of time. I’d go mad if I thought about my old life too often.”
“Tell me about it,” Dara muttered. “Still, you have a place here. A purpose. A life you have made and enjoy.”
“Do you not think you can do the same?”
“I have not missed that you are taking me the long way out the back.”
Razu’s expression dimmed. “I thought it best we avoid running into, well, anyone. I believe you were under Manizheh’s control when you attacked the quarters, but many don’t. They believe it too convenient. They’re angry and grieving and want to see someone punished.”
Of course they do. It had been fourteen centuries since Qui-zi, and still he’d been known as the Scourge. How many centuries would this newest horror take to atone for?
“I should not have come to the hospital,” Dara said, the realization making him ill. “I am sorry. You should not have to be guiding me about like this—I don’t wish the hatred people have for me to hang on you.”
“Oh, believe me, Afshin, I can handle myself.”
They kept walking, emerging from a back door that led into the street. It was still early in the morning, and there weren’t yet many people out.
Which meant not much blocked Dara’s view of the devastated neighborhoods stretching from the hospital to the broken midan. The bodies had been removed, but dark stains, torn clothing, and abandoned shoes marked where they’d been killed, surrounded by the contents of smashed buildings—broken pots, filthy quilts, and shattered toys. The products of a lifetime, homes that had housed generations, destroyed in moments.
By him. In one corner, he’d started to conjure tents for shelters earlier before literally getting chased out. His victims didn’t want his help.
And Dara didn’t blame them. “I should have stood up to Manizheh sooner,” he said bitterly. “Creator, a day earlier. An hour. So many people would still be alive.”
“Afshin, if you’re looking for absolution, you won’t find it from me,” Razu replied. “But I don’t think any of us realized how far she’d fallen. Not in a thousand years would I have believed her capable of murdering other Daevas for blood magic, let alone enslaving her own Afshin.”
That’s not all she was capable of. In his bones, Dara knew the nobles weren’t the only Daevas she’d killed: Manizheh had murdered her brother as well. The story she’d told of Rustam wanting to sacrifice his newborn niece—Dara would put money on those roles being reversed.
“I cannot even imagine how we fix all this,” he confessed.
“Bit by bit. I find even the most impossible tasks seem less daunting from the inside. And we all have our own strengths, our roles to play.”
Dara grimaced. “I suppose.”
“Afshin, can I ask you something?” When he nodded, Razu ventured forth. “Do you love her? Truly love her?”
“I did not say you could ask me that.” If Dara had doubted his feelings for Nahri would survive all their betrayals and battles, he’d known the moment she’d smiled at him from her hospital bed that he was besotted as ever.
“Yes,” he answered after a time. “I love her. More than my life. I do not imagine I will ever love another in such a manner.”
Razu gave him a sad smile. “Then make sure you follow your own words back there. She is young and brilliant, and despite everything, seems to have pulled through with soul intact.” Her smile faded. “Make sure you are not her burden.”
KARTIR SAT BACK ON THE CUSHIONED BENCH, DESPAIR in his face as he gestured to the scattered relics across the floor. “They’re gone. Every single vessel we’d been keeping safe.”
Dara knelt on the ground, picking up one of the relics. “How many?”
“Thirty-seven.” Kartir’s voice was hollow. “And that’s only from our records. I strongly suspect Manizheh gave the ifrit some of the ‘traitors’ she had arrested as well. She threatened us with that during interrogation. I would never have wanted to imagine such a thing, but men went missing, and …” He trailed off, looking very old. “Vizaresh travels on lightning. He could have scattered them across the world by now, and there’s no way to trace them.”
Dara kept picking up the relics. It didn’t seem right for them to be on the floor. And yet the djinn and Daevas they belonged to were already possibly in a far worse state of affairs, waking to new human masters after the somber peace of the Temple. His memories of Manizheh’s awful, gripping control came back to him, the way he’d