This scene is meant to take place during Nahri and Dara’s journey to Daevabad, shortly after they flee Hierapolis. No spoilers.
This human-blooded scoundrel was going to be the death of him.
Dara peeked again at the merchants arguing in the street, the cobbler angrily accusing the fruit seller of intentionally spilling his cart, and then darted a glance at Nahri.
“Will you please hurry up?” he implored. “He’s going to come back any minute.”
Surrounded by a pile of boots and leather slippers in various states of mending, Nahri languidly stretched out a foot, wiggling her toes in the shoe she was trying on.
“They’re still fighting. Relax.” She made a face and then removed the shoe, tossing it aside. “Too stiff.”
Dara hissed under his breath. “For the love of the Creator, will you just pick something? It cannot make that much of a difference!”
“Maybe if my feet were made of fire, it wouldn’t. But alas . . . oh.” Her dark eyes sparkled as she plucked out a pair of leather boots. “These look comfortable. And how lovely,” she remarked, admiring the swirling pattern of leaves stamped up the sides. “I bet I could trade them later.”
Dara counted to ten in his head, reminding himself that this woman was the closest thing to a Nahid healer left in the world, he was an Afshin, and a pack of ifrit were after her. Losing his temper and causing the pile of shoes surrounding her to burst into flames was not an option.
Not a good option, at least.
“Nahri,” he said, stressing her name. It felt strange to speak it, an intimacy Dara was not yet accustomed to, but she had pointedly stopped responding to thief, girl, and human. He raised his hands, half praying, half begging. “Our people have rules. If that human man comes in here and catches you, I cannot harm him.”
“Why? Will you melt? Turn to ash?” She rolled her eyes. “What’s the use in being some all-powerful djinn if you have to run and hide from humans?”
Blood might no longer pump through his veins, but Dara was certain some part of him was boiling. “I have told you a hundred times. I am not a djinn.”
“I know.” Nahri smiled sweetly. “It just gives me exquisite pleasure to make you angry.”
Between her mocking grin and his roiling emotions, Dara was not quite prepared to hear the phrase exquisite pleasure in Nahri’s teasing voice. “Please just steal something and be done with it,” he said gruffly.
“Fine.” She rose to her feet, still wearing the boots. “I suppose these will do.” She picked up her bag, already filled with other pilfered items, and shoved it in his arms, taking back a pot she’d stolen and forced him to carry. “Let’s go.” She turned for the front door of the tiny shop.
Dara put an arm out to stop her. “You can’t mean to go out that way. He’ll see you!”
“He will,” Nahri agreed, shoving past him. In horror, Dara watched as she stepped out of the shop, neatly winding between piles of leather soles and spilled fruit, heading directly for the arguing merchants.
I am not going to save her. I am not. Dara hurried after her.
As he expected, it was not a smooth exit. Nahri was fighting with the fruit seller, one hand on her hip. She was shouting in that human tongue Dara barely understood, but judging from the righteous fury in the fruit seller’s face and the cobbler’s stammering denial, she had taken sides. Within moments, the cobbler had thrown up his hands, seemingly cursed them both, and stormed off. Dara watched Nahri kneel to help the fruit seller. He appeared to be thanking her profusely, clearly unaware Nahri had been the one to stick one of the cobbler’s tools in his cart’s wheel. Upon spotting her pot, he began filling it with fruit, waving off her feigned protestations.
“You are . . . the most dishonest person I have ever met,” Dara said when Nahri rejoined him. He was as awed as he was scandalized.
“Then you have lived a very boring number of centuries whose exact number you still refuse to disclose.” As they walked, Nahri glanced up at him with another of her winks. “Surely you’ve broken at least one rule in your life. Stayed out past curfew, lied to your mother. Slept with the wrong woman.”
I have slaughtered thousands of people like you.
“No,” Dara lied. “Centuries of being dull and rule-abiding. Just as you say.”
“Sounds like a waste of life to me.”
She might have punched him. But Dara kept his mouth shut, masking his reaction and following Nahri as she continued through the market, discreetly filching vegetables and clothes like she was at harvest and the crop was coming from her personal garden. This was the third human town they’d visited after fleeing Hierapolis and the last he hoped to lay eyes on for a long time. They certainly had enough supplies to see them through the rest of the journey to Daevabad.
Daevabad. Its very name still filled Dara with grief. The prospect of actually being across the lake from his home seemed impossible. But then he spotted Nahri neatly cut a purse off a man twice Dara’s size.
“You are done,” Dara proclaimed, seizing her wrist and pulling Nahri through the crowd of shoppers. Humans shivered as he swept past, their vacant gazes trailing over him with unseeing eyes. He hated it. Dara already felt like a ghost with his own people, the Daevas he’d been avoiding since he’d been freed. Being surrounded by humans in their world of dirt and iron blood where he truly was an invisible wraith was too much.
They’d left their horses along a bed of lush grass bordering the river where Dara had summoned a smoky fog to shroud them. He dissipated it now and turned toward Nahri. “We should . . . wh-what are you doing?” he stammered. “Why are you taking your clothes off?”
Nahri continued unlacing the strips of torn cloth she’d used to make his spare tunic fit her much smaller frame. “Getting rid of this giant tent of a shirt and then bathing so I don’t smell like a brooding fire warrior.” She wrenched off the tunic, and Dara caught a glimpse of ebony curls spilling over bare shoulders before he swore under his breath and spun around.
