sick, he realized, dread sinking deeper into his soul. The island and its lake stood out like a festering wound on the world, as though a vital piece had been stolen away. The loss of Suleiman’s seal—it had to be.
By the Creator, Nahri, please be alive. Please bring it back. Dara couldn’t imagine any way Nahri and the current holder of Suleiman’s seal could return to Daevabad that didn’t end with one of them dead, but the true toll of all this was suddenly so clear. They’d broken their world, and now their home—the home of tens of thousands—was dying.
Awful as that thought was, Dara could do nothing to save Daevabad tonight. But he could save the life of someone who’d trusted him.
Fixing the hospital in his mind, Dara found himself there in the next moment, spinning down and landing on the roof, light as a bird. It was a disorienting experience; there was the ghost of stone beneath what might have been his feet—except glancing down, he didn’t see his feet. Trying to pull himself back into the material world, he cloaked himself in shadows and crept to the roof’s edge.
Nostalgia swept him. The hospital looked different, but the bones of the old institution were still there. In his youth, Dara had spent plenty of time in the hospital—most warriors-intraining did—and his memories returned to him, of Nahid healers in facemasks and aprons forcing foul potions down his throat and resetting snapped bones.
It was quiet now, the breeze rustling the trees in the courtyard the only sound. An arcaded corridor surrounded the garden, and in the eastern corner, he noticed the flicker of firelight beyond the pale bricks.
This is a trap. It had been there in every goading, mocking line of that Geziri woman’s speech. The djinn wanted him dead. A smart man wouldn’t take this risk—one didn’t risk catastrophe for a single life, and until recently, Dara himself would have made the same cruel calculus.
But there was another part of the equation worth examining:
They have never beaten me.
Dara had been cut down only twice—by the ifrit when he was enslaved and then by Alizayd and his marid masters, fiends who couldn’t touch him now. And that was before he’d awoken with the incredible abilities of an original daeva. There was no one below but ordinary djinn soldiers and shafit servants. Trap or not, they were no match for him.
Dara vanished again, letting himself become immaterial, but it was a struggle to hold, an ill-timed reminder that his magic and strength were finite, no matter what he wanted to believe. He slipped from the roof and then into the hospital’s murky heart. He was not entirely silent—he might be invisible, but the curtains shivered when he passed, and the torches blossomed, their fire growing wild in his presence. As he went deeper, it became clear the place wasn’t completely asleep. A yawning shafit servant, her arms filled with linens, passed in the corridor, and there were murmured whispers behind doors. Farther away, someone moaned in pain, and a child whimpered.
He drifted around the next corner and then stilled. Two Geziri men stood at attention beside a closed door, light playing below the doorjamb. The men weren’t in uniform, and one looked barely older than a boy, but the elder wore a zulfiqar and the other a straight sword, their posture indicating training.
Dara considered his options. With corridors snaking in three different directions, he knew a single cry would carry, alerting the rest of the hospital. But he wasn’t sure he could pass by like this. The djinn might not know the extent of his abilities, but wild gossip would have carried of his fiery form and the lake that had risen like a beast. They were probably on guard for the slightest hint of magic, and he didn’t need the wall torches next to the guards’ heads flaring and giving him away.
He studied the door, letting himself reach out. The wooden particles were old and dry, insubstantial, really. Beyond, he could sense a vacuum of air, a single hot presence and beating heart. Acting on instinct, Dara willed himself inside.
He stumbled, falling to his knees as he abruptly rematerialized—thankfully inside the dark room. He was out of breath and exhausted, his magic nearly spent, but he had just enough to pull his mortal form over his body, masking his fiery skin. By the Creator, maybe he should have taken to interrogating the ifrit more often about their ancient abilities.