The Kingdom of Copper (The Daevabad Trilogy #2) - S. A. Chakraborty Page 0,70

demon?”

“A bargain?” he repeated in disbelief. “You think I asked for what happened that night?”

“For aid in killing your people’s greatest enemy? For the fame of finally finishing off the man your ancestor couldn’t?” Scorn filled her eyes. “Yes, Afshin-slayer, I do.”

“Then you’re wrong.” Ali knew Nahri was upset, but she wasn’t the only one whose life had been turned upside down that night. “The marid wouldn’t have been able to use me to kill your Afshin if he hadn’t knocked me into the lake in the first place. And how they took me, Nahri?” His voice broke. “They ripped through my mind and made me hallucinate the deaths of everyone I loved.” He yanked up his sleeve. His scars were stark in the faded sunlight: the ragged marks of triangular teeth and a strip of ruined flesh that twisted around his wrist. “And that’s while they were doing this.” He was shaking, the memory of the awful visions stealing over him. “Some bargain.”

He would swear he saw a flicker of shock on her face, but it lasted only a second. Because between being thrown to the ground and pulling up his sleeve, Ali realized too late what had become visible at his waist.

Nahri’s gaze locked on the distinctive hilt of Darayavahoush’s dagger. The leaves in the grove shuddered. “What are you doing with that?”

Oh no. “I-I meant to give it to you,” Ali said quickly, fumbling to pull the dagger from his waist.

Nahri lunged forward and ripped it from his hands. She ran her fingers over the hilt, gently pressing the carnelian and lapis stones as wetness brimmed in her eyes.

He swallowed, aching to say something. Anything. But no words would erase what was between them. “Nahri …”

“Get out.” She said it in Arabic, the language that had once been the foundation of their friendship, the one with which he’d taught her to conjure flames. “You want to avoid a war? Then get out of my garden before I bury this in your heart.”

Nahri sank to her knees as Ali vanished beyond the trees. Dara’s dagger was heavy in her hands. No, like this, she remembered him correcting her when he taught her how to throw it. Dara’s hot fingers grazing her skin, his breath tickling her ear. His laugh on the wind when she swore in frustration.

Tears blurred her eyes. Her fingers curled around the hilt, and she pressed her other fist hard against her mouth, fighting the sob rising in her chest. Ali was probably still close and she’d be damned if he was going to hear her cry.

I should have buried this in his heart anyway. Leave it to Alizayd al Qahtani to intrude upon her one sanctuary in Daevabad and upend all her emotions. She was as angry at his nerve as at her own reaction; Nahri rarely lost her composure so badly. She argued plenty with Muntadhir, she looked forward to the day Ghassan burned on his funeral pyre with open relish, but she didn’t weep before them like some sad little girl.

But they hadn’t tricked her. Ali had. Despite Nahri’s best intentions, she’d fallen for his friendship. She’d liked spending time with someone who shared her intellect and her curiosity, with someone who didn’t make her feel self-conscious about her ignorance of the magical world or her human skin. She’d liked him, his endearing exuberance when he rattled on about obscure economic theory, and the quiet kindness with which he’d treated the palace’s shafit servants.

It was a lie. Everything about him was a lie. Including what he’d just been spouting about the marid. It had to be.

She took a deep breath, unclenching her fist. The stones on the dagger’s hilt had left an impression in her palm. Nahri had never expected to see Dara’s blade again. In the wake of his death, she’d once asked Ghassan about the dagger, and he said he’d had it melted.

He’d lied. He’d given it as a prize to his son. His Afshin-slaying son.

She wiped her eyes with trembling hands. She hadn’t known that Ali was already back. In fact, she’d been making a conscious effort to avoid hearing news of him. Muntadhir’s stress—and the increasingly shaky grip he had on his wine consumption—had been all the information she’d needed about his brother’s progress toward the city.

Footsteps approached on the other side of the grove. “Banu Nahida?” a female voice squeaked. “Lady Nisreen asked me to retrieve you. She said Jamshid e-Pramukh is waiting.”

Nahri sighed, glancing at the