The City of Brass (The Daevabad Trilogy #1) - S. A. Chakraborty Page 0,89

She angrily wiped away the tears rolling down her cheeks. “How could you leave him there? It was him you should have carried, not me!”

“I . . .” Dara turned away with a choked sob and abruptly dropped onto a large, moss-covered boulder. His head fell into his hands. The weeds surrounding him started to blacken and a hazy heat rose in waves above the rock. “I couldn’t, Nahri. Only those of our blood can cross the threshold.”

“We could have tried to help. To fight—”

“How?” Dara glanced up. His eyes were dim with sorrow, but his expression was resolute. “You saw what the marid did to the river, how Khayzur fought back.” He pressed his mouth in a grim line. “Compared to the marid and peri, we are insects. And Khayzur was right—I had to get you to safety.”

Nahri leaned against a crooked tree, feeling ready to collapse herself. “What do you think happened to the ifrit?” she finally asked.

“If there’s any justice in this world, they were dashed upon the rocks and drowned.” Dara spat. “That . . . woman,” he said scornfully. “It was she who enslaved me. I remember her face from the memory you triggered.”

Nahri wrapped her arms around herself; she was still wet, and the dawn air was cool. “The one I killed said they were working with my mother, Dara.” Her voice choked on the word. “That Manizheh they kept talking about.” She reeled; Khayzur’s death, the mention of her mother, an entire damned river rising up to smash them to pieces . . . it was all too much.

Dara was at her side in a moment. He took her by the shoulders, bending to meet her gaze. “They’re lying, Nahri,” he said firmly. “They’re demons. You can’t trust anything they say. All they do is deceive and manipulate. They do it to humans, they do it to daevas. They will say anything to trick you. To break you.”

She managed a nod, and he briefly cupped her cheek with one hand. “Let’s just get into the city,” he said softly. “We should be able to find sanctuary at the Grand Temple. We’ll figure out our next step there.”

“All right.” The press of his palm on her skin made her think back to what they’d been doing before the ifrit attack, and she flushed. She glanced away, looking around them for the city. But she saw nothing but silvery trees and flashes of the sun-dappled water in the distance. “Where is Daevabad?”

Dara pointed through the trees. The forest descended sharply before them. “There’s a lake at the bottom of the mountain. Daevabad is on an island at its center. There should be a ferry down by the beach.”

“The djinn use ferries?” It was so unexpected and so human, she almost broke into laughter.

He raised an eyebrow. “Can you think of a better way to cross a lake?”

Movement drew her eye. Nahri glanced up, catching sight of a gray hawk perched in the trees opposite her. It stared back, shifting on its feet as it settled into a more comfortable position.

She turned back to Dara. “I suppose not. Lead the way.”

Nahri followed him through the trees as the sun climbed higher and filled the forest with a lovely, pale yellow light. Her bare feet crunched through the underbrush, and as she passed a thick bush with spindly dark green leaves, she let her hands drift out to briefly cradle a spray of salmon-colored buds. They warmed to her touch and began to blossom ever so slightly.

She glanced at Dara from the corner of her eye, watching as he gazed at the forest. Despite Khayzur’s death, there was a new light in his eyes. He’s home, Nahri realized. And it wasn’t just his eyes that were shining; as he reached to clear away a low-hanging branch, she caught a glimpse of his ring, the emerald glowing bright. Nahri frowned, but as she moved closer to him, the glow vanished.

The forest finally began to flatten, the trees thinning out to give way to a pebbly shore. The lake was enormous, ringed by mountains of green hardwood forests on the southern side and sheer cliffs in the distant north. The blue-green water was completely still, an unbroken sheet of glass. She saw no island, nothing even hinting at a village, let alone a massive city.

But there was a large boat beached not far from where they stood, similar in shape to the feluccas that sailed the Nile. The sun