That took care of the fools shooting from an upper story—the man holding the rifle first and foremost—but then their fellows charged him, wielding maces, zulfiqars, and lengths of pipe. There were shafit among them, which seemed fitting. The kin and people of all his victims, come to finally try and cut him down.
But no one was cutting Dara down. He shoved his sword through the throat of the nearest sand fly, ripping it out to decapitate the dirt-blood next to him.
“COME!” he roared. Any inklings he’d had of mercy were gone. The Geziris and shafit thought to kill him here—here at this hospital where so many of their forebearers had slaughtered his Nahids and kicked off the violent sack of his city that had ended with the deaths of his mother and little sister?
Dara would bathe it in their blood.
He tore through them, crimson and black gore coating his hands, his wrists, his face. He was a weapon again and he acted accordingly, not hearing their screams, their gurgles, their dying cries for their mothers. It was a relief, who he was meant to be.
“Aqisa, no!”
The female voice caught him off guard, jerking him from his bloodlust, and then a warrior did—Aqisa, the Geziri woman who’d delivered Zaynab al Qahtani’s threat. She swung her zulfiqar at his neck in a motion that would have left a slower man headless, but Dara ducked back in time. He forced her against the fountain, raising his sword.
“Stop!” Another woman rushed out from beneath the shadowed arcade. She was armed as well, but it wasn’t her blade that caught Dara’s attention.
It was her gray-gold eyes and the instantly familiar set of her face.
The princess. Between her eyes and the striking resemblance to Alizayd, she had to be. Manizheh’s enemy, the key his Banu Nahida needed to force the Ayaanle and Geziris to back down.
Dara didn’t hesitate. “Do not move!” he boomed to the soldiers as he lunged for the princess, seizing her arm. “Drop your weapons, or—”
A fierce thrust punched through his shoulder, stealing his next words. There was the sharp smell of gunpowder and iron.
Then a white-hot blast of the worst pain he’d ever felt, in all his lives, exploded through his body.
Dara cried out, his sword dipping as he stumbled. Aqisa pulled Zaynab from his grip as he tried to recover, but it was as if someone had shoved poison into a gaping wound and set the entire thing ablaze. Spots blossomed across his eyes and Dara bit his tongue so hard he tasted blood.
Gunpowder. He could smell it, the iron scorching his flesh. They’d shot him. Some filthy dirt-blood had actually shot him with one of their wretched human weapons.
And by the Creator, were they going to pay. A burst of magic and his sword split into a dozen barbed strands, the handle transforming in his hand.
His scourge. Dara drew it back and whirled around. He would shred the man who had dared …
He froze. It wasn’t a man. It was a woman, standing not five paces away, the smoking pistol still in her hands.
She was shafit, brown visible in her tin-toned eyes, her skin a human matte in the darkness. She was breathing hard and was dressed in a bloodstained smock, small metal weapons poking out of the pockets. No, not weapons. A scalpel and small hammer, a roll of bandage cloth.
The shafit doctor Aqisa had mentioned.
The princess gasped. “Subha, run!”
But the doctor didn’t run. Instead, she stood tall, glaring at Dara with all the hate someone like her was right to hold. Creator, how he must look, wild and gruesome, his infamous scourge in one fiery hand.
He should have struck her down. He’d just killed dozens. What was another life—particularly when it belonged to a woman holding one of the few weapons that could kill him?
A shafit woman and the metallic smell of human blood. Somewhere a baby cried, but Dara did not move, the hospital suddenly feeling very far away in the fog of pain racking his body. It wasn’t the raging courtyard battle he saw, but a plaza in a bustling merchant city, lanterns hanging from pretty, tiled buildings and stalls packed with bolts of silk in all the colors of the world. They’d burned so fast, so violently, snapping and cracking in the heat, delicate embers floating in the air.
The doctor raised the pistol, leveling it at his head. Wouldn’t this be justice? The Scourge of Qui-zi killed by some shafit civilian, taken down with a weapon from the human world. He thought of just closing his eyes, giving in.
But Dara didn’t close his eyes.
Instead, he dropped his scourge and ran.
Surprised shouts followed as he threw himself into the maze of corridors leading off from the courtyard. Dara took the turns at random, but he was in so much pain, he was staggering more than sprinting. Black spots exploded before his vision, blood in his mouth. All that compelled him forward was the wild desire to escape, to live.
He could hear them hunting him. There were a few cries of triumph, but not many. The warriors after him now were professionals, and the tide had turned. A good story this would make for the djinn and shafit, the cruel Darayavahoush chased down like a wounded animal. The torture probably wouldn’t be long—they wouldn’t risk the opportunity to put him down for good—but it would be vicious. They’d probably hack him apart and put his head on a spike, a present for Manizheh when their forces broke into the Daeva Quarter.
Not like this. Creator, please … not like this.
The fire was steadily leaving his skin and with it the embrace of magic. The icy pain of the
