Manizheh

This scene takes place a few decades before The City of Brass and contains spoilers for the first two books.

Her son was glorious.

Manizheh traced one of Jamshid’s tiny ears, drinking in the sight of his perfect little face. Though he was barely a week old, the black of his eyes was still tempered by a fiery-hued haze. His small body was warm and soft, tucked safe in the cradle of her arms. Even so, Manizheh held him closer as she made her way out of the tent. It might be spring, but it was still early in the season and Zariaspa clung to its chilly mornings.

The valley before her was glowing in the dawn light, flashes of pink and purple clover twinkling with dew against the long grass. She stepped carefully over scattered stones and broken bricks. She and Kaveh had pitched their tent in one of the many forgotten human ruins that dotted this land, and little was left now to distinguish those remnants from the rocky hillside, save a few archways and one squat column decorated with a pattern of diamonds. Yet as she walked, Manizheh wondered what this place might have once been. Could it have been a castle, a royal home walked by other anxious new parents terrified of the world into which they’d brought a child with noble blood?

Manizheh glanced down again at her son. Her Jamshid. His was a regal name, taken from the humans long ago like so many of their names—a borrowing most Daevas would deny, but Manizheh had been educated as a Nahid, learning things the rest of her people were not permitted. Jamshid was a name of legend and kingship. An optimistic name, spiraling from the last shred of hope in her soul.

“This is my favorite place in the world,” she said softly as Jamshid’s eyelids fluttered, the baby sleepy and milk-drunk. She laid his head against her shoulder, breathing in the sweet scent of his neck. “You are going to have so many adventures here. Your baba will get you a pony and teach you to ride, and you can explore to your heart’s content. I want you to explore, my love,” she whispered. “I want you to explore and dream and get lost in a place where no one will watch you. Where no one will cage you.”

Where Ghassan will not hurt you. Where he will never, ever learn of you.

For if there was one thing about her baby’s future she was sure of, it was that Ghassan couldn’t learn of Jamshid. The very prospect made Manizheh sick with fear, and she was not a woman easily frightened. Ghassan would kill Kaveh, of that she had no doubt, in the longest, most excruciating manner he could devise. He would punish Rustam, breaking what was left of her traumatized brother’s spirit.

And Jamshid . . . her mind would not let her contemplate the ways Ghassan would use him. If Jamshid was lucky, Ghassan would settle for inflicting on him the same life of terror she and Rustam had been subjected to: enslaved in the palace infirmary and reminded every day that if it were not for the usefulness of their Nahid blood, their family would have been exterminated long ago.

But she didn’t think her son would be lucky. Manizheh had watched the years harden Ghassan into a reflection of his tyrannical father. Maybe Manizheh had been a proud fool to deny Ghassan what his heart had wanted most; maybe it would have been best to unite their families and tribes: to force a smile to her face in a royal wedding and close her eyes in the darkness of his bed. Maybe her people would be breathing easier and her brother wouldn’t jump when someone closed a door too loudly. Was that not the best choice for so very many women, the most they could hope for?

But Manizheh hadn’t chosen that. Instead she had betrayed Ghassan in the most personal way she could, and Manizheh knew if she and Kaveh were caught, she’d pay for that in kind.

She pressed a kiss to the soft downy hair lying in a messy pouf around Jamshid’s head. “I’ll come back for you, little one, I promise. And when I do . . . I pray you can forgive me.”

Jamshid stirred in his sleep, making a tiny sound that drove a knife of grief through her chest. Manizheh closed her eyes, trying to memorize every detail of this moment. His weight in her arms and his sweet scent. The breeze whispering through the grasses and the chill in the air. She wanted to remember holding her son before she took everything away from him.

“Manu?”

Manizheh stilled at Kaveh’s hesitant voice, her emotions free-falling again. Kaveh. Her partner and conspirator since they were children sneaking out to steal horses and wander the countryside. Her closest friend, and then her lover when their curiosity and teenage pinings turned to fumbling touches and stolen moments.

