Dara scrubbed a hand through his hair, finding it hard to judge her. “So which … experiment,” he said, repeating the word with poorly concealed distaste, “was the one that finally worked?”
She rose from the desk. “We’d been reading a lot about the history of our family, the origins of our magic, all the miraculous things our blood—our very lives—were said to be capable of.” Manizheh brushed her thumb over his amulet. “There are stories of Nahids dying in battle and their lifeblood resurrecting all who’d fallen around them.”
“Fairy tales, Banu Nahida. Like you said.”
“Perhaps.” She ran her finger against the edge of the brass. “But then I became pregnant a second time. I couldn’t do it again—I couldn’t strip another Nahid child of her abilities and abandon her in Zariaspa to never again see my face. Rustam agreed, or so I thought. We left Daevabad, but I’d hidden the pregnancy well and was far along on the journey. Too far along.”
Manizheh fell silent. She looked crushed, more than Dara had ever seen her. “We were so broken, Afshin. Our spirits, our hopes. I had no doubt Ghassan would hunt me down. That when he realized I’d given away what he so openly desired, he would make me pay. Rustam knew that too. I think … I think in a way he was trying to protect me. To protect us all.”
Sick fear swirled into Dara’s heart. “What happened?”
Manizheh stared at her hands. “She was born. I knew it was obvious, but I was so tired, and when Rustam said he would handle things … I didn’t realize what he meant.” She took a deep breath. “When I woke up, he was preparing to use Nahri to bring you back.”
Shock froze his tongue. Dara knew little about Manizheh’s brother, but the scant amount he’d heard of a quiet man who’d liked to paint and had a talent for turning the plants he grew himself into pharmaceuticals did not add up to … that.
“Use her?” he whispered. “You mean, he meant to sacrifice her life to bring me back? His own niece? A child?”
“A shafit child.”
Dara blinked. Shafit? “But you said Nahri was pureblooded.
That her appearance was a curse …”
“And it is. But if it was the marid who cursed her, they had plenty to work with.” She exhaled. “I continued the lie when Kaveh told me. She’s my daughter, and I wanted to protect her. I knew—especially now, when she’s lied and deceived us—that if such information leaked, the Daevas would believe Nahri’s betrayal was because she was shafit and turn on her. It fits the worst of what people believe about the mixed-bloods.”
Dara was speechless. And yet there was another part of this that made no sense. “But who?” he asked, perhaps tactlessly. “You do not seem the type to—” He flushed. “I mean, the only shafit in the palace would have been …”
“Servants,” Manizheh finished. “A Nahid child—with abilities so strong I could sense them in pregnancy—and a shafit servant as a father. It would be beyond a scandal, Rustam said. A disgrace so outrageous it might have cost us the support of other Daevas when we needed it most. At least this way, she could serve her family. Her tribe. And it would be painless.”
“But a baby?”
Manizheh pinned him with her dark eyes, her expression suddenly frostier. “Were there no babes still at breast in Qui-zi?”
It was a cruel, if justified, question. “Are you saying you agreed with him?”
“Of course I didn’t agree with him! We fought about it, and when it became clear that Rustam wouldn’t stop, we … battled. In ways I didn’t think our people were still capable of. He cursed me, I’m not entirely sure how. A blast, an explosion. I woke hours later. What Kaveh would find—the scorched landscape, the broken bodies—that was what I returned to. My daughter was gone, the ring was gone. And Rustam …” Her voice grew hollow with old grief. “It was too late. I couldn’t save him.”
Dara abruptly sat down. “Suleiman’s eye.”
“Suleiman had nothing to do with it. In the end, that was what we were reduced to. The last Nahids scrabbling in the dust over whether or not to murder a baby. How pleased the djinn would have been to finally see our ruin.”
The anguish in Manizheh’s confession tugged hard at his soul. It was easier to resent the coolly aloof woman who’d ordered him to be a weapon and then dismissed him when he disobeyed. Dara could relate to someone who’d spent their life fighting tooth and nail for their freedom, for their people, only to lose it all at the end.
“You’ve not told anyone else this, have you?” he asked softly.
“How could I? It would confirm the worst prejudices of the djinn, and I knew the price Ghassan would demand to pardon me.” Manizheh’s voice grew fierce again. “I’d take my own life before I let him touch me.”
“Does Kaveh know?”
Her face fell. “No. He all but worshipped us. I couldn’t destroy his faith like that.” She hesitated. “But …”
“But, what?”
“Aeshma knows.”
Dara would not have been more surprised if she’d said the ifrit had gone out to dance in the midan. “Aeshma?”
“He showed up shortly after I found Rustam’s body. He said the intensity of the battle, of the magic and the blood, drew his attention. And he knew me. Knew my name, what people said about my abilities … he said he’d been hoping to meet me one day.”
“Why?”
“Is it not obvious?” Manizheh asked. “He wants to be like you, Afshin. The ifrit have been waiting for a Nahid powerful enough to free them from Suleiman’s curse. There are only a handful left, and they’re nearing the end of their lives. They want peace and a last taste of their old magic.”
Dara stared at her. “Don’t tell me you believed him. Banu Manizheh, for all you know, he’d been waiting for you
