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Nahri mumbled in her sleep again, and Ali jumped.
You failed her. You failed all of them. Nahri could have been back in Daevabad right now, with the world and a throne at her fingertips.
I have to get out of here. Ali had a sudden driving need to get out of this claustrophobic little room. To breathe fresh air and put space between himself, Nahri, and his awful, bloody memories. He crossed the room, reaching for the door and stumbling through. He caught a glimpse of crowded shelves, the scent of sesame oil …
Then Ali crashed directly into a small, elderly man. The man let out a surprised yelp and stepped back, nearly upsetting a tin tray of carefully heaped powders.
“I’m sorry,” Ali rushed to say, speaking in Djinnistani before thinking. “I didn’t mean to … oh, my God, you’re a human.”
“Oh!” The man put down the knife, setting it next to the bright bed of herbs he’d been cutting. “Forgive me,” he said in Arabic. “I don’t think I quite understood that. But you’re still here—and awake. Nahri will be so pleased!” His fuzzy brows drew together. “I keep forgetting you exist.” He shook his head, looking oddly undisturbed by such alarming words. “But I am forgetting my manners. Peace be upon you.”
Ali swiftly pulled the door closed, not wanting to wake Nahri, and then stared at the man in open astonishment. Ali couldn’t have said what set him so immediately apart; after all, he’d met plenty of shafit with rounded ears, dull, earthy skin, and warm brown eyes like the man before him. But there was something entirely too real and too solid, too … rooted about this man. As though Ali had stepped into a dream, or a curtain had been drawn back he’d never realized was there.
“I, er … upon you peace,” he stammered back.
The man’s gaze traced across Ali’s face. “It is like the more I try to look at you, the harder it is. How bizarre.” He frowned. “Is that a tattoo on your cheek?”
Ali’s hand shot up to cover Suleiman’s mark. He had no idea how to interact with this man—despite his fascination with the human world, he had never imagined actually speaking with a human. By all accounts, the man shouldn’t have been able to see him at all.
What in the name of God has happened to magic? “Birthmark,” Ali managed, his voice pitched. “Completely natural. Since birth.”
“Ah,” the man marveled. “Well, would you like some tea? You must be hungry.” He beckoned Ali to follow him deeper into the shop. “I am Yaqub, by the way.”
Yaqub. Nahri’s stories of her human life came back to him. So they really were in Cairo—with the old man she said had been her only friend.
Ali swallowed, trying to get his bearings straight. “You are Nahri’s friend. The pharmacist she worked with.” He glanced down at the small man, Yaqub’s head barely reaching Ali’s chest. “She always spoke most highly of you.”
Yaqub blushed. “That was too kind of her. But my mind must be going with age. I cannot seem to recall her mentioning your name.”
Ali hesitated, torn between politeness and caution—the last time a non-djinn asked for his name, it had not gone well. “Ali,” he answered, keeping it simple.
“Ali? Are you a Muslim, then?”
The human word, a sacred word his people rarely voiced, tumbled Ali’s emotions further. “Yes,” he said hoarsely.
“And your kingdom?” Yaqub ventured. “Your Arabic … I’ve never heard an accent like that. Where is your family from?”
Ali grasped for an answer, trying to piece together what he knew of the human world and match it to his djinn geography. “The Kingdom of Saba?” When Yaqub merely looked more perplexed, he tried again. “Yemen? Is it the Yemen?”
“Yemen.” The old man pursed his lips. “The Yemen and Afghanistan,” he muttered under his breath. “Of course, the most natural of neighbors.”
But questions about Ali’s family had sent darkness rushing forward again, despair unfurling and creeping through him like vines that couldn’t be beaten back. If he stayed here and tried to make small talk with this curious human, he was going to slip up and unravel whatever story Nahri had already spun. The apothecary walls suddenly felt close, too close. Ali needed air, the sky. A moment alone.
“Does that lead outside?” Ali asked, raising a trembling finger at a door on the other side of the shop.
“Yes, but you’ve been bedridden for days. I’m not sure you should be out and about.”
Ali was already crossing the apothecary. “I’ll be fine.”
“Wait!” Yaqub protested. “What should I tell Nahri if she wakes before you return?”