Another person she was about to lose. Manizheh had overstayed her visit to Zariaspa by three months, ignoring Ghassan’s letters ordering her return. She’d be surprised if the king wasn’t already mustering soldiers to retrieve her. One thing was certain: there would be no leaving Daevabad again. Not while Ghassan ruled anyway.

The ring, she tried to remind herself. While you still have the ring, there is hope. But her childhood fantasy of breaking free the sleeping Afshin warrior from the slave ring she and Rustam had found so long ago seemed just that right now: a fantasy.

Kaveh spoke again. “I prepared everything you asked. Are you . . . are you all right?”

Manizheh wanted to laugh. She wanted to cry. No, she was not all right. She clutched her baby closer. It seemed impossible that she would have to let him go. She wanted to scream at her Creator. She wanted to collapse in Kaveh’s arms. For once she wanted someone to tell her that everything was going to be okay. She wanted to stop being the Banu Nahida, the goddess who was allowed no weakness.

But hers was not a role one could escape. Even with Kaveh, she would always be his Nahid before his lover and friend, and she would not shake his faith now. She made sure her voice was steady and her eyes were dry before she turned around.

Heartbreak was writ across his face. “You look beautiful with him,” Kaveh whispered, reverence and pain edging his voice. He drew closer, gazing at their sleeping son. “Are you sure about this?”

Manizheh rubbed Jamshid’s back. “It’s the only way to hide who he is. Nahid magic is strong when we’re children. If we don’t do this now, he’ll otherwise be healing his wet nurses and having skinned knees close up.”

Kaveh gave her an uncertain glance. “And if one day he should need such abilities?”

It was a justified question. In her arms, Jamshid seemed so tiny and fragile. There were illnesses and curses he could catch. He could tumble off a horse and break his neck. Drink from one of the many iron-poisoned streams that coursed through Zariaspa’s thick forests.

And yet those risks were still less than getting caught out as a Nahid.

Amazing, how death might be more preferable to life in Daevabad.

“I don’t know what else to do, Kaveh,” she confessed as they returned to the tent. Their fire altar smoldered in the eastern corner. “I’m hoping a day will come when I can remove the mark, but that day is not today. Honestly, it’s a magic so old and understudied that I just hope I can make it work.”

“How will we know if it does?”

Manizheh stared at her son, stroking a finger down his tiny scrunched face. She tried to imagine how Jamshid would look when he was three months old. Three years. Thirteen. She did not want to contemplate beyond that. She did not want to contemplate entirely missing him grow up.

“If it works, I won’t be able to control his pain,” she answered. “And he will start to scream.”

 

Three weeks after holding her baby for the last time, Manizheh stood in Daevabad’s throne room.

“So you see . . . ,” she said, finishing her fictional, fumbling excuse for the monthslong delay in Zariaspa, “my experiments at the time were far too promising to abandon. I needed to stay and see them through.”

For a long, tense moment the room was so silent one could hear a pin drop. Then Ghassan drew up on his throne, fury scorching his expression.

“Your experiments?” he repeated. “You stayed in Zariaspa, ignoring my pleas and messengers, to tend to your experiments? My wife, your queen, is dead because of your experiments?”

Saffiyeh was never my queen. But Manizheh did not dare say that. Instead, she fought not to sway on her feet. Nahid magic be damned, she was utterly drained. Her legs and back ached from riding, and her breasts were swollen with milk that would not stop, the slightest pressure of the pads and cabbage leaves stuffed beneath her shirt to conceal her condition bringing stinging tears to her eyes.

Pushing past all that, she said, “I did not receive your messages in time.” Manizheh was too weary and heartbroken to make her response sound sincere; even she could hear how devoid of caring her words came out. “If I had, I would have returned sooner.”

Ghassan stared at her, looking betrayed. There was genuine grief in his expression, an emotion Manizheh had not seen in his face for a very long time. With each decade as Daevabad’s tyrant, he expressed less sentiment, as though ruling the city was sucking the warmth from his heart.

