His glassy, copper-hued gray eyes stared vacantly at the night sky, his face coated in blood.
Ali abruptly released her, and a look of rage unlike any she’d seen from him before, twisted his face.
He’d thrown himself at the Daeva soldiers before she could think to react, his zulfiqar bursting into flames. They moved fast, but they could not quite match the speed of the grief-stricken prince. With a cry he cut through the man who had spoken, yanking the blade free and swinging back to behead the archer who had recognized her.
And with that, Nahri was catapulted back into the night of the boat. The night she’d seen firsthand what Dara was truly capable of, the way he’d torn through the men surrounding him like some instrument of death, impervious to the blood and screams and brutal violence that surrounded him.
She stared at Ali in horror. She couldn’t see anything of the bookish prince, the man who was still sometimes too shy to meet her eyes, in the raging warrior before her.
Is this how it starts? Was this how Dara had been undone, his soul stripped away as he watched the slaughter of his family and his tribe, his mind and body forged into a weapon by fury and despair? Is this how he’d been made into a monster who would visit that same violence on a new generation?
And yet Nahri still found herself lunging forward when the last Daeva raised his sword, preparing to strike. Nahri grabbed the man’s arm, throwing him off balance as he spun to look at her, his expression one of utter betrayal.
Ali plunged the zulfiqar into his back.
Nahri stepped away, her hand going to her mouth. Her ears were ringing, bile choking her.
“Nahri!” Ali took her face in his hands, his own now wet with the blood of her tribesmen. “Nahri, look at me! Are you hurt?”
It seemed a ludicrous question. Nahri was beyond hurt. Her city was collapsing and the people dearest to her were dying or turning into creatures she couldn’t recognize. And suddenly she wanted more than anything to flee. To race down the steps and out of the palace. To get on a boat, a horse, any damn thing that would take her back to the moment in her life before she decided to sing a zar song in Divasti.
The seal. Retrieve the seal and then you can sort all this out. She jerked back from his hands, pulling free one of her daggers as she moved automatically toward Ghassan’s body.
Ali followed her, kneeling at his father’s side. “I should have been here,” he whispered. Tears came to his eyes, and something of the friend she knew returned to his face. “This is all my fault. He was too busy trying to deal with my rebellion to anticipate any of this.”
Nahri said nothing. She had no assurances to offer right now. Instead, she cut a slit in Ghassan’s bloody dishdasha, straight across the chest.
Ali moved to stop her. “What are you doing?”
“We have to burn his heart,” she said, her voice unsteady. “The ring re-forms from the ash.”
Ali dropped his hand as if he’d been burned. “What?”
She was able to summon up enough pity to soften her voice. “I’ll do it. Between the two of us, I’ve a bit more experience carving into people’s bodies.”
He looked sick but didn’t argue. “Thank you.” He shifted away, taking his father’s head in his lap, closing his eyes as he began to softly pray.
Nahri let the quiet Arabic words wash over her—reminding her of Cairo, as always. She worked quickly, cutting through the flesh and muscle of Ghassan’s chest. There wasn’t as much blood as she would have expected—perhaps since he’d already lost so much.
Not that it mattered. Nahri had been bathed in blood today. She expected its stain would never completely fade.
Even so, it was grim work, and Ali looked ready to pass out by the time she finally plunged her hand into Ghassan’s chest. Her fingers closed around his still heart, and Nahri would be lying if she said she didn’t feel a small twinge of dark pleasure. The tyrant who had toyed with lives as though they were pawns on a game board. The one who had forced her to marry his son because her own mother had denied him. The one who had threatened her brother’s life—more than once.
Unbidden, a burst of heat bloomed in her palm, the dance of a conjured flame. Nahri quickly pulled her hand free,