Ali hesitated, his hand on the door. Forget whatever was going on with Suleiman’s seal and magic; it was hard not to feel like the kindest thing he could do for Nahri would be to never return. That if Ali truly cared for her—loved her as Muntadhir had accused—he’d leave and let her go back to the human world she’d never stopped missing, without needing to worry about the useless djinn prince she kept having to save.
Ali pulled open the door. “Tell her I’m sorry.”
ALI HAD SPENT HIS ENTIRE LIFE DREAMING OF THE human world. He’d devoured accounts of their monuments and marketplaces, envisioning himself in the holy city of Mecca and wandering the ports of great ships that crossed oceans. Exploring markets packed with new foods and inventions that had not yet made their way to Daevabad. And libraries … oh, the libraries.
None of those fantasies had included being nearly run down by a cart.
Ali jerked out of the path of the snub-nosed donkey and its driver and then ducked to avoid a mountain of sugarcane heaped on the back. The motion sent him crashing into a veiled woman lugging a basket of vivid purple eggplant.
“Forgive me!” he said quickly, but the woman was already brushing by as if Ali were an invisible irritant. A pair of chatting men in clerical robes parted like a human wave as they passed him, not even pausing in their conversation, and then he was almost knocked to the ground by a man balancing a large board of bread on his head.
Ali lurched out of the way, stumbling as he walked. It was too bright, too busy. Everywhere he looked was sky, a more vibrant, sunnier blue than he ever saw in Daevabad. The buildings were low, none more than a few stories tall, and far more spread out than they would have been in his packed island city. Beyond were glimpses of golden desert and rocky hills.
Ali might have craved open sky and fresh air, but in his dazed grief, the bustling human world was suddenly too much; too different and too similar all at once. The heavy, dry heat felt like an oven compared to the misty chill of his kingdom, the rich scent of fried meat and spices as thick in the air as it was in Daevabad’s bazaars, but the notes unfamiliar.
“Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!”
Ali jumped at the adhan. Even the call to prayer sounded strange, the human intonation falling on different beats. He felt like he was dreaming, as if the awful circumstances to which he’d awoken weren’t real.
It’s real, all of it. Your brother is dead. Your father is dead. Your friends, your family, your home. You left them when they needed you most.
Ali clutched at his head but started walking faster, following the sound of the nearest muezzin through the winding streets like a man bewitched. This was something he knew, and all Ali wanted to do right now was pray, to cry out to God and beg Him to make this right.
He fell in with a crowd of men streaming into an enormous mosque, one of the largest Ali had ever seen. He didn’t have shoes to kick off, as he was already barefoot, but he paused as he entered anyway, his mouth falling open at the vast courtyard. The interior lay exposed to the sky, surrounded by four covered halls held up by hundreds of richly decorated stone arches. The skill and devotion displayed in the intricate patterns and soaring domes—done with painstaking effort by human hands, not by the simple snap of a djinn’s fingers—stunned him, briefly pulling Ali from his grief. Then the glisten and splash of water caught his eye: an ablution fountain.
Water.
A worshipper shouldered roughly past, but Ali didn’t care. He stared at the fountain like a man dying of thirst. But it wasn’t hydration he craved; it was something deeper. The strength that had run through his blood on Daevabad’s beach when he’d commanded the lake’s waves. The peace that had eased him when he’d coaxed springs out of Bir Nabat’s rocky cliffs.
The magic that the marid’s possession—the possession that had ruined and saved his life—had granted him.
Ali stepped up to the fountain, his heart in his throat. He was surrounded by humans, and this would be a violation of every interpretation of Suleiman’s law his people had, but he needed to know. Ali extended a hand just above the water. He called to it with his mind.
A ribbon of liquid leapt onto his palm.
Tears stung his eyes and then Ali faltered, a spasm stabbing through his chest. The pain wasn’t awful, but it was enough to break his concentration. The water fell away, streaming through his fingers.
But he had done it. His water abilities might be weakened, but they were there, unlike his djinn magic.
Ali wasn’t sure what that meant. Dazed, he went through his ablutions. Then Ali stepped back, letting the crowd sweep him away as he surrendered to the familiar rhythm and movement of prayer.