She had no sympathy. Ghassan had had her seized—well, no, not seized, because not even the king was terrifying enough to make people touch her—but she’d been surrounded by soldiers and forced off her horse at the Daeva Gate, made to walk the entirety of the main boulevard through her tribe’s quarter to the palace. Manizheh had done so, trying to keep her head held high and hide the fact that she struggled for breath as the road switchbacked up Daevabad’s hills. Her people had been watching, their frightened faces visible behind windows and cracked doors, and Manizheh could not let the Daevas see her falter. She was their Banu Nahida, their light. It was her duty.

But by the time she’d arrived at the palace her ancestors had built, its stones singing to her, she was a mess. Her clothes were filthy, her dress torn and streaked with mud. Her chador had slipped to her shoulders, revealing her wild hair and ash-dotted brow. All this before they’d even taken her to the throne room, the sacred place where the Nahid Council had once deliberated.

She wondered what her ancestors would think to see her now, disheveled and dirty at the foot of her family’s stolen throne, meant to grovel before the descendants of the djinn who had slaughtered them.

If she was wise, she’d apologize. That’s what Ghassan wanted, Manizheh knew. She had humiliated him. Daevabad’s court was vicious, and its rulers were not spared the gossip of courtiers. Manizheh had made him look weak. Was Daevabad’s fearsome king really all that mighty if his own Nahid could defy him? If that defiance had killed his wife? And truthfully, for Saffiyeh’s death, Manizheh was sorry. She had never borne any ill will toward Saffiyeh; if anything, she had hoped Ghassan’s marriage meant he’d finally given up his designs on her. It would cost Manizheh nothing but pride to apologize, and perhaps a good healer would, chastened by the unnecessary loss of life.

Manizheh held Ghassan’s gaze, aware of the court staring at her. His Qaid, Wajed, another Geziri djinn. His Ayaanle grand wazir. For all Ghassan’s chirping about improving relations between the Daeva and djinn tribes, there was not a single Daeva face among those staring down at her. And these djinn didn’t look like they were grieving. They looked eager. Hungry. Everyone enjoyed seeing an uppity “fire worshipper” shoved back into place.

We are better than you. I am better than you. Not for the first time, Manizheh was tempted to give in to the rage that roared inside her. She could probably break the bones of half the men sneering at her, urge the ceiling to collapse and bury them all.

But she was outnumbered, and for such an act, Manizheh knew every Daeva in the city would die. She would be run through with the weapons of any man left alive here, and then Rustam would be executed, as would Nisreen, her most loyal friend and assistant. The priests in the temple and the children at school would follow. Their Quarter would run black with innocent blood.

So Manizheh lowered her gaze. But she did not apologize. “Are we done?” she asked instead, her voice cold.

She could hear the rage in Ghassan’s. “No. But you are no doubt needed in the infirmary by the other patients you abandoned. Go.”

Go. The command scorched through her, humiliating. Manizheh spun on her heel.

But he wasn’t done. “You will not leave this palace again,” Ghassan declared to her back. “We would not wish for something to happen to you.”

Her hands were burning with magic. A snap of her fingers. Would it be enough to shatter the bones at the base of his skull?

She squared her shoulders and relaxed her hands. “Understood.”

Gossip rose in waves as she strode through the crowd toward the door. The djinn’s metal-toned gazes were hostile and accusing. A heartless witch, she heard. Jealous and cruel. A snob. A bitch.

A fire worshipper.

Manizheh held her head high and swept through the door.

But outside the throne room was no easier. It was the middle of the day, and the palace was bustling with secretaries and ministers, nobles and scholars. Her filthy chador still dropped to her shoulders, Manizheh was instantly recognizable, and she could only imagine how tarnished she looked, dirty and without escort after being punished by their rightful, believing king. The noise of the corridor died with people stopping to stare.

A pair of Daevas across the hall, looking worried, moved for her. Manizheh met their eyes and slightly shook her head. They couldn’t help and she wouldn’t put any of her people at further risk. Instead, she faced the whispers alone. She was cold, it was hissed. She was evil. She’d all but murdered Saffiyeh, the sweetest of queens, to get back into Ghassan’s bed.

The burning had spread up her arms, her neck. A haze swam before Manizheh’s eyes. She could sense every stone, every drop of Nahid blood that had been spilled in this place. Was everyone else aware how much she and her people had sacrificed for them to be standing there, judging her now?

Of course not.