“You are going to drown,” he spat as he heard her splash into the river. “Then I will have been dragged across the world for nothing.”
“Oh, did I pull you from some sort of engaging social life? What exactly were you doing before you met me? Prowling the plains and scowling at deer? Please. I bet saving a secret Nahid shafit is the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to you, Darayavahoush.” Nahri all but purred his name. Since prying it from him in the ruins of Hierapolis with her ridiculous stunt, she’d taken to using it as often as possible, probably to irritate him.
And it did irritate him. Because Creator, did Dara like hearing his name out of her mouth.
Get ahold of yourself. Dara sat with his back purposefully to the water, fighting the urge to check on her. It cut too close to his urge to look at her, and he was not letting this shafit thief beguile him any further. Despite his horrified shock when he first realized what Nahri was, Dara was beginning to have sympathy for whatever distant Nahid ancestor had crossed paths with one of her human ones. If they were anything like Nahri, they would have been all but impossible to resist. He scrubbed his hands through his hair, trying to think of anything that wasn’t the sound of her swimming.
“Hurry up,” he insisted. “We still have ground to cover before nightfall.”
“And you still have a whole slew of questions to answer, like you promised back at Hierapolis. Maybe I’ll stay in the river until you start talking about this supposed war Khayzur says you got yourself involved in.”
Dread crawled over Dara. There were a vast number of things he did not wish to discuss with Nahri, and the war was chief among them.
But you are running out of time. Dara had already made up his mind to tell her: allowing Nahri to present herself before the Qahtani king without knowing the deadly history between their families would be abhorrent.
Especially since Dara had no intention of being at her side when she did. He had no intention of even going beyond Daevabad’s gates. How could he? Not only had he lost the right to return home when he failed his people and his Nahids—if he was honest, he was afraid. Nahri might not know what he’d done during the war, but Dara was damn sure even fourteen centuries later, the djinn had not forgotten. He’d be locked up in one of the infamous cells beneath the palace and left to suffer for eternity. Which might be a fate he deserved, but not one he’d willingly rush into. He didn’t hate himself that much.
The darkness of his closed eyes dimmed further, and Dara glanced up, blinking to see Nahri standing before him, outlined against the sun. She was dressed in her stolen clothes, beads of water still clinging to her cheeks and glistening in her hair.
Suleiman’s eye, she is beautiful. The sight of her left him feeling breathless, which of course was not possible, as Dara did not breath, and the sentiment lasted only as long as it took Nahri to aim a hard kick at his foot.
“Are you done berating yourself over here for my thieving at the market? If it makes you feel better, you were a useless accomplice.”
If only being a useless accomplice was the crime he was berating himself for. “You are the rudest person I have ever encountered,” he said, trying to force some rancor into his voice.
Nahri snorted in derision, a mocking sound that had no business increasing Dara’s extremely unhelpful desire to pull her into his lap. She picked her belt back up and unsheathed the dagger he’d given her. Sunlight played on the iron blade.
“Can you teach me how to throw this?”
“Why?”
“Because I’d like to be able to protect myself from the pack of ifrit hunting me?”
Dara winced. “Fair point. Let us travel a bit farther first. I do not like remaining this close to a human settlement.”
They resaddled the horses, Dara silently noting that Nahri clearly remembered what he’d shown her. He arranged her new purchases, threading a cord through the handle of a pot.
He tapped the pot. “What exactly do you mean to do with this?”
“Teach myself to cook?” But Nahri didn’t sound optimistic. “I stole some vegetables and figured if I boiled them with water . . . that’s soup, isn’t it?”
Dara frowned. “If you do not know how to cook and have always lived alone, what did you eat?”
“Whatever I got my hands on. When I had enough coin, I could buy some fried beans and occasionally a bit of grilled meat. Otherwise, it was mostly day-old bread and bruised fruit.” Nahri flushed. “And when I was a child . . . a lot of garbage and other people’s leftovers.”
Garbage. A lifetime of hot home-cooked meals flashed before Dara’s eyes. Despite the war that engulfed his world, Dara had grown up beloved and well cared for in a wealthy home full of bustling relatives, including the mother he adored and a dozen aunts who would have taken it as a personal affront if he’d left the house hungry. There was always a steaming bowl of stew, freshly fried dumplings, or butter pastry being pressed on him—a privilege he hadn’t realized.
He gazed at Nahri, remembering anew the sharp lines of her face and the sallow color to her skin when they first met. He could not begin to imagine how lonely and difficult it must have been to grow up the way she did.
“I will cook something for you,” Dara decided. “Conjure it anyway, I mean.” He’d never actually tried to conjure food—he didn’t need to eat often in whatever form this was—but conjuring food couldn’t be much harder than conjuring wine, and he was exceedingly practiced at that.
A guarded expression slipped across her face. “And what’s that going to cost me?”
A few more days of believing my worst crime is being a useless accomplice. A few more days for Dara to savor being an ordinary soldier with an irrational crush on an impossibility instead of the Scourge of Qui-zi.
“Merely your company and the promise not to stab me during knife-throwing lessons,” Dara replied, trying to sound as sincere as possible. “I promise.”
“Does that mean I can stab you if you don’t successfully conjure up some food?”
Dara couldn’t help but smile. “Whatever makes you happy, little thief.”