It was like slipping into oblivion, into bliss, muscle memory and the murmured song of sacred revelation relaxing his tightly wound emotions and offering a brief escape. Ali could not begin to imagine how the two men he stood between—an elder in a crisp galabiyya and a pale, jittery boy—would react if they knew their arms were brushing those of a djinn. This was probably another violation of Suleiman’s law, and yet Ali found it impossible to care, aching only to call out to his Creator, whom he so obviously shared with the worshippers around him.
Tears were brimming in his eyes by the time he finished. Ali stayed kneeling in numb silence as the other worshippers slowly left. He stared at his hands, the scarred outline of a hook marking one palm.
We’re okay, Zaydi. The poisoned lines creeping over his brother’s stomach and the pain Muntadhir couldn’t hide in his last smile as he reassured Ali. We’re okay.
Ali promptly lost the battle with his tears. He fell forward, biting his fist in a poor effort to contain his wail.
Dhiru, I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! Ali was crying so hard now that his entire body shook. To his ears, his sobs rang out across the vast space, echoing off the lofty walls, but none of the humans seemed to hear him at all. He was utterly alone here, in a world he was not only forbidden to be in, but one that seemed to deny his very existence. And wasn’t that what he deserved for failing his people?
The salty taste of blood burst in his mouth. Ali dropped his hand away, fighting the mad desire to do something reckless and destructive. To hurl himself back into the Nile. To climb these high walls and jump off. Anything that would allow him to escape the grief tearing him open.
Instead, he pressed his face into his hands and rocked back and forth. Merciful One, please help me. Please take this from me. I can’t survive this. I can’t.
Hours passed. Ali stayed rooted to the spot he’d claimed, falling apart in his grief in a span of time that felt endless. His voice faded as his throat grew sore, and his tears dried up, his head pounding with dehydration. Numb, he was barely aware of the humans bustling around him, but he pulled himself from the ground each time they came to pray. It was a tether, a fragile line anchoring him from complete loss.
When night fell, Ali climbed the steps that spiraled around the minaret, feeling like the restless creature he’d heard humans believed djinn to be—the unseen spirits who haunted ruins and crept through graveyards. He pulled himself onto the small, ornate roof and then finally slept, tucked between the cold stones beneath the stars.
He woke just before dawn to the sounds of the muezzin shuffling up the steps. Ali froze, not wanting to frighten the man, and then listened quietly as the call to fajr rose in waves across the city. From this height, Ali could see much of Cairo: a labyrinth of pale brown buildings nestled between hills in the east and the winding dark Nile in the west. It was larger than Daevabad, sprawling across a land so very different from his fog-wreathed island, and though it was dazzling, it made Ali feel very small and very, very homesick.
Is this how Nahri felt? Ali recalled his friend on the night before everything had gone so terribly wrong. The longing in her voice contrasting with the sounds of celebration as they sat together in the hospital and spoke of Egypt. The night she’d touched his face and urged him to find a happier life.
The night Ali realized too late that his heart and his head might be taking different paths when it came to the clever, beautiful Banu Nahida. And though he was not arrogant enough to believe his world had been punished for the beginnings of a forbidden attraction he would never have acted on, it didn’t help his guilt.
You shouldn’t have left her at Yaqub’s like that. Ali might have been senseless with grief, but it had been cruel and selfish to have vanished without a word. Nahri probably would be better off without him, but that was still her decision to make.
So he’d make sure she could.
IT TOOK ALI MOST OF THE MORNING TO RETRACE HIS steps, an effort that sent him down several wrong streets and made him briefly fear that he was lost for good. Finally, he found the twisting lane he half remembered and followed it to its end.
Nahri was outside the apothecary, perched on a stool in a patch of sun. Though she’d veiled her face, Ali would have known her anywhere. There was a basket in her lap, and she was sorting through a pile of leafy twigs, separating out the green leaves like she’d been doing it for years. She seemed at peace, already back in the rhythms of her old life.
Then she glanced up. Relief rushed into her eyes, and Nahri shot to her feet, knocking over the bowl.
Ali crossed the street with equal haste. “I’m sorry,” he blurted out. “I woke up, and I just needed to get away.” He dropped to his knees, trying to pick up the leaves she’d scattered. “I didn’t mean to startle you—”
Nahri grabbed his hands. “You didn’t startle me. I’ve been waiting out here, hoping you’d come back!”
Ali met her gaze over the overturned basket. “Oh.”
