The City of Brass (The Daevabad Trilogy #1) - S. A. Chakraborty Page 0,185

he was doomed.

He did this to himself. Nahri knew that. But her mind flashed back to their journey, to the sorrow that constantly haunted him, his anguish when he talked about his family’s fate, the bloody memories of his time as a slave. He’d spent his life fighting for the Daevas against the Qahtanis. It was no small wonder he was desperate to save her from what must seem the worst possible fate.

And God, the thought of him in irons, dragged before the king, executed in front of a jeering crowd of djinn . . .

No. Never. She turned, a sudden heat in her chest. “Let him go,” she begged. “Please. Let him leave, and I’ll stay here. I’ll marry your brother. I’ll do whatever your family wants.”

Ali hesitated. “Nahri . . .”

“Please.” She grabbed his hand, willing the reluctance in his eyes to vanish. She couldn’t let Dara die. The thought alone broke her heart. “I beg you. That’s all I want,” she added, and at the moment, it was true, her only desire in the world. “I only wish for him to live.”

There was a moment of strange stillness on the ship. The air grew uncomfortably hot, the way it might at an approaching monsoon.

Dara let out a choked gasp. Nahri whirled around in time to see him stumble. His bow dipped in his hands as he frantically tried to catch his breath.

Horrified, she lurched toward him. Ali grabbed her arm as Dara’s ring suddenly blazed.

When he looked up, Nahri stifled a cry. Though Dara’s gaze was focused on her, there was no recognition in his bright eyes. There was nothing familiar in his face: his expression was wilder than it had been at Hierapolis, the look of something hunted and hurt.

He whirled on the soldiers. He snarled, and his bow doubled in size. The quiver transformed as well, growing flush with a variety of arrows that vied to outdo each other in savagery. The one he held notched ended in an iron crescent, its shaft studded with barbs.

Nahri went cold. She remembered her last words. The intent behind them. She couldn’t have truly—could she? “Dara, wait! Don’t!”

“Shoot him!” Muntadhir screamed.

Ali shoved her down. They hit the deck hard, but nothing whizzed over their heads. She looked up.

The soldiers’ arrows had frozen in midair.

Nahri strongly suspected King Ghassan was going to be too late.

Dara snapped his fingers, and the arrows abruptly reversed direction to flit through the air and cut through their owners. His own swiftly joined them, his hands moving so fast between the quiver and bow that she couldn’t follow the motion with her eyes. When the archers fell back under the onslaught, Dara snatched up Ali’s zulfiqar.

His bright gaze locked on Muntadhir, and his mad eyes flashed with recognition. “Zaydi al Qahtani,” he declared. He spat. “Traitor. I’ve waited a long time to make you pay for what you did to my people.”

Dara had no sooner made his lunatic assertion than he charged the ship. The wooden railing burst into flames at his touch, and he vanished into the black smoke. She could hear men screaming.

“Free me,” Ali begged, thrusting his wrists into her lap. “Please!”

“I don’t know how!”

The body—sans head—of an Agnivanshi officer landed beside them with a thud, and Nahri shrieked. Ali pushed awkwardly to his feet.

She grabbed his arm. “Are you mad? What are you possibly going to do like that?” she asked, gesturing to his bound wrists.

He shook her off. “My brother’s over there!”

“Ali!” But the prince was already gone, disappearing into the same black smoke as Dara.

She recoiled. What in God’s name had just happened to Dara? Nahri had spent weeks at his side—surely she had wished for things out loud without . . . well, whatever it was she had just done.

He’s going to kill everyone on that boat. Ghassan would arrive to find his sons murdered, and then he’d hunt them to the ends of the earth, hang them in the midan, and their tribes would go to war for a century.

She couldn’t let that happen. “God preserve me,” she whispered, and then she did the most un-Nahri-like thing she could imagine.

She ran into danger.

Nahri boarded the ship, climbing up the broken oars and anchor chains, while trying very hard not to look at the cursed water gleaming below. She’d never forgotten what Dara told her about it shredding djinn flesh.

But the carnage on the trireme put the deadly lake out of mind. Fire licked down the wooden