Daevabad—not commit another Qui-zi.” He reached for the tent flap.
It burst into flames and a searing pain shot down his arm. Dara cried out, more in shock than hurt as he whirled back around.
Manizheh snapped her fingers, and the pain vanished. “We are not done with our conversation,” she seethed. “I have risked and lost too much to see my plans fail now because a warrior with more blood on his hands than I can even imagine momentarily grew a conscience.” Her expression was cold. “If you have ever called yourself an Afshin, you will sit back down right now.”
Dara stared at her in disbelief. “This is not you, Banu Manizheh.”
“You do not know me, Darayavahoush. You do not know what you’ve already cost me.”
“What I’ve cost you?” The charge was almost laughable. Dara beat a fist against his chest. “Do you think I want to be here?” Anger swirled into his heart, and then it was breaking free—the line he’d sworn he’d never cross, the resentment that festered in the darkest part of his soul. “I do not want any of this! Your family destroyed my life—my honor, my reputation! You had me carry out one of the worst crimes in our history, and when it blew up in your faces, you blamed me!”
She glared. “I wasn’t the one who put a scourge in your hand.”
“No, you are just the one who brought me back. Twice.” Tears blurred his eyes. “I was with my sister. I was at peace.”
Her eyes were blazing now. “You don’t get to pine for peace with your family after what you did to mine.”
“Your daughter would never agree to any of this.”
“I’m not talking about my daughter.” Manizheh’s gaze pinned him. He’d swear he could feel her magic, the ghost of fingers around his throat, a barbed tightness in his chest. “I’m talking about my son.”
Confusion coursed through him. “Your son?” But before the word fully left his mouth, Dara’s gaze fell upon Kaveh’s cap beside her bedroll. He recalled her fierce words about keeping those she loved hidden …
He thought, very suddenly, of the kindhearted young man he’d left riddled with arrows.
“No,” Dara whispered. “He … he has no abilities.” Dara couldn’t even say his name; it would make the horrified suspicion racing through his mind all too real. “He said his mother was a servant. That she died when he was born …”
“He was misinformed,” Manizheh said brusquely. “He has no mother because if the Qahtanis ever learned of such a thing, he would have been forced into the same cage I was trapped in. He has no abilities because when he was less than a week old, I had to brand my infant child with a tattoo that would inhibit them. In order to give him a life, a peaceful future in the Zariaspa that I loved, I had no choice but to to cut him off from his very birthright.” Manizheh’s voice was trembling. “Jamshid e-Pramukh is my son.”
Dara inhaled, fighting for breath, for words. “That cannot be.”
“He’s my son,” Manizheh repeated. “Your Baga Nahid, should such a thing mean anything to you.” She sounded more hurt than angry now. “And because of your heedlessness when it came to my daughter, you nearly killed him. You stole from him the only future he ever wanted and left him wracked with such physical pain Kaveh says there are days he can’t leave his bed.” Her expression twisted. “What is the punishment for that, Afshin? For sending arrows into a man you should have greeted with your face in the dust?”
Dara was suddenly sitting, though he had little recollection of doing so. His knees felt weak, his head heavy.
Manizheh clearly wasn’t done. “I wasn’t going to tell you, you know. Not until after we’d won. Until he was safe and I’d burned that damned mark from his back. I thought you’d suffered enough. I feared the guilt might break you.”
He could see the truth of that in her eyes, and that did break him—that, and the realization that Manizheh had spent these years Jamshid needed her most at the side of the man who’d injured him. “I am sorry,” he whispered.
“I don’t want your apology,” Manizheh snapped. “I want my children. I want my city. I want the throne, and the seal Zaydi al Qahtani stole from my ancestors. I want my generation of Daevas to stop suffering because of the actions of yours. And quite frankly, Afshin, I do not give