Nahri quickly let him go, averting her eyes as she knelt and stuffed the leafy twigs back into the basket. “I … when I woke up and you were gone, I wanted to go after you, but I wasn’t sure you’d want to see me. I figured I’d wait a day, but then I was worried if I wasn’t outside, you’d never find the apothecary again …” She trailed off, stammering in a very un-Nahri-like way.
It wasn’t close to the anger Ali had been expecting to be greeted with. “Why wouldn’t I want to see you?”
Nahri was trembling. “I put that ring on your hand. I took you away from your family, your home.” He heard her voice catch. “When you left, I thought it might have been because you hated me.”
“Oh, God, Nahri—” Ali took the basket out of her hands, setting it aside and rising as he helped her to her feet. “No. Never. I was at the palace with you; I saw the same things. I don’t blame you for anything that happened that night. And I could never hate you,” he insisted, shocked that she could think so. “Not in a thousand years. By the Most High, I actually thought you might be happier if I stayed gone.”
It was her turn to look confused. “Why?”
“You’re free of us,” he said. “My family, the magical world. I thought … I thought if I was a good friend, it would be better to let you return to your life. Your human one.”
She rolled her eyes. “I dragged your burning body through the Nile for a whole damn day. Trust that I wouldn’t have done so if I wanted to get rid of you.”
Shame rushed through him. “You shouldn’t have had to. You shouldn’t have to keep saving me like this.”
Nahri stepped closer. She touched his hand, and Ali felt all the walls he’d bricked up around his broken spirit crash to the ground. “Ali … I thought I made very clear to you I never intended to let you out of my debt.”
Ali choked, a sound that might have been a sob or a laugh. But it was tears that pricked his eyes. “I don’t think I can do this.” Ali couldn’t even say what “this” was. The enormity of how thoroughly his world had just been broken, the danger his loved ones were in, the impossibility of ever fixing it all … he knew no words to convey it.
“I know.” And indeed, there was no mistaking a wet glimmer in her eyes as well. Nahri dropped her hand. “Why don’t we take a walk? There’s a place I’d like to show you.”
6
NAHRI
“It’s the first thing I remember,” Nahri said softly, her eyes on the coursing river. “Like my life started the day I was lifted out of the Nile. The fishermen pounding my back to get the water out of my lungs, asking me what happened, who I was …” She wrapped her arms around herself, shivering despite the warm air. “Nothing. But I remember the sunlight on the water, the Pyramids against the sky, and the smell of mud like it was yesterday.”
They had returned to the Nile, walking its bank as fishermen and sailors brought their boats and nets ashore. After a while, the two of them had settled at the base of a towering palm tree, which was when Nahri had started talking, sharing stories about her old life.
Next to her, Ali was tracing patterns in the dust. He had barely spoken, a quiet shadow at her side.
“That’s the first thing you remember?” he asked now. “How old were you?”
Nahri shrugged. “Five? Six? I don’t really know. I had issues with speech—all the languages in my head.” Nostalgia swept her. “The little river girl, they called me.”
“Bint el nahr.” They’d been switching between Djinnistani and Arabic, but he said the words in Arabic, glancing up at her. “Nahri.”
“Nahri,” she repeated. “One of the few things I could decide for myself. Everyone was always trying to stick proper names on me. Never fit. I’ve always liked choosing my own path.”
“That must have been hard in Daevabad.”
A half-dozen sarcastic responses hovered at her lips. But the devastation still felt too close. “Yes,” she said simply.
Ali was silent for a long moment before speaking again. “Can I ask you something?”
“That depends on what it is.”
He looked at her again. Creator, it was hard to hold his gaze. Ali had always been an open book, and the achingly raw grief in his bloodshot eyes was nothing like the reckless, know-it-all prince she’d unwittingly befriended. “Were you ever happy there? In Daevabad, I mean.”
Nahri sucked in her breath, not expecting that question. “I … yes,” she replied, realizing it was the truth as she said it. “Sometimes. I liked being a Nahid healer. I liked the purpose it gave me, the respect. I liked being part of the Daevas and being able to fill my mind with books and new skills rather than fretting over where to find my next meal.” She paused, her throat hitching. “I liked the hospital a lot. It made me feel hopeful for the first time. I think …” She dropped her gaze. “I think I would have been happy working there.”
