to find the veil.
On what must have been the hundredth attempt, Dara crashed to his knees. He wailed, flames bursting from his hands.
There was a crack of thunder and then the sound of running feet and Aeshma’s annoyed sigh.
A woman knelt quietly at his side. The Daeva woman whose face he’d awoken to, the one who resembled Nahri. A long moment of silence stretched between them, broken only by Dara’s ragged breaths.
He finally spoke. “Am I in hell?” he whispered, giving voice to the fear that gnawed at his heart, the uncertainty that had kept him from taking his sister’s hand to enter the garden. “Is this punishment for the things I’ve done?”
“No, Darayavahoush, you are not in hell.”
The soft assurance in her calm voice encouraged him to continue, and so he did. “I cannot cross the threshold,” he choked out. “I cannot even find it. I have been damned. I have been turned away from my home and—”
The woman gripped his shoulder, the powerful magic in her touch stealing his words. “You have not been damned,” she said firmly. “You cannot cross the threshold because you don’t carry Suleiman’s curse. Because you are free.”
Dara shook his head. “I do not understand.”
“You will.” She took his chin in her hands, and Dara found himself turning to look at her, feeling strangely compelled by the urgency in her dark eyes. “You’ve been granted more power than any daeva in millennia. We will find a way to return you to Daevabad, I promise.” Her grip tightened on his chin. “And when we do, Darayavahoush … we are going to take it. We’re going to save our people. We’re going to save Nahri.”
Dara stared at her, desperate for the chance her words offered. “Who are you?” he whispered.
Her mouth curved in a smile familiar enough to break his heart. “My name is Banu Manizheh.”
Nahri closed her eyes, lifting her face to the sun and enjoying its heat on her skin. She inhaled, savoring the earthy smell of the distant mountains and the fresh breeze off the lake.
“They’re late,” Muntadhir complained. “They’re always late. I think they like the sight of us waiting in the sun.”
Zaynab snorted. “Dhiru, you haven’t been on time for a single event in your life. Is this truly a fight you wish to pick?”
Nahri ignored their bickering, taking another deep breath of the crisp air and reveling in the stillness. It was rare she was allowed such freedom, and she intended to savor what she could of it. She’d learned the hard way that she had no other choice.
The first time Nahri had attempted sneaking out of the palace had been shortly after the night on the boat. She had been desperate for a distraction, aching to wander parts of the city she’d yet to visit, places where thoughts of Dara wouldn’t haunt her.
In response, Ghassan had her maid Dunoor brought out before her. He hexed the girl’s tongue for not reporting the Banu Nahida’s absence, stealing her ability to ever speak again.
The second time, Nahri had been moved by a surge of defiance. She and Muntadhir were soon to be wed. She was the Banu Nahida. Who was Ghassan to lock her away in her ancestor’s city? She had taken better care, making sure her companions had alibis and using the palace itself to cloak her in shadows and guide her through the most unused of corridors.
Still, Ghassan had found out. He dragged in the sleeping gate guard she’d tiptoed past and had the man scourged before her until there was not a strip of unbloodied skin on his back.
The third time, Nahri hadn’t even been sneaking around. Newly married to Muntadhir, she had merely decided to walk back to the palace from the Grand Temple on a sunny day, instead of taking her guarded litter. She’d never imagined Ghassan—now her father-in-law—would care. On the way, she’d stopped inside a small café in the Daeva Quarter, passing a lovely few moments chatting with its surprised and delighted proprietors.
The following day Ghassan had the couple brought to the palace. This time, he didn’t have to harm anyone. Nahri had no sooner seen their frightened faces than she dropped to her knees and swore never to go anywhere without permission again.
Which meant she now never turned away a chance to escape the palace walls. Aside from the royal siblings’ squabbling and the cry of a hawk, the lake was entirely silent, the air wrapping her in a blessed, heavy peace.
Her relief didn’t go unnoticed.
“Your wife looks like someone just released her from a century in prison,” Zaynab muttered from a few paces away. She kept her voice low, but Nahri had a talent for listening to whispers. “Even I’m starting to feel bad for her, and one of the vines in her garden ripped my cup from my hand the last time we had tea.”
Muntadhir shushed his sister. “I’m certain she didn’t mean it. Sometimes that just … happens when she’s around.”
“I heard one of the shedu statues bit a soldier who slapped her assistant.”
“Maybe he shouldn’t have slapped her assistant.” Muntadhir’s whisper turned sharper. “But enough of such gossip. I don’t want Abba hearing things like that.”
Nahri smiled beneath her veil, pleasantly surprised by his defense. Despite being married now for nearly five years, Muntadhir rarely defended her against his family.
She opened her eyes, admiring the view before her. It was a beautiful day, one of the few in which not a single cloud marred the bright, fathomless blue of Daevabad’s sky. The three of them were waiting at the front of the city’s once grand port. Though the docks were still serviceable, the rest of the port was in ruins and apparently had been for centuries. Weeds grew through the cracked paving stones and the decorative granite columns lay smashed. The only hint of the port’s ancient grandeur was behind her, in the gleaming brass facades of her ancestors on the city’s mighty walls.
Ahead was the lake, the misty-green mountains of the opposite shore melting into a thin, pebbly beach. The lake itself was still, its murky water cursed long ago by the marid during some forgotten feud with the Nahid Council. It was a curse Nahri tried very hard not to think about. Nor did she let her gaze drift southward to where the high cliffs beneath the palace met the dark water. What had happened on that stretch of the lake five years ago was a thing she didn’t dwell on.
The air shimmered and sparked, pulling Nahri’s attention to the center of the lake.
The Ayaanle had arrived.
The ship that emerged from the veil looked like something out of a fairy tale, slipping through the mists with a grace that belied its size. Nahri had grown up along the Nile and was used to boats, to the thicket of sleek feluccas, fishing canoes, and loaded trade transports that glided over the wide river in a ceaseless flow. But this ship was nothing like any of those. It looked large enough to fit hundreds, its dark teak dazzling in the sunlight as it floated lightly upon the lake. Teal banners adorned with the icons of studded golden pyramids and starry
