Ali gagged, but beneath his hands, Nahri stirred. Water gushed from her mouth as though he had summoned it, and then she was choking, coughing, fighting for air.
“Nahri.” Barely aware of Sobek removing his hands, Ali raised Nahri to a sitting position, helping her onto her knees as she threw up. “Breathe,” he whispered, rubbing her back as she sucked for air. “Just breathe. It’s all right; you’re all right.”
She put her head back against Ali’s chest, her skin still icy. The blue tinge had yet to leave her lips, but then her eyes found his, and Ali was so relieved he had to resist the urge to clutch her close.
“Ali?” Nahri’s voice was hoarse. Her gaze drifted past his shoulder.
Sobek laid a hand on her brow, and her eyes shuttered.
Ali whirled on the marid as Nahri slumped in his arms. “What did you do?” he cried.
Sobek rose to his feet. “She merely sleeps, daeva, do not fear. She is not to see me.”
Ali was still shaking, trying to understand everything that had just happened. “Why not?”
“I made a promise.”
That answered nothing. Ali held Nahri tight, trying to take reassurance from the steady beat of her heart.
Sobek was still studying him, his lambent eyes seeming to peel Ali apart layer by layer. He bent down, and Ali stilled as a webbed hand grasped his chin, a stubby claw brushing the seal marked on his face. It was everything he could do not to rock back in revulsion. Who knew how many people had died under these claws? How many more had been slaughtered in Sobek’s name?
The marid spoke again, his voice like water tumbling over rocks. “You are the daeva they took, the one they used to kill the Nahid’s champion.”
It was not a question. The Nahid’s champion. “Do you mean the Afshin?” Ali asked. “Yes.”
Sobek pursed gray lips. For a second, Ali saw rows of teeth like broken arrows jutting in every direction.
“A moment of hesitation,” the marid murmured. “A moment to taste the flavors of your blood, and all this might have been avoided.” Regret filled his voice, the first emotion besides anger that he betrayed. “They must have been so desperate.” His claw pressed harder against the seal mark, enough that the skin began to tear. “It was not your choice to take Anahid’s ring and bring it to my waters?”
Ali shivered. Just how much had Sobek seen? “No,” he replied.
Sobek’s eyes gleamed, and Ali had to fight not to jump as the pupils turned to vertical slits like a lizard’s. “So you do not know who I am?”
There was weight behind that question, the humid air heavy with tension. “No,” he said again, for it seemed impossible to lie to the creature before him. “I don’t know who you are.”
Sobek drew back like a whip. “Then you should leave, both of you. Qatesh spoke truthfully about the Nahid’s champion. My people owe him a blood debt; we cannot harm him, and I will not be able to protect you if she brings him.”
The Nahid’s champion. For a moment, the image of Darayavahoush danced before Ali. The zulfiqar ripped from his hand, Muntadhir’s blood on his face.
Let his brother’s murderer come. Ali would welcome it. Let the two of them finish this.
You’ll finish nothing. You couldn’t even raise a blade to him. The bitter truth crushed him, making Ali feel small and useless. If Qandisha returned with Darayavahoush, Ali was dead—the Afshin would not make the mistake of delaying his death again.
And then Nahri and Suleiman’s seal would be returned to Manizheh.
Ali exhaled, glancing at the river. His heart dropped. Their boat was destroyed, the pieces and supplies that hadn’t sunk smoldering. Their food, their possessions. Ali had his weapons, but they were otherwise right back where they’d been weeks ago, all their work for nothing. Worse—now there was no city, no village or farmland. Nothing indicating a nearby human presence where they could barter for a new boat or buy supplies. There was nothing but dark desert, untouched by djinn fires or human lamplight.
“Our boat is gone,” he said in despair, more to himself than to Sobek.
The marid stared at Ali, another of those long, assessing looks that seemed to open him up and rearrange his insides. “Where do you mean to go?”
“Ta Ntry,” Ali replied, his head spinning. “My mother’s homeland. It is to the south, along the sea—”
“I know where Ta Ntry is.” Sobek sounded snappish now and restless. He swung his head back and forth, looking more like a crocodile. “Will she be safe there?”
“Safer than with Qandisha.”
“Then I will take you our way. There is a place where my waters meet the sea, where your kind often visits.” Sobek made a beckoning motion. “Come.”
Our way? Apprehension trickled down Ali’s spine, but Sobek was already turning around, strutting toward the river like a general surveying conquered territory.
A trick, this could be a trick. “Why?” Ali called out. “Why would you help us?”
Sobek stopped at the water’s edge, sharp lines blacker than black against the moonlit sand and shadow-wreathed scrub of the opposite bank. He looked like a void cut in space, one that would drag in and devour anything that drew too close.
“I do not help.” The marid sounded thoroughly irked, the Nile rippling with his mood. “I make exchanges, and one was to preserve her life.” He jutted a snoutlike chin at Nahri.
It was not a comforting answer. Ali gazed again at the empty desert and then glanced at the woman in his arms. She too had once followed a mysterious magical being offering safety—and had her life