Aware that the palace magic was going to simply take her rage and do something regrettable with it if she didn’t get herself under control, Manizheh headed toward the first entrance to the garden she saw, breathing fast. She seemed to startle the guard, who jumped at the sight of her, but recovered in time to slam the door and throw the latch lock once she was through.

Manizheh fell back against the stone wall and covered her face with her hands. Her entire body hurt. Her soul hurt. She felt empty and burned out, a husk. All she could see in the darkness of her mind’s eye was Jamshid and Kaveh where she last left them—the man she loved holding their forbidden child in his arms among the ruins and spring flowers. She could still hear Jamshid’s wails as she tattooed the mark on his shoulder, severing him from his heritage. The sound had been ringing in her ears since she left. Hiccupping screams and muffled sobs, again and again.

Then Manizheh stilled. It wasn’t just the memory of Jamshid’s cries she heard; she heard another child, weeping somewhere beyond the tangled web of greenery.

She hesitated. This was the wildest corner of the garden, neglected for centuries and now essentially a feral jungle. Its towering trees soared beyond the palace walls, thorny vines choked the paths, and the undergrowth was so thick that the forest floor was dark and slippery with rotting leaves and moss. Here the canal that ran through the palace was silent and unfathomably deep, its black water claiming at least one life a year. Of course because this was Daevabad, it wasn’t merely nature that was dangerous. The palace magic that flowed through her veins had always seemed most ruthless among these silent trees. As if something ancient and wounded had buried itself beneath the ground, fed on the blood and suffering of millennia.

Accordingly, this part of the garden was avoided by anyone with sense. Things happened in these woods that djinn didn’t understand. A once-scrawny cat had emerged as a tiger with glass teeth and a serpentine tail. The shadows were said to peel from the ground and swallow the unwary. A mix of gossip and genuine magic, the line between stories told to frighten children and servants who actually did go missing hard to parse out.

Stories that hadn’t frightened Manizheh. Until now. Yes, she was a Nahid and the palace’s magic had never harmed her. But she couldn’t imagine what would have lured a child out here, and for a moment, she wondered if the sound might be a trick, a cruelly personal goad.

The wet, hiccupping sobs didn’t stop, trick or not. Growing concerned, she followed them, half expecting to find some monstrously large bird making mimic calls.

But it wasn’t a bird she stumbled upon. Beneath a massive cedar, swathed in roots so tangled that one would have to be very small to slip through, was a young boy. He lay curled on the mossy ground, hugging his knees to his chest as his entire body shook with sobs. The finery of his clothes stood out in the gloom. Where it wasn’t streaked with leaves and dirt, his cotton dishdasha was so white it gleamed. The sash at his waist was silk; bronze and indigo patterned against a rich copper. Gold ringed his wrists and ears, pearls looping his neck. They weren’t the garments most little boys playing outdoors would wear—certainly not her own son, who would dress in homespun wool and patched hats as he shivered during Zariaspa’s winters.

Then again, the little boy before her wasn’t like most. He was the next djinn king.

He was also very foolish. For a glance revealed young Muntadhir al Qahtani appeared to be alone and unarmed, one mistake compounded with another. She couldn’t imagine what had led to the cosseted little prince being out here by himself, weeping in the jungle.

Can’t you? After all, Manizheh had been a royal child and had learned early to mask her emotions. They were weaknesses in the palace, liabilities others would seize upon to hurt you. And Muntadhir was not just the son of the king—he came from a family of warriors, from a people who prized themselves on their hardiness. He was clearly old enough to know the price of grieving where he could be observed.

He was also going to get eaten by a shadow creature if he kept carrying on out here, for which the Nahid siblings would likely get blamed, and so Manizheh stepped forward. “Peace be upon you, little prince.”

Muntadhir started, his head jerking up. His wet eyes had no sooner locked on hers than they went wide with fear. He scrambled to his feet, backing into the tree trunk.

Manizheh raised her hands. “I do not mean you any harm,” she said softly. “But this is not a safe place.”

