t like it one bit.
“I need to say something no Qahtani has a right to tell you, but it needs to be said and there’s no one else,” he began. “Even if Manizheh doesn’t hunt us, even if we don’t get our magic back, we can’t stay here. We have a duty to go back, no matter the consequences. Our families caused this mess, but they’re not the only ones who are going to pay. There are tens of thousands of innocent civilians who are going to pay. And you and I don’t get to look away from that, no matter how tempting.”
Nahri could have punched him in the face. “You’re correct, you don’t have the right to say that to me. Tempting? So I’m selfish for not wanting to die in Daevabad when I could help people here?”
“I didn’t say you were selfish—”
“You might as well have.” Fury rose in her, at herself as well as at Ali. Why was Nahri wasting air trying to convince some stubborn djinn prince to stay at her side?
Because you want him to stay at your side. Because Nahri didn’t want to be a lonely, selfless doctor in the human world. She wanted to drink bad tea and browse books with someone who knew her. She wanted a life, a friend.
Nahri didn’t need Ali. She wanted him.
And that made him a weakness. Nahri could hear the word in Nisreen’s voice, in Ghassan’s voice, in Manizheh’s. That’s what Ali was, what all of them were—the whole of Daevabad. She should have continued to live the way she had in Egypt. No attachments, no dreaming of a hospital or a better future. Just survival.
The sky abruptly darkened, the sun sinking behind the Pyramids. The murmur of river traffic and the bustling city pulled at her soul. It all suddenly felt so fragile that she wanted to clutch Cairo to her chest and never let it go.
“Forget it,” she declared. “I’m not going to waste my breath trying to save you from yourself again. You want to go die in Daevabad? Fine. But you’ll be doing it alone.”
Nahri turned away, meaning to leave him on the roof, but he was already pursuing her.
“Nahri, she’s going to come for the seal.”
She glanced back. It was a mistake. Because the beseeching look in Ali’s eyes tugged on a part of her heart Nahri wanted to crush out.
So she crushed him instead. “Then I’m glad I gave it to you.”
NAHRI SHOOK WITH ANGER AS SHE STORMED AWAY from the khanqah. To hell with Alizayd al Qahtani and his idealism. To hell with Daevabad, the doomed, poisoned city she’d tried to help. The Grand Temple had enough shrines to Nahids who’d martyred themselves. Nahri wasn’t planning on joining them.
She didn’t go back to the apothecary. Let Ali go back first, collect his things, and take off on his ludicrous Nile
