The City of Brass (The Daevabad Trilogy #1) - S. A. Chakraborty Page 0,192

“What happened?”

Nisreen froze at the door. “Should I call for guards, my king?”

“No,” his father snapped. “Just my son.” He grabbed Ali’s hands. “Alizayd, calm down. Calm down!” Nisreen vanished.

Water streamed down his cheeks, pooling in his palms and growing clammy on his brow. Ali stared in horror at his dripping hands. “What is this? Am I . . . sweating?” Such a thing wasn’t possible: pureblooded djinn did not sweat.

The door burst open, and Muntadhir rushed in. “Zaydi . . . thank God,” he breathed as he hurried to his bedside. His face paled. “Oh . . . oh.”

He wasn’t the only one shocked. Ali gaped at his brother; Muntadhir looked like he’d been on the wrong side of a street brawl. His jaw was bruised, stitches held together gashes on his cheek and brow, and bloody bandages wrapped his arms. His robe hung in shreds. He appeared to have aged thirty years; his face was drawn, his eyes swollen and darkly rimmed from crying.

Ali gasped. “What happened to you?”

“The Scourge was offering a demonstration of his title,” Muntadhir said bitterly. “Until you turned him into a pile of ash.”

“Until I did what?”

The king glared at Muntadhir. “I had not yet reached that part.” He glanced at Ali again, his face unusually gentle. “Do you remember climbing back onto the boat? Killing Darayavahoush?”

“No!”

His father and brother exchanged a dark look. “What do you remember of the lake?” Ghassan asked.

Pain. Indescribable pain. But he didn’t need to tell his worried father that. “I . . . something was talking to me,” he remembered. “Showing me things. Awful things. You were dead, Abba. Dhiru . . . they cut your head off in front of a crowd of ifrit.” He blinked back tears as his brother blanched. “There were men defiling Zaynab . . . the streets were burning . . . I thought it all real.” He swallowed, trying to regain control. More sweat poured from his skin, soaking the sheets. “The voice . . . it-it was asking for something. My name.”

“Your name?” Ghassan asked sharply. “It asked for your name? Did you give it?”

“I-I think so,” Ali replied, trying to recall his scattered memories. “I don’t remember anything after that.” His father went still, and Ali panicked. “Why?”

“You don’t give your name, Alizayd.” Ghassan was clearly trying—and failing—to check the alarm rising in his voice. “Not freely, not to a creature who’s not of our race. Giving your name means giving up control. That’s how the ifrit enslave us.”

“What are you saying?” Ali touched his wounds. “You think the ifrit did this to me?” He gasped. “Does that mean—”

“Not the ifrit, Zaydi,” Muntadhir cut in quietly. Ali watched his brother’s gaze dart to their father, but Ghassan didn’t interrupt. “That’s not what lives in the lake.”

Ali’s eyes went wide. “The marid? That’s insane. They haven’t been seen in thousands of years!”

His father hushed him. “Keep your voice down.” He glanced at his eldest. “Muntadhir, get him some water.” Muntadhir poured him a cup from the ceramic water pitcher on the table behind them, pressing it into his hand before stepping carefully away. Ali clutched it, taking a nervous sip.

Ghassan’s face stayed grave. “The marid have been seen, Alizayd. By Zaydi al Qahtani himself when he took Daevabad . . . in the company of the Ayaanle man who commanded them.”

Ali went cold. “What?”

“The marid were seen by Zaydi,” Ghassan repeated. “He warned his son about them when he became emir, a warning passed down to each generation of Qahtani kings.”

“We don’t cross the Ayaanle,” Muntadhir intoned softly.

Ghassan nodded. “Zaydi said the Ayaanle alliance with the marid earned us our victory . . . but that the Ayaanle had paid a terrible price for doing so. We were never to betray them.”

Ali was shocked. “The marid helped us take Daevabad from the Nahids? But that-that’s absurd. That’s . . . abhorrent,” he realized. “That would be . . .”

“A betrayal of our race itself,” Ghassan finished. “Which is why it doesn’t leave this room.” He shook his head. “My own father never believed it, said it was just a story passed down over the centuries to frighten us.” Ghassan’s face fell. “Until today, I thought he might be right.”

Ali narrowed his eyes. “What are you saying?”

Ghassan took his hand. “You fell in the lake, my son. You gave your name to a creature in its depths. I think it took it . . . I think it took you.”

Ali