“He’s not here. My father had Rustam and you—whoever he thought was you—cremated at the Grand Temple. He said when he first became king, he wanted to have all the bodies burned and blessed, but …”
“Oh, I’m sure he did. So my parents, my grandmother …” Manizheh glanced up, catching the pair of small coffins. “Children. We were defeated. You kept us locked in the infirmary like useful pets. You killed the ones who were too defiant, disappeared the pretty ones who caught a royal eye. And after all that, not even in death could we be granted peace.” She motioned to the scrolls. “Are these records, or did no one bother to note their names?”
“They’re records,” Muntadhir stammered. “They’re in Geziriyya, but I can’t read them.”
“We’ll find someone who can.”
Dara gazed upon the hundreds of dead. His Blessed Nahids, reduced to rotting in their shrouds.
“Why?” he asked. “Why did your people do this?”
“I told you I don’t know.” Muntadhir’s voice quaked in angry fear. “Maybe they were afraid. Maybe they were right to be. Look at you. You should be dead twice over; you have access to powers not even you understand—and all because of her.” Muntadhir gestured rudely at Manizheh. “Maybe they liked the occasional reassurance that you were all dead.”
Manizheh closed her hands into fists, and for a moment Dara thought she was going to punch Muntadhir.
But then she inhaled, shutting her eyes. “Kaveh, get him out of my sight. Find a scribe who can read Geziriyya and one of our priests. People who can be discreet. I’m not ready to share this news.”
Kaveh hesitated, clearly not liking the murderous look Dara was giving Muntadhir, but then he came to his senses and rushed the emir away.
When they were gone, Manizheh opened her eyes, gazing at the entombed remains of her relatives. She was still holding his relic.
Dara had to fight the wild urge to grab it away. His relic. If he opened it, would the curl of baby hair his mother tucked inside with a prayer still be there? Could he touch something she had once touched so many centuries ago?
But Dara’s distant past wasn’t the most pressing one. Not now. “Banu Manizheh,” he said softly, “how did you bring me back?”
Manizheh stilled. “What are you talking about?”
Dara met her gaze. His anger was gone, and now he was just tired. “I know how slaves are freed and brought back to life. You would have needed my relic.”
“I only needed a bit of your mortal remains, and Qandisha showed me where you died.”
“I am not talking about that, and you know it. I am talking about the first time.” His voice rose. “You and I have been dancing around this for six years. So now I am asking. How did you bring me back?”
Manizheh gave him a wary look. “This isn’t a story you want to hear. If I’ve held back certain details, it was out of kindness.”
Another time Dara might have believed that. He might have even found it compassionate.
No longer. “I have followed you and killed for you and asked for nothing in return.” He was trembling. “I walk around you all, but I am not one of you. I’m not like other freed djinn. I can’t remember my years as a slave, centuries—centuries—of my own life. I want to know why. I want to know how. You owe me that.”
Manizheh held his gaze. Torchlight reflected in her eyes, but her expression otherwise gave nothing away.
Which was why Dara was shocked when she set down his relic, sat upon the desk, and began.
“We found your ring when we were children. The three of us: Kaveh, Rustam, and I. We’d discovered the ruins of a human caravan while exploring. We were very young, and it was very exciting—the closest any of us had gotten to humans, even if all that was left were bones and a few rotted possessions. The bodies had been scattered, dismembered. And on one severed hand there was a ring.”
Dara was already uneasy, a caravan of murdered humans perhaps a too apt start to this tale. “My ring?”
“Your ring. The magic coming off it … any Nahid would know it was a slave vessel. There’s a way to glimpse some of the dreams of the slave trapped inside, and when I peered inside yours, I recognized right away who you were. Your rage, your despair, the memories of Qui-zi and warring against Zaydi al Qahtani—you could be no other than the great Darayavahoush, the last of the Afshins.”
She already looked lost in her memories, but more alarm spiked through Dara at her words. “And you didn’t think it was too much of a coincidence that the last of the Nahids stumbled across the last of the Afshins?”
“We were children, Darayavahoush. It sounded like a fairy tale. The adults around us were all so cowed by the djinn, so defeated. So we brought the ring to Daevabad, hidden in our clothes, and tried to learn the truth of what had happened to you.”
“Did none of my followers leave accounts?”
Manizheh shook her head. “If your followers knew, they didn’t talk. Those who weren’t executed after your rebellion fell apart were brought back to Daevabad and richly rewarded.”
Ah, yes, the Daeva noble houses with their familiar names. Stung, Dara pressed on. “So if there was no record of me being enslaved, no hope of a relic …”
“It meant we needed to find another way. So Rustam and I tried everything. For years. Decades. Any new magic we came upon—enchantments and potions and conjurements. Wild experiments that would have horrified our ancestors.”
Dara felt ill. “Experiments?”
“We were desperate. It felt like a cruel joke. To be so close to someone who could save us and not be able to bridge that last gap. I watched my people crushed, my brother beaten, Ghassan pressuring me to marry him, and I’d close my eyes and see this ancient warrior, a man who’d known the mightiest
