He blinked, dazed to find himself in a narrow hall, pitch-black save for the soft glow still emanating from his skin. The ghostly light danced upon wall paintings of sandships and seabirds, a narrow pocket of beauty and silence in the last moments before his horrific end.
And then Dara spotted his ring, the emerald gleaming in the darkness.
Everything went very still. The last time he’d been separated from his ring, he’d died. His body had turned to ash, his soul fleeing to the garden of shade and cypresses where his sister waited. Maybe he could go there again.
You will not go back to Tamima. Not this time. If there is any justice in this world, you will suffer for a thousand more years.
The ring seemed to brighten slightly, the halo of light spreading. And there before him, a miracle he didn’t deserve … a door.
Weeping with pain, with loss, Dara forced himself back to his feet, leaning heavily against the wall. He could still hear the approaching mob, but maybe there would be a window, another way out.
Maybe this was not the night he died yet again. Dara eased the door open and slipped inside. The room was small and messy, covered with lengths of canvas, pots of paint, brushes, and half-completed portraits.
And a single Sahrayn woman with brilliant green eyes.
The breath went out of him. The woman had wedged herself into a corner and was holding some sort of paint-covered metal prod in her shaking hands. She stared in shock at him, her emerald eyes wide and startled. They were as green as his—the first time in his life he’d come face-to-face with another victim of ifrit slavery.
“Down here!” Shouts in Djinnistani and Geziriyya beyond the closed door, his pursuers catching up when there was nowhere else to run. Dara was caught.
But in the blink of an eye, the woman dashed to his side. She grabbed him by his collar and yanked him forward, surprisingly strong for her size. Stunned by the resulting burst of pain, Dara let himself be dragged toward a large ebony chest set against the wall.
She threw open the top and pointed.
Any other time, he might have hesitated. But about to pass out and with running footsteps closing in, Dara fell into the chest. She shut it, throwing him into darkness.
The smells of linseed oil and chalk were so thick he struggled not to cough. Paintbrushes were poking into him, his injured shoulder throbbing, but a small crack in the wood let in a fraction of light. Dara pressed an eye to it, glimpsing the Sahrayn woman covering a patch of blood on the floor with an old rug. He shifted, trying to get a better look as the footsteps stopped outside the door.
The movement cost him. A wave of fresh pain stabbed through his shoulder, and Dara’s vision blurred. He fell back against the chest’s interior.
There was an impatient knock, followed by the sound of the door scraping open. A man barking in Djinnistani, the words weaving in and out. Scourge. Escaped. Elashia. The Sahrayn woman didn’t seem to be saying anything.
And then Aqisa’s rough voice. “She’s shaking her head. That means she knows nothing, so you can stop badgering her.”
There was a protest and then the rather distinct thud of something—someone—being shoved into a wall.
“—and I said let her be,” Aqisa snapped. “Let’s move on. He’s probably hiding down the other way.”
Darkness was shutting in, hot blood running down his arm. Wetness on his cheeks that could have been tears or more blood.
Dara closed his eyes and let the blackness take him.
THE CHEST ABRUPTLY OPENED, PULLING DARA FROM unconsciousness. Two faces swam before him, both with emerald eyes. One belonged to his Sahrayn savior and the other to an older Tukharistani woman.
Half dead, insensible with pain, and sitting in a pool of his own blood mixed with paint cleaner, all Dara could think to do was croak a greeting. “May the fires burn brightly for you.”
The Tukharistani woman groaned. “This was not the sort of surprise I was hoping you had for me in your studio.”
The woman named Elashia gave her an imploring look, gesturing between the three of them.
“He’s not one of us,” the Tukharistani woman said fiercely. “Being enslaved by the ifrit is no justification for what he and Manizheh have done.” She touched Elashia’s face. “My love, what were you thinking? I know you have a tender heart, but these people have allowed us to stay here in peace and protected us, and now you hide their enemy?”
Dara tried to sit up, wheezing out a plume of smoke. “I mean you no trouble. I can leave,” he added, gripping the edge of the chest with his good hand.
The Tukharistani woman kicked the chest, sending a ricochet of pain through his body. Dara gasped, falling back.
“You can stay put,” she warned. “I won’t have you leaving a trail of blood back to us.”
Blazing pinpricks of light danced before his eyes. “Yes,” he agreed weakly.
She sighed. “Fire or water?”
“What?”
“Fire or water,” she repeated, as if speaking to a dense child. “What revives you?”
He squeezed his eyes shut against the new throbbing in his shoulder. “Fire,” he rasped. “But it does not matter. They shot me with some sort of iron projectile—”
“A bullet. Come now. I’ve got a millennium on you, and I keep up with the modern words.”
Dara gritted his teeth. “The bullet is still in my shoulder. It is interfering with my magic and keeping me in this form.”
The woman regarded him. “And if I removed it from your shoulder, do you think you could escape?”
Dara stared at her in shock. “You would help me?”
“That depends. Did you kill them?”
“You need to be more specific.”
Her expression grew hard. “Banu Nahri and Prince Alizayd.”
Dara’s mouth fell open. “No. I would never harm Nahri. I was trying to save her.”
“Then what
