The Kingdom of Copper (The Daevabad Trilogy #2) - S. A. Chakraborty Page 0,214

can take a few days to recover from the magic. And then you’re trapped in Daevabad forever,” he added darkly. “Now do you see why I was in no hurry to be king?”

“What do you mean, you’re trapped in Daevabad?” Nahri asked, her mind racing.

“I didn’t ask.” When she stared at him in disbelief, he threw up his hands. “Nahri, I don’t think I was older than eight when he told me all of this. I was more preoccupied with trying not to be sick in terror than with interrogating him about the exact strings attached to wearing a ring I was supposed to pull from his bloody corpse. What he told me was that the ring can’t leave the city. So unless someone is willing to leave their heart behind …”

“How poetic,” she muttered as they continued moving down the dim passageway.

He stopped outside the grimy, barely visible contours of a door. “We’re here.”

Nahri hovered at his shoulder as he gently eased it open. They stepped into the darkness.

Her face fell. A Geziri woman in a steward’s robe lay dead on the stone floor, blood running from her ears.

“The poison has been through here,” she said softly. This wasn’t the first body they’d found. Though they’d been able to warn a handful of Geziri nobles, they were finding far more dead than alive: soldiers with their zulfiqars still sheathed, a scholar with scrolls scattered around her, and—most heartbreaking—a pair of young boys in feast clothing, clutching unlit sparklers in their hands, tendrils of the hazy copper vapor still clinging to their small feet.

Muntadhir closed the woman’s eyes. “I’m going to give Kaveh to the karkadann,” he whispered savagely. “I swear on my father’s name.”

Nahri shivered; she couldn’t argue with that. “Let’s keep going.”

They’d no sooner stood up than Nahri heard footsteps. At least three people were approaching from around the bend. With no time to duck back inside the passage, they swiftly pressed into a darkened niche in the wall. Shadows rushed over them, a protective response from the palace, just as several figures came around the bend.

Her heart dropped. Daevas, all of them. Young and unfamiliar, they were clad in uniforms of mottled gray and black. They were also quite well-armed, looking more than capable of taking on the emir and his wife. It was a conclusion Muntadhir must have come to as well, for he made no move to confront them and stayed quiet until they had vanished.

Finally, he cleared his throat. “I think your tribe is conducting a coup.”

Nahri swallowed. “It does seem that way,” she said shakily.

Muntadhir looked down at her. “Still on my side?”

Her gaze fell on the murdered woman. “I’m on the side that doesn’t unleash things like that.”

They kept walking, following the deserted corridor. Nahri’s heart was racing, and she didn’t dare speak, especially since it was now clear there were enemies creeping through the palace. An occasional scream or abruptly cut-off warning broke the air, carried through the echoing halls of the labyrinthine royal complex.

A strange buzz swept her skin, and Nahri shivered. It was an oddly familiar feeling, but she couldn’t place it. She moved her hand to one of her daggers as they continued. She could hear the beat of her heart in her head, a steady pounding. Like the tap-tap-tap of a warning.

Muntadhir threw out his arm. There was a muffled cry in the distance.

“Get off me!”

He gasped. “Nahri, that sounds like—”

But she was already running. There was the sound of arguing, another voice, but she barely heard it. She threw up her arm as they rounded the corner; the sudden light was blinding after so much time stealing through the dark.

But the light wasn’t coming from torches or conjured flames. It was coming from two ifrit who had Ali pinned to the ground.

Nahri jerked to a halt, stifling a scream. Ali was a bloody wreck, lying too still beneath a large ifrit inexplicably dressed in the same uniform as the Daeva soldiers and holding a knife to the prince’s throat. A skinnier ifrit in a bronze chest plate was clutching Ali’s hand, holding the prince’s wrist at what must have been a painful angle.

Both ifrit turned to stare at the royal couple. Nahri gasped when she spotted the green gem gleaming on one of Ali’s fingers.

A ring. An emerald slave ring.

The ifrit dressed in Daeva clothing opened his mouth, his eyes flashing brighter. “Nah—”

She didn’t let him finish. Fury flooding through her, she dragged her dagger hard