“Until my father found a way to crush it.”
“Yes, admittedly, the constant fear your father would murder someone I loved and being forced to marry a man who hated me were less than ideal.” She stared at her hands. “But I’ve got a lot of experience finding slivers of light to cherish when life gets more miserable than usual.”
“You shouldn’t have to.” Ali sighed. “My Divasti is, well, pretty awful, but I heard some of what Manizheh was saying to you that night. She wanted you to join them, didn’t she?”
Nahri hesitated, wondering how to respond. Ali was a Qahtani, she was a Nahid, and their peoples were at war. It seemed foolish to point out that she had a foot in each camp.
But right now, Ali didn’t look like her enemy. He looked like a man grieving for his dead, like the optimist she knew had desperately wanted a better world for all of them—and then had seen his hopes destroyed.
Nahri could relate. “Yes, Manizheh wanted me to join them.” Alone by the river, she’d removed her veil, and she worried it between her hands now. “Dara too.” Her voice, which had been steady, trembled at Dara’s name. “He said he was sorry, that I was supposed to be in the infirmary with Nisreen and … oh. Oh.”
“What?” Ali immediately moved closer, sounding worried. “What is it?”
But Nahri couldn’t speak. I was supposed to be with Nisreen the night of the attack. Nisreen’s comments about future training, her determined assistance in preventing Nahri from having a child with Muntadhir …
Just get through Navasatem, Nisreen had urged their last night together, as they drank soma and made peace after months of estrangement. I promise you, things are going to be very different soon.
Nisreen had known about Manizheh.
The mentor who’d been like a mother, who’d died in Nahri’s arms, had known. Along with Kaveh. Dara. Who else among the Daevas, among the people Nahri had thought she could trust, had quietly plotted the slaughter of the djinn they lived among? Who else had let Nahri dream, knowing it was just that—a dream?
“Nahri?” Ali started to reach for her shoulder and then stopped. “Are you okay?”
She shook her head. She felt like she was going to throw up. “I think Nisreen knew about Manizheh.”
“Nisreen?” Ali’s eyes widened. “So, if Nisreen knew, and Kaveh knew, you don’t think Jamshid—”
“No.” But Jamshid … her brother’s name was another knife through her heart, one Nahri did not feel remotely capable of extracting right now. “Jamshid would never have taken part in such a thing. I don’t think either of us was supposed to be involved. I guess they figured if they swept in, killed your father, seized the throne, and disposed of the bloody evidence, we’d just be happy to be saved.” The words were bitter in her mouth.
Ali looked sick. “Every time I think there’s no lower our world can sink, we all plunge deeper.”
“Some of us rise,” she countered. “What Muntadhir did … that was one of the bravest things I’ve ever seen.”
“It was brave, wasn’t it?” Ali hastily wiped his eyes, doing a poor job of hiding his tears. “I can’t stop thinking about him, Nahri. I feel like I’m losing my mind. I can’t stop wondering how long it took, how much pain he was in, if he blamed me at the end—”
“Don’t. Ali, don’t do that. There’s no way Muntadhir blamed you, and he wouldn’t want you killing yourself thinking that.”
Ali was shaking. “It should have been me. I still don’t understand what happened, why I couldn’t fight Darayavahoush …”
Another subject Nahri wasn’t ready to discuss. “I can’t—I can’t talk about him right now. Please.”
Ali blinked at her, his eyes wet and uncertain. He managed a nod. “All right.”
But the silence that stretched between them didn’t last long. Because no matter how much Nahri didn’t want to talk about Dara, she remembered the rage of the woman who commanded him, and right now Nahri and Ali were powerless.
“Have you had any luck lifting the seal?” she asked, trying to keep the hope from her voice.
Ali’s expression was not inspiring. “No. The ring has mostly stopped feeling like it’s going to explode in my heart, but I can’t detect anything of its magic.”
“Muntadhir said it might take a couple of days.”
“It’s been a couple of days.”
Nahri toyed with her veil. “Well, there was one other thing.”
“What one other thing?”
“Muntadhir said the seal ring wasn’t supposed to leave Daevabad.”
Ali jerked upright. “Why didn’t you say something earlier?” He gestured wildly at the Nile. “We are very much not in Daevabad!”