Irtemiz offered a wan smile. “I had a man actually gasp when I said I was an archer.” She clutched at an invisible strand of pearls. “But how can you draw a bow? Does your form not impede you?” She rolled her eyes. “I told him if he didn’t take his eyes off my form, I would shove an arrow up his ass.”
That was probably language Dara should curtail, but alas, Manizheh had given away his responsibilities. “You can have one of mine,” he replied, taking his wine back from Gushtap. “How are you feeling, by the way? The leg and arm healing?”
“Banu Manizheh says it’ll take time, but at least I’m alive. Thanks to you,” she added, emotion thickening her voice. “I owe you more than I can ever repay, Afshin. I can’t imagine the Geziris had a pleasant fate in mind for me if you hadn’t shown up.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” Dara insisted. He looked at them all, the warriors he’d trained in the frozen forests of northern Daevastana when he wasn’t certain they’d ever get to Daevabad. As terribly wrong as the invasion had gone, it had eased the division between his first crop of soldiers and himself. There was a trust, the camaraderie of having bonded and grieved together. “You are my brothers and sisters, understand? This is what we do for each other.”
Irtemiz smiled and raised her cup. “To the Nahids.”
Dara raised his bottle. “To the Daevas,” he corrected, feeling rebellious. He drank down the rest of the wine, his head finally starting to swim.
“May we join you?”
He glanced up. A pair of dancers had separated from the main troupe to approach his knot of drunken warriors, gliding forward on a wave of perfume and tinkling bells.
“Suleiman’s eye,” Gushtap whispered, his black eyes going wide. Dara couldn’t blame him: the dancers were quite the sight—so stunning that it was hard to believe they weren’t using magic to enhance their full-lipped smiles and thick inky-black braids. Enough gold to provision a dozen brides draped their necks and wrists, sapphires winking from their ears.
Unlike Gushtap, a farmer’s son barely past his first quarter century, Dara had enough familiarity with Daevabadi dancers to know the women would likely be disappointed by his band’s paltry offerings. However, he greeted them politely.
“May the fires burn brightly for you, my ladies. You are welcome to our company and our wine, but I fear we cannot match the financial appreciation of the men out there.”
Gushtap gave him a look that bordered on treason.
But Dara’s words didn’t seem to deter the dancers. The first woman, wearing a dazzling collar of ruby roses, stepped forward.
“I have danced for gold aplenty,” she replied, her gaze locking on his. “But never for the saviors of my tribe.”
A little drunk, Dara spoke perhaps too honestly. “Is that what we are?”
“It’s what you’re calling yourselves, no?”
Charmed by the challenge in her eyes—as well as the pleading in Gushtap’s—Dara inclined his head, gesturing toward the long-necked lute the other woman carried. “Then we would be honored.”
Dara had seen enough dancing in his life to know the woman was exquisitely skilled the moment she started spinning. She moved with such precision and elegance that it was impossible to look away, and though he’d said yes more as a favor to his men, Dara found himself spellbound and slightly emotional as she sang, her bejeweled fingers tracing whirling patterns in the air that seemed to illuminate the gentle curve of a lover’s cheek and the fall of tears. Her voice was lovely, the lyrics what they always were: love and loss and crushing heartbreak.
“Thank you,” he said sincerely when she finished. “That was beautiful. It must take a lifetime to learn to perform like that.”
“No less time than I assume it takes to master archery,” she replied with a teasing smile. “Though the effect is more pleasant.”
“Not when the songs are always so sad. Should love not be happier?”
She laughed, a pleasant, tinkling laugh that, combined with the wine, stirred a bit of heat in Dara.
“Poets don’t write songs about that kind of love. Tragedy makes for a better tale.” She held his gaze, boldness entering her expression. “Though were you to take me on a tour of the palace, I might sing you a sweeter one.”
There was no mere stirring now. A bolt raced down his spine, the kind of ache he hadn’t felt for a very long time. Dara might have been brought back to life twice, but both times had been in new forms, bodies that never quite felt his. His urges had been infrequent—and the awful suspicion that he’d likely been used and abused by human masters in such a way for centuries left him with little desire.
You desired Nahri. Badly, if he was to be honest. After being alone for so many years, the sudden presence of a beautiful woman with flashing black eyes and an acerbic tongue—who obviously hadn’t given a damn what Dara thought about her bathing in rivers and sleeping beside him—had shocked him out of his routine, and he’d wanted her, weaving fantasies at night that left him occasionally embarrassed to meet her eye the next morning.
But now he and Nahri were on opposite sides, having both made their choice.
And Dara wasn’t wallowing in his guilt tonight. He gazed at the beautiful dancer, and a moment of drunken recklessness consumed him. He embraced it, relishing the chance to briefly feel mortal again.
He grabbed her outstretched hand. “I would be delighted.”
If Dara had any doubts about the dancer’s true intentions, they were gone the moment the two of them slipped into the corridor. It was empty, the only sounds the distant feast and their labored breathing. She dragged him to her, her mouth and hands moving with professional speed, making him dizzy with lust. He didn’t have time to be nervous, his body falling back into the familiar rhythm.
“Your