The prince only blinked. He was a beautiful child, with big bright gray eyes framed by long dark lashes. A hint of russet gleamed in the black locks that fell in perfect curls past his chin. Closer now, Manizheh could see that tiny amulets of sand-blasted glass had been pinned to his clothes. A necklace of similar materials wound around his neck, the pale glass beads interspersed with those of wood and shell framing a pendant of hammered copper. The pendent was likely filled with holy verses written on minuscule scripts of paper. Village superstitions to protect the young royal from all manner of evil. His mother had been from a small coastal settlement, and if Manizheh had found Saffiyeh meek and quiet, she could not help but note how she had still tried to protect her son with what she knew.

Now she was gone. Muntadhir had frozen, like a rabbit in the presence of a hawk.

Manizheh knelt, hoping to appear less threatening. Despite what the djinn believed, she would never hurt a child. “I am very sorry about your mother, little one.”

“Then why did you kill her?” Muntadhir burst out. He wiped his running nose on his sleeve, starting to cry again. “She never did anything to you. She was good and kind . . . She was my amma,” he wept. “I need her.”

“I know, and I’m sorry. I lost my mother too when I was young.” Lost was a cruelly accurate word, because Manizheh’s mother had been among the many Daevas who disappeared under Khader’s, Ghassan’s father, brutal reign. “And I know it seems impossible now, but you will survive her. She would want you to. You have people here who love you, and they’ll take care of you.” The last part seemed like a lie, or at least not the full truth. The fact of the matter was that people would indeed be flocking to the motherless young prince, but they’d have their own schemes.

Muntadhir just stared at her. He looked completely lost. “Why did you kill her?” he whispered again.

“I didn’t,” Manizheh replied, keeping her voice gentle but her words firm. “Your amma was extremely sick. I didn’t get your father’s message in time, but I didn’t mean to hurt her. I never would.”

Muntadhir stepped closer. He was gripping one of the mossy branches that separated them so hard that his knuckles had paled. “They said you would say that. They said you would lie. That all the Daevas do is lie. They said you killed her so you could marry my father.”

Hearing such bigotry muttered by adult courtiers was one thing; out of the mouth of a mourning child was so much worse. Manizheh found herself struck speechless by the accusation in his eyes. Muntadhir was standing tall now, every bit the future emir.

“I will see you dead one day.” The Qahtani princeling trembled as he said the words, but he said them, as though testing out a new skill he had not yet mastered. And then, before she could respond, he fled deeper into the woods.

Manizheh watched his retreating back. Muntadhir looked so very small against the fog-shrouded undergrowth. For a fleeting moment, she wanted the prince to be consumed by the jungle, nature taking care of a threat she knew was going to fester.

And that is why you left Jamshid behind. Abandoning her son might have broken her heart, but at least he wouldn’t be raised in this awful place.

Manizheh forced herself to keep walking, but she was soon exhausted, the wet heat sapping what little strength she had left. Her legs were shaky, and there was a new slickness where they joined. Though it had been weeks since Jamshid’s birth, she was still bleeding off and on. Manizheh had no idea if that was normal, no idea if Nahid bodies reacted differently to birthing. By the time she was old enough to ask such questions, there were no Nahid women left who could tell her.

But her pain didn’t matter. Because the closer she got to the infirmary, the clearer it was that another Nahid needed her.

If the palace magic had claimed Manizheh, its overgrown jungle interior was Rustam’s. Her little brother had never been the healer she was—no one was the healer she was—but he was a genuine savant when it came to plants, and the garden was as attuned to him as a loyal, adoring dog to its master.

Now it had gone wild. New vines of ivy and gigantic trumpet-like flowers spread everywhere, the bright green of fresh growth stark. Long before it was visible, Manizheh could smell Rustam’s beloved orange grove, the too-sweet aroma of overripe citrus and rot thick in the air.

Her breath caught when she came around the bend. The infirmary garden looked like it had taken a dozen doses of growth potion. Waist-tall silver-mint bushes were now the height of trees alongside platter-size roses whose thorns could serve as daggers. Rustam’s orchard, his joy and point of pride, had gone savage, hulking over the rest of the garden like a looming spider. Its explosion of fruit must have been too much even for the volunteers who collected the extras for the Temple food pantries, for oranges lay rotting on the ground.

