around him.
It wasn’t enough. Zaynab al Qahtani was nowhere to be seen, and Manizheh’s wish drove him to further destruction, further death. Dara returned to the sky to bring down a vast complex he recognized as a famed school in the Ayaanle Quarter and a public garden in the Geziri one. Then he headed for the old border between the Geziri and shafit neighborhoods.
The next block was Nahri’s hospital.
No. Dara fought harder against the curse binding him, frantic for a way out. A way to delay. He couldn’t harm himself; he couldn’t not carry out the order.
So he sent his horse hurtling to the ground.
The cobblestones cracked under the heat and energy pouring off his body. It was as if he’d plummeted into the hell he deserved, nightmarish scenes of panicked mothers running with sobbing children and his soldiers locked in bloody, uneven combat with shafit civilians. There were blasts of gunfire and the punch of arrows. Homes were ablaze, the thick smoke a backdrop against the rise and fall of blades, the spray of blood.
The saviors of Daevabad.
Still Dara’s feet carried him forth. His scourge was gone, ripped from his hand when it stuck too deeply into the back of a weeping man who’d fallen to his knees to beg for his life. Dara now held a mace in one hand, a dagger in the other.
But the djinn hadn’t fallen apart completely. Not yet.
“Hold the hospital! Target the Scourge!”
Warriors threw themselves on him. Men mounted on horses, women flinging scalding Rumi fire. Yesterday he would have been dead a dozen times over, original daeva powers be damned. Now, with the blood magic protecting him, Manizheh’s curse defying nature itself, Dara stayed standing, cutting a path of death as he moved on the hospital that the woman he loved had worked so hard to rebuild. Tears pricked in his eyes, evaporating before they could be seen—he was not permitted to give any hint of the anguish ripping him apart.
Twenty paces from the hospital. Ten. Dara raised his hands. Go away from this in your mind. Energy sizzled through his fingers …
The great wooden doors burst open.
“Stop!”
Zaynab al Qahtani stood with a black flag in her hands.
It took a few moments for her cry to be carried. For the sight of her, unarmed save the flag, to freeze the djinn fighters where they stood. She took another step, and several people retreated, as though her very presence had forced them back. Razu was at her side, staring at Dara with naked hate and betrayal.
Gripping the flag as though it were a sword, Zaynab took another step toward him, her head held high. “We surrender,” she said coldly. “We will lay down our arms if you stop.” She dropped the flag. “Manizheh may have me.”
Dara raised his own hand. “Stand down,” he commanded his men. Not that he’d needed to. Zaynab had stilled them all.
Ah, but Manizheh’s wish burned through him. It wanted more. Humiliate her, it demanded. Make her cower.
“Zaynab!” Aqisa charged out from the hospital doors.
Razu and a pair of Geziri soldiers moved to grab the warrior. They were ill-matched, Aqisa wrenching free as Zaynab glanced back.
“Fall back, my friend. We have no choice.” But Zaynab’s voice snapped across the air as she added something in what sounded like stilted Geziriyya.
Dara had borne much shame in his life but watching the proud Qahtani princess approach with blazing eyes was a dishonor he knew he’d carry for the rest of his days. This wasn’t how he was supposed to take Daevabad from the family that had ruined his.
They aren’t the family that ruined yours. That family still rules you.
Zaynab stepped up to him. Like her younger brother, she was tall, and she evenly met Dara’s height.
“Here I am,” she declared. “May it please the wretched demon you call mistress.”
Dara glared, even as he ached to fall at her feet and beg for forgiveness. “What did you tell your warrior?”
“To gut you.”
The words were loud enough to carry. A few of his soldiers bristled, reaching again for their weapons.
Creator, kill me. Dara seized Zaynab al Qahtani, grabbing her roughly by the arm and yanking her forward. Manizheh’s wish was urging him to do worse, to rip away her veil and drag her by the hair. Instead, he walked faster toward the midan through the neighborhoods he’d annihilated, trying to distract himself from the awful longing. It looked as if a great wheel had rolled through, pulverizing everything in its path and leaving