him to know, emotions she couldn’t articulate.
“Take off your shirt,” she said instead. “And lie down.”
He obeyed. Jamshid placed a drape over Ali’s chest. “Keep your eyes on me,” he said. “She doesn’t need the distraction, and you definitely don’t want to see what she’s doing. We can talk about your brother, if you like, and the hundreds of signs you missed.”
“So you plan to mock me as I bleed to death?” Ali asked as Nahri scrubbed his chest with disinfectant. “That sounds like a terrible bedside manner.”
“Whatever it takes to keep you awake and focused,” Jamshid said cheerfully. But when he glanced at Nahri, his expression was serious. “Ready?”
No. “Yes,” she replied, pressing her fingers over his heart. Jamshid did the same. “Your turn, Ali.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him drop his hand to hover just above the water. He whispered a prayer in Arabic, and then a tendril of water dashed from the tub. The seal fell, and Nahri’s magic flooded back into her, raw and wild and warm. At her side, Jamshid gasped.
Ali was breathing fast, his heart racing. “Can you … the pain,” he wheezed.
“Jamshid—”
“I’ve got it.” Jamshid squeezed his eyes shut in concentration, and Nahri felt a cool wave pass through Ali, numbing his nerves. Despite the circumstances, part of her marveled. It was incredible working with another Nahid like this, as though they were sharing part of themselves.
“I’m starting,” she said in Divasti. “Keep him awake and calm.”
“Will do, little sister.”
Letting Jamshid hold the healing magic, Nahri broke contact to pick up her tools. As feared, her powers fell instantly away, but for this part, she wouldn’t need them. Still, she paused with the scalpel. It felt so incredibly wrong to cut into Ali.
And yet Nahri had no choice. Because, like he’d said, she was the Banu Nahida.
Ali twitched as she sank the scalpel into his skin, but she had to hand it to Jamshid; he was doing a good job of keeping the prince oblivious to what was going on below his neck.
“So let me tell you all the ways in which you have terrible form as a rider,” Jamshid began conversationally. “Because it really is distressing to watch, and Muntadhir never had the heart to tell you. He actually hoped I would tell you, in exchange for you teaching me how to wield a zulfiqar …”
Nahri let their conversation fade into the background. There was only the job in front of her. Skin and muscle that needed to be carefully cut and clamped back. Blood to be packed with gauze. It wasn’t her doomed friend she was opening up, the man she’d been kissing only hours earlier. It was simply parts, a biological mechanism with a foreign object that needed excising.
It was only when she started on the bone saw that she felt the others waver. Jamshid’s voice hitched, and Ali trembled beneath her.
“Al Qahtani,” Jamshid said soothingly, “look at me, all right? Keep your eyes open so I know you’re awake.”
Ali’s response was too muttered to hear. Nahri worked faster, the chalky smell of bone dust filling her nose. She cut free the rib, setting it aside. And then she stared in awe at his heart.
Jamshid let out a small sound of surprise. “Is it supposed to look like that?” he whispered in Divasti.
“No,” she breathed. “Not quite.” For Nahri had seen hearts in her work. Djinn hearts were larger than human ones and a rich, dazzling purple. Ali’s was large as well but swirled with bright golden brown and silver-toned blue. Had the marid possession done that?
Focus, Nahri. The scalpel in one hand, she laid her other one against his pulsing heart and her magic returned even faster. Stronger. The muscles throbbed; the ring was ready to burst through.
It wants you, Ali had said once. Nahri had found that ridiculous, and yet it was hard to shake the feeling now. With magic burning through her veins, it seemed such an easy matter to pluck the ring from his heart and heal him right up.
One step at a time. Closing her eyes to tease out the different levels of the membrane protecting his heart, Nahri saw the ring in her mind’s eye, nestled in the walls of undulating tissue.
“I’m opening the heart now,” she warned Jamshid. “Get ready.”
Ever so gently, she cut through the membrane, teasing it back with the edge of her scalpel. Bright amber fluid flowed out, and then it was there, Suleiman’s ring, the