Manizheh picked her way through the weeds as fast as she could—which was not very. Her head was pounding, and a layer of ash coated her skin. Her chador was gone now, snagged by a tree, and her dirty hair hung loose around her shoulders. She’d barely made it to the pavilion when a sharp pain tore through her pelvis. She bowed over, stifling a cry.

“My lady!”

Manizheh glanced up to see Nisreen dropping the medical instruments she’d been laying out in the sun. She rushed to Manizheh’s side.

“Banu Nahida . . .” Nisreen stopped, her wide worried eyes staring at Manizheh with open shock.

Manizheh gritted her teeth as the ache came again in her womb. Breathe. Just breathe. “Where is Rustam?” she managed.

“He’s in the middle of a procedure. He’d already started when word came you were back.”

“Is he all right?”

Nisreen opened and closed her mouth, looking lost for a response. “He is alive.”

That was not a reassuring answer. Manizheh knew he’d be alive. Ghassan could not risk killing his only Nahid while she was still gone. But there were a very great number of other things he could do to Rustam.

“My lady, you need help,” Nisreen insisted. “Let me take you to the hammam.”

Manizheh pressed a fist harder against her belly. Right now she wasn’t sure she could make it to the hammam, let alone clean herself up without passing out. But the signs on her body would be obvious the moment she undressed.

She met Nisreen’s eyes. Her assistant, the closest thing Manizheh had to a friend. Perhaps more important, a woman who would go to her death before betraying a Nahid. She hesitated only a moment longer before taking Nisreen’s outstretched arm and leaning heavily onto it.

“No one else can see me,” Manizheh murmured. “When we get to the hammam, make sure there is no one there. And barricade the door behind us.”

“Barricade the door?”

“Yes. I’m going to need your help, dear one. But I’ll need your silence even more.”

 

Manizheh didn’t end up passing out in the bath, though she was so dazed that she might as well have. Time moved in a blur of steam and hot water, the smells of rose soap and old blood. Nisreen was gentle and quiet. There had been a moment of hesitation when she first peeled off Manizheh’s dusty clothes, but then she got to work, reliable as always. As she was bathed and scrubbed, the water turning an ugly gray, Manizheh might have wept, tears running with the soap down her face. She wasn’t sure. She didn’t care.

Once in her familiar bed, however, she did fall asleep and slept hard. By the time she stirred awake, her room was dark save for the light of her fire altar and of a small oil lamp that had been placed next to her bed.

She wasn’t alone; her Nahid senses picked up the heartbeat and breath of another as easily as her eyes would have spotted them in better light. Disoriented, Manizheh tried to sit up and succeeded only in provoking another pain in her belly.

“It’s all right,” a soft voice assured. “It’s just me.”

“Rustam?” Manizheh blinked. Her brother came to her in blurry pieces—the black eyes they shared and the bright white of his veil.

“Baga Nahid right now.” Rustam eased another pillow under her head and put a foul-smelling cup to her lips. “Drink.”

Manizheh obeyed. When Rustam e-Nahid personally brewed you a potion, you drank it without question. The relief came so fast that Manizheh choked; her aches, the swelling all over her body, and her pounding head immediately eased.

“Creator bless you,” she said hoarsely.

“You should eat,” he said in response. “And take some water.”

She drank from the new cup he offered, but shook her head when he offered up a small platter of cut fruit and plain bread. “I am not hungry.”

“You need to eat, Manu. Your body’s weak.” Rustam reached for her hand.

Manizheh jerked her hand back before he could touch her. “I said I’m not hungry.”

There was a moment of silence. She still couldn’t see him well. His gaze was downcast as it usually was. Rustam rarely made eye contact with people anymore, and when he did, he struggled to maintain it.

He spoke again. “I may not have your talents, sister, but I am as Nahid as you. I do not need to touch your hand to know what has happened.”

Fresh tears burned in her eyes. Manizheh hadn’t cried in years before Jamshid was born. “Nothing happened. I’m fine. It was simply a rough journey.”

