Muntadhir shot a skittish look across the small courtyard. “What do you want?”
“To talk.” Dara gestured to the basin of water he’d brought for washing and then pulled the top off a silver platter of spiced rice, greens, and dried fruit. “You must be hungry.”
Muntadhir’s gray eyes locked on the food, but he didn’t move. “Is this a trick?”
“No. I wanted to talk and figured it would be easier if you did not smell of rot or were delirious with starvation.” When the emir stayed put, Dara rolled his eyes. “For the love of the Creator, would you drop this whole ‘noble suffering thing’ your people so adore? You are supposed to be the agreeable one.”
Still glaring, Muntadhir stepped forward and began gingerly washing his face and hands with the water. The movement drew Dara’s attention to the small hole in his earlobe—the place his copper relic should have been.
He’s probably one of the few people in the palace without one. With a pair of ifrit now wandering freely, everyone seemed to have taken to wearing their relics, as though their very presence might protect them from the horror of being enslaved. Save Manizheh, Dara had not seen a Daeva in days without an amulet—relic hidden inside—hanging from their neck.
Muntadhir let out a pained hiss as he rinsed his blistering skin, moving like an old man.
“You need some salve.”
“Ah, yes, salve. I’ll be sure to get some on the way back to my cell. I believe it’s next to the decaying corpses.”
Well, at least he was feeling sharper. Dara held his tongue, watching as Muntadhir finished washing up and then seated himself beside the tray, already looking haughtier. He eyed the food skeptically.
“Are you too snobbish to eat Daeva cuisine?”
“I rather like Daeva cuisine,” Muntadhir countered. “I’m just wondering if it’s poisoned.”
“Poison is not my style.”
“No, I suppose your style is torturing a dying man with threats to his younger siblings.”
Dara stared at him. “I can put you back in your cell.”
“And miss possibly poisoned food and your magnetic presence?” Muntadhir reached for the platter, rolling a small ball of the rice and popping it into his mouth. He made a face after he swallowed. “Underspiced. The kitchen staff must not be fond of you.”
Dara snapped his fingers. Muntadhir jumped, but Dara had only conjured a cup of wine, bringing it to his lips in the same motion.
The emir watched with open jealousy. “Why do you still have your magic?”
“The Creator has blessed me.”
“I doubt that very much.” Muntadhir probably had mites in his clothes and was clearly starving, but he ate like the nobleman he was, every move precise and elegant. It threw Dara back into his memories of that last night in Daevabad. Muntadhir, drunk, with a courtesan in his lap, mocking his future marriage to the Banu Nahida.
Unable to stop himself, Dara opened his mouth. “You did not deserve her.”
The words came out hard, and Muntadhir stilled, his hand halfway to his mouth, as if he expected to be struck again.
Then he relaxed, giving Dara a dirty look. “Neither did you.”
“Did you hurt her?”
A hint of genuine anger blossomed in the emir’s face. “I never raised a hand to her. I’ve never raised a hand to any woman. I’m not you, Scourge.”
“No, you just forced her to marry you.”
Muntadhir glowered. “I’m sure the thought of me dragging Nahri by the hair to my bed was very comforting to you as you were stepping past the bodies of Geziri children, but that’s not how things were between us.”
Dara knew he had no right to ask, but he could not go any further with this man if he had even once taken advantage of her. “Then how were things between you?”
“It was a political marriage between two deeply incompatible people, but she was my wife. I tried to protect her, to build something between us that might have been good for Daevabad. And I think she did the same with me.”
“Did you love her?”
Muntadhir stared at him in exasperation. “How are you so old and yet so naive? No, I didn’t love her. I cared for her—in fifty years, if she and my father didn’t kill each other first, if we’d had a child, maybe things would have been different.”
“And Jamshid?”
The other man flinched. He hid it well, but Dara still noticed. Muntadhir’s true weakness.
Muntadhir shoved the food away. “Conjure another cup of wine or put me back in my cell. Discussing my romantic entanglements with you is almost enough to make me wish the zulfiqar had done its job.”
Checking his temper, Dara conjured another cup and pushed it in Muntadhir’s direction, the amber liquid sloshing over the rim.
Muntadhir tasted it, his nose wrinkling in displeasure. “Date wine. Overly sweet and utterly common. You really never did spend much time in the palace, did you?”
“I find politics loathsome.”
“Do you?” Muntadhir waved about the courtyard. “And what do you think all this is if not politics? I find that those who look on politics with contempt are usually the first to be dragged down by them.”
Dara drained his cup and set it down, not having any desire to get pulled in by riddles. “I saw your sister.”
Muntadhir coughed, spitting out his wine. “What?” The mask slipped, worry filling his face. “Where? Has Manizheh—”
“No. Not yet, anyway. I saw Zaynab at the hospital, fighting at the side of a warrior woman of your tribe.”
Muntadhir was gripping his cup so hard Dara could see the whites of his knuckles. “Did you hurt her?”
“No. Nor, for that matter, did I tell Manizheh she was there.”
“Waiting to see how this conversation went?”
“I’m not telling you this to threaten her, al Qahtani. I’m telling you so you know you have a reason to live.” When Muntadhir’s only response was more arrogant staring, as though Dara were a speck of dirt on his shoe, Dara continued. “Our conquest … it has not exactly gone to plan.”
Muntadhir feigned shock, his eyes wide. “You don’t say.”
Dara
