The Kingdom of Copper. S. Chakraborty A.

the things I have done.”

      “Then confess them and free yourself of their weight.”

      “I cannot,” he whispered. “If I start, Tamima … they will drown me. They—”

      A burst of heat suddenly seared his left hand, and Dara gasped, the pain taking him by surprise. It was a sensation he’d started to forget, but the burn vanished as quickly as it had come. He raised his hand.

      A battered iron and emerald ring was on his finger.

      Dara stared at it, baffled. He pushed to a sitting position, the heavy mantle of drowsiness falling from his body like a cloak.

      The glen’s stillness ebbed away, a cold breeze sweeping aside the smells of home and sending the cedar leaves dancing. Dara shivered. The wind seemed like a thing alive, pulling at his limbs and tousling his hair.

      He was on his feet before he realized it.

      Tamima grabbed his hand. “No, Daru,” she pleaded. “Don’t go. Not again. You’re finally so close.”

      Startled, he glanced at his sister. “What?”

      As if in response, the shadows in the cedar grove deepened, emerald and black writhing and twisting together. Whatever magic this was … it was intoxicating, tugging hard at his soul, the ring pulsing against his finger like a beating heart.

      It was suddenly obvious. Of course, Dara would go. It was his duty, and he was a good Afshin.

      He obeyed.

      He pulled free of his sister’s hand. “I will come back,” he said. “I promise.”

      Tamima was weeping. “You always say that.”

      But his sister’s sobs grew distant as Dara walked deeper into the grove. The sound of birdsong vanished, replaced by a low humming buzz that set his nerves on edge. The air seemed to close in around him, uncomfortably hot. The tug came again from his hand, the ring smoldering.

      And then he was seized. Stolen, an unseen force snatching him like a rukh and dragging him into its maw.

      The cedar glen vanished, replaced by utter blackness. Nothingness. A blazing, tearing pain ripped through him, worse than any sensation he could imagine, a thousand knives seeming to shred every fiber of his body as he was pulled, dragged through a substance thicker than mud. Disassembled and reformed from pieces as sharp as broken glass.

      A presence thundered to life in his breast, pounding like a drum. Rushing liquid swirled through new veins, lubricating the growing muscles, and a smothering heaviness settled upon his chest. He choked, his mouth reforming to draw air into his lungs. His hearing returned, bringing with it screams.

      His screams.

      Memories slammed into him. A woman shouting his name, whispering his name. Black eyes and a sly smile, her mouth on his as their bodies pressed together in a darkened cave. Those same eyes filled with shock, with betrayal, in a ruined infirmary. A drowned man covered in scales and tentacles looming over him, a rusting blade in his dripping hand.

      Dara’s eyes shot open, but he saw only blackness. The pain was fading but everything felt wrong, his body both too light and yet too real, pulsing in a way he hadn’t experienced in decades. Centuries. He choked again, gasping as he tried to remember how to breathe.

      A hand clamped down on his shoulder, and a wave of warmth and calm surged into his body. The pain vanished, his heart slowing to a steady beat.

      Relief flooded through him. Dara would know the healing touch of a Nahid anywhere. “Nahri,” he breathed. Tears burned his eyes. “Oh, Nahri, I am sorry. I am so sorry. I never meant—”

      The words died in his mouth. He’d caught sight of his hand.

      It was fire-bright, tipped in deadly sharp claws.

      Before he could scream, a woman’s face swam into view. Nahri. No, not Nahri, though Dara could see the ghost of her in the woman’s expression. This Daeva was older, her face slightly lined. Silver stole through the black hair roughly shorn at her shoulders.

      She looked almost as shocked as Dara felt. Delighted—but shocked. She reached up to stroke his cheek. “It worked,” she whispered. “It finally worked.”

      Dara stared down in horror at his burning hands. The hated emerald slave ring glittered back. “Why do I look like this?” His voice broke in panic. “Have the ifrit—”

      “No,” the woman assured him quickly. “You’re free of the ifrit, Darayavahoush. You’re free of everything.”

      That answered nothing. Dara gaped at the incomprehensible sight of his fiery skin, dread rising in his heart. In no world he knew did djinn and daevas look as he did now, even when brought back from slavery.

      In a distant corner of his mind, Dara could still hear his sister begging him to return to the garden of his ancestors. Tamima. Grief rushed through him, and tears streamed down his cheeks, sizzling against his hot skin.

      He shuddered. The magic coursing through his blood felt raw: new and ragged and uncontrollable. He drew a sharp breath, and the walls of the tent they were in undulated wildly.

      The woman grabbed his hand. “Calm yourself, Afshin,” she said. “You are safe. You are free.”

      “What am I?” He glanced again at his claws, sick at the sight. “What have you done to me?”

      She blinked, looking taken aback by the despair in his voice. “I’ve made you a marvel. A miracle. The first daeva to be freed of Suleiman’s curse in three thousand years.”

      Suleiman’s curse. He stared at her in disbelief, the words echoing in his head. That wasn’t possible. That … that was abominable. His people honored Suleiman. They obeyed his code.

      Dara had killed for that code.

      He shot to his feet. The ground shook beneath him, the tent walls flapping madly in a gust of hot wind. He staggered outside.

      “Afshin!”

      He gasped. He had been expecting the darkly lush mountains of his island city, but instead, Dara faced a desert, vast and empty. And then with horror, he recognized it. Recognized the line of salt cliffs and the single rocky tower that stood sentinel in the distance.

      The Dasht-e Loot. The desert in southern Daevastana so hot and inhospitable that birds dropped dead from the sky while flying over it. At the height of the Daeva rebellion, Dara had lured Zaydi al Qahtani to the Dasht-e Loot. He’d caught and killed Zaydi’s son in a battle that should have finally turned the war in the Daevas’ favor.

      But that was not how things had ended for Dara in the Dasht-e Loot.

      A cackling laugh brought him sharply to the present.

      “Well, there is a wager I have lost …” The voice behind him was smoothly clever, pulled from the worst of Dara’s memories. “The Nahid actually did it.”

      Dara whirled around, blinking in the sudden brightness. Three ifrit were before him, waiting in the crumbling ruins of what might have once been a human palace, now lost to time and the elements. The same ifrit who’d hunted him and Nahri across the Gozan River, a desperate encounter they’d barely survived.

      Their leader—Aeshma, Dara remembered—dropped from a broken wall, sauntering forward with a grin. “He even looks like us,” he teased. “I suspect that’s a shock.”

      “It’s a pity.” The ifrit who spoke next was a woman. “I liked the look of him before.” She gave him a sly smile, holding up a battered metal helmet. “What do you think, Darayavahoush? Want to see if it still fits?”

      Dara’s eyes locked on the helmet. It had gone bluish-green with rust, but he instantly recognized the ragged edge of the brass shedu wings that sprouted