“Manizheh—”

“It was a rough journey,” she repeated, her voice fierce. “Do you understand? There is nothing to talk about. Nothing to know. You can’t be blamed for what you don’t know.”

“You and I both know that’s not true.” Rustam snapped his fingers and the oil lamp burned brighter, throwing wild illumination and shadows across the room. “Do not carry this burden alone. You can’t. Not this.”

“There is nothing to tell.”

“There is! You cannot vanish for a year and come back after having a—”

The entire room shook. There was a blast of heat, and the flames in the fire altar soared, scorching the ceiling and making Rustam’s effect look like child’s play.

“If you continue that sentence, you will never speak again,” she warned. “Do you understand?”

Rustam grabbed the empty cup from her hands, but he was trembling. His hands shook when he was afraid, an affliction he couldn’t control and one that had only gotten worse over the years. He could barely hold an object without it rattling in Ghassan’s presence, and when they had to attend public functions, he and Manizheh had taken to putting binders on his wrists with knotted rags he could grip to control himself.

And now Manizheh had made him tremble. She had no choice—he was foolish to speak openly when Ghassan had hidden eyes and ears everywhere—but regret immediately washed over her.

“Rustam, I’m sorry. I just—”

“I understand,” he said harshly. “That you would threaten me is answer enough.” He opened and closed his fists and then pressed his hands to his knees, fighting for control. “I hate this,” he whispered. “I hate them. That I cannot even ask you if . . .”

“I know.” Now she did take his hand. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Would you add that which I cannot tell you to your prayers?”

Rustam lifted his gaze to her again. “Every day, sister.”

The sincerity in his eyes only made Manizheh feel worse. She wanted to tell him. She wanted to huddle together under her blanket as they did when they were children and weep. She wanted another Nahid to tell her that it was going to be okay. That Ghassan would fall and she’d see her son again. That they would reverse the spell she’d done and return to Daevabad to rule together as their family deserved.

But her little brother looked awful. Rustam was shivering slightly, his skin pale with a sick yellow tinge. The shadows under his eyes were so pronounced, it looked like he’d been punched, and he’d lost weight. She couldn’t see the rest of his face. Rustam removed his veil so rarely that she sometimes had to remind him that he could when they were alone, and Manizheh knew it wasn’t just piety. He’d turned inward to survive their lives in Daevabad, retreating behind every wall he could to a place where no one could touch him.

It was enough to paint a picture of the way her brother must have suffered in the year she’d been gone. There would be no other signs. There never were. Rustam’s bones healed when Ghassan’s thugs broke them, as did the gashes left by whips and the burns left by acid. Ghassan had never raised a hand to Manizheh; he didn’t have to. He’d learned long ago that beating her brother made her submit faster than anything else. However, not all his invisible marks had been put there by Ghassan. On Rustam’s wrists was a different story. Her brother had tried to kill himself more than once, but doing so successfully was difficult for a Nahid. His last attempt—a poisoning—had been years ago, and Manizheh had been the one to bring him back. He had begged her to let him die. She had fallen to her knees and begged him not to leave her.

It was the last time she’d wept before Jamshid’s birth.

She would not lean on Rustam further. Instead Manizheh tried to bring a steadier expression to her face. “Could you have the kitchens bring me some ginger tea?” she asked. “I think it will settle my stomach enough that I can eat.”

Relief swept over his face. Ah yes, she knew the look of a healer pleased to have a solid task. “Of course.” Rustam rose to his feet and then fumbled in the pockets of his robe. “I brought you something. I know you like to keep it hidden away, but I thought . . . I thought it might give you some comfort.” He placed a small, hard object in her hand, closing her fingers over it before stepping back. “May the fires burn brightly for you, Manu.”

Manizheh’s heart twisted. She knew what was in her hand. “For you as well, beloved.”

He left with a bow and Manizheh settled back into bed, curling in on herself. Only when she heard the door close did she command the flames to constrict, returning the room to darkness.

Then she slipped the ancient ring he’d given her onto her finger. The band was badly battered. Manizheh was familiar with every single one of its dents and scratches—for there was no object she had devoted more attention to than the ring containing her people’s only hope at salvation.

“Please come back,” she whispered. “Please save us.”