very irritating to watch over, did you know that? All this shrieking in your sleep and calling for your sister. ‘Tamima! Tamima!’”
Dara lunged against the chains holding him and then gasped as a wave of pain left him breathless. He fell back against the smoldering surface to which he’d been bound.
Vizaresh slowly circled him, fiery eyes raking his body. “Careful, Afshin. Your Banu Nahida has gone through such efforts to revive you. It would be disrespectful to undo all her hard work. Especially now, when she needs you so dearly.”
Dara was still struggling to breathe, but he clung to the ifrit’s words like a drowning man. “She’s alive?”
“She survived.” The ifrit licked his teeth, revealing a glimpse of glistening fangs. “Such disloyal, flighty things, your Daevas. Running from this ruler to that ruler—”
“Where is she?” Dara demanded. “What have you done with her?”
Vizaresh’s eyes lit up, incredulity crossing his face. “Oh, you poor man, you still don’t see it, do you? I am not the one you should be worried about. Nor would I do anything to cross your Manizheh. At this point, I just enjoy watching her.”
Dara wanted to strangle him with his riddles. “Where is Aeshma?”
“At her side, as always. I believe the phrase is ‘helping her reach her true potential.’”
Dara writhed against his confines, a bit of strength returning. “Let me out of these chains.”
Vizaresh snorted. “You’ll never be out of chains. Not now.” He left Dara’s view, but when he returned, it was with a hammer. “I warned you the first time you took to the winds. You shouldn’t have wasted your rebirth on these mortals and their wars.”
Alarm spiked through Dara even as Vizaresh began striking off the chains. “What does that mean?” he demanded, wrenching his left hand free. “WHAT DOES THAT—”
Dara froze. His ring was gone.
He sprang up, all thoughts of Manizheh and Aeshma vanishing. “My ring,” he whispered, staring in dread at his hand. The other mark of ifrit slavery was there: the winding tattoo recording the lives of the human masters he’d taken. But the glowing emerald and battered band, the ring whose previous loss meant his instant death, was nowhere to be seen.
Dara lunged at the ifrit, who was probably regretting his decision to free him. The sudden movement made his head spin, and he clutched at Vizaresh’s collar. Creator, what had happened to him? Dara had never felt this fractured, like the pathways between his mind and body had been broken and badly pieced back together.
“Where is my ring?” he wheezed, wrapping his hands around the ifrit’s throat.
Vizaresh writhed, spitting fire. “Gone,” he choked out, nodding at Dara’s right wrist. “You’ve that now.”
Dropping him, Dara glanced down. He recoiled at the contraption embedded in his wrist. A brass sheath like an archer’s bracer bordered by raw scar tissue and seeping, gold-flecked black blood. Set in the center was his relic, the amulet hammered out and flattened.
What is that? What has been done to me?
Sick with dread, Dara forced himself to look around. They were in the palace infirmary, but it had been emptied save for him and Vizaresh. Tools he couldn’t recognize, scorched rags, and broken apothecary bottles littered the worktables as though someone had gone into a frenzy.
Dara shoved aside his broken chains. He’d been strapped to a low metal table set over a smoldering fire, and the smoke smelled wrong. He searched for what might have fed the flames, but there were no charred pieces of wood, or any oil. Instead, frayed bits of crumbling linen drifted through the air. Dara swept a hand through the ash lying thick in his lap, examining the crumbling remains. Tiny black shards peppered the pale dust.
Bone.
He reeled. “What is this?” There was so much ash. So much. “What did she do?”
Vizaresh had backed away and was massaging his throat. “You were all but dead by the time Aeshma and I brought you back. One of your traitors injected you with iron solution. A brilliantly ghastly idea, to be honest. It’s still in you. Manizheh said there was no way to extract it from your blood without her magic. So she needed another way to save you.” His gaze met Dara’s, vicious and knowing. “How fortunate she was in possession of her dead kin. You know what they say about the power of the Nahid—”
Dara cried out, heaving away the bone fragments in his hands and trying to scramble out of the burning pit. He stumbled to his knees and sent