The door burst open, and Muntadhir rushed in. “Zaydi . . . thank God,” he breathed as he hurried to his bedside. His face paled. “Oh . . . oh.”
He wasn’t the only one shocked. Ali gaped at his brother; Muntadhir looked like he’d been on the wrong side of a street brawl. His jaw was bruised, stitches held together gashes on his cheek and brow, and bloody bandages wrapped his arms. His robe hung in shreds. He appeared to have aged thirty years; his face was drawn, his eyes swollen and darkly rimmed from crying.
Ali gasped. “What happened to you?”
“The Scourge was offering a demonstration of his title,” Muntadhir said bitterly. “Until you turned him into a pile of ash.”
“Until I did what?”
The king glared at Muntadhir. “I had not yet reached that part.” He glanced at Ali again, his face unusually gentle. “Do you remember climbing back onto the boat? Killing Darayavahoush?”
“No!”
His father and brother exchanged a dark look. “What do you remember of the lake?” Ghassan asked.
Pain. Indescribable pain. But he didn’t need to tell his worried father that. “I . . . something was talking to me,” he remembered. “Showing me things. Awful things. You were dead, Abba. Dhiru . . . they cut your head off in front of a crowd of ifrit.” He blinked back tears as his brother blanched. “There were men defiling Zaynab . . . the streets were burning . . . I thought it all real.” He swallowed, trying to regain control. More sweat poured from his skin, soaking the sheets. “The voice . . . it-it was asking for something. My name.”
“Your name?” Ghassan asked sharply. “It asked for your name? Did you give it?”
“I-I think so,” Ali replied, trying to recall his scattered memories. “I don’t remember anything after that.” His father went still, and Ali panicked. “Why?”
“You don’t give your name, Alizayd.” Ghassan was clearly trying—and failing—to check the alarm rising in his voice. “Not freely, not to a creature who’s not of our race. Giving your name means giving up control. That’s how the ifrit enslave us.”
“What are you saying?” Ali touched his wounds. “You think the ifrit did this to me?” He gasped. “Does that mean—”
“Not the ifrit, Zaydi,” Muntadhir cut in quietly. Ali watched his brother’s gaze dart to their father, but Ghassan didn’t interrupt. “That’s not what lives in the lake.”
Ali’s eyes went wide. “The marid? That’s insane. They haven’t been seen in thousands of years!”
His father hushed him. “Keep your voice down.” He glanced at his eldest. “Muntadhir, get him some water.” Muntadhir poured him a cup from the ceramic water pitcher on the table behind them, pressing it into his hand before stepping carefully away. Ali clutched it, taking a nervous sip.
Ghassan’s face stayed grave. “The marid have been seen, Alizayd. By Zaydi al Qahtani himself when he took Daevabad . . . in the company of the Ayaanle man who commanded them.”
Ali went cold. “What?”
“The marid were seen by Zaydi,” Ghassan repeated. “He warned his son about them when he became emir, a warning passed down to each generation of Qahtani kings.”
“We don’t cross the Ayaanle,” Muntadhir intoned softly.
Ghassan nodded. “Zaydi said the Ayaanle alliance with the marid earned us our victory . . . but that the Ayaanle had paid a terrible price for doing so. We were never to betray them.”
Ali was shocked. “The marid helped us take Daevabad from the Nahids? But that-that’s absurd. That’s . . . abhorrent,” he realized. “That would be . . .”
“A betrayal of our race itself,” Ghassan finished. “Which is why it doesn’t leave this room.” He shook his head. “My own father never believed it, said it was just a story passed down over the centuries to frighten us.” Ghassan’s face fell. “Until today, I thought he might be right.”
Ali narrowed his eyes. “What are you saying?”
Ghassan took his hand. “You fell in the lake, my son. You gave your name to a creature in its depths. I think it took it . . . I think it took you.”
Ali drew up with as much indignation as he could from his soaking sheets. “You think I let a marid . . . what, possess me? That’s impossible!”
“Zaydi . . .” Muntadhir stepped closer, his face apologetic. “I saw you climb back on the boat. You had all those things clinging to you, your eyes were black, you were whispering in some bizarre language. And when you used the seal, my God, you completely overpowered Darayavahoush. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
The seal? He had used Suleiman’s seal? No, this is madness. Utter madness. Ali was an educated man. He’d never read anything indicating that marid could possess pureblooded djinn. That anything could possess djinn. How would something like that have been kept a secret? And did that mean all the gossip—all the cruel rumors about his mother’s people—was rooted in truth?
Ali shook his head. “No. We have scholars; they know the truth about the war. Besides, djinn can’t be possessed by a marid. If they could, surely—surely someone would have studied it. It would be in a book—”
“Oh, my child . . .” His father’s eyes were filled with sorrow. “Not everything is in a book.”
Ali dropped his gaze, fighting back tears, unable to bear the pity in Ghassan’s face. They’re wrong, he tried to insist to himself. They’re wrong.
But how else to explain the gaps in his memory? The horrific visions? The very fact that he was alive? He’d been shot in the throat and lungs, had fallen into water cursed to shred any djinn who touched it. And here he was.
A marid. He stared at his dripping hands as nausea swept over him. I gave my name and let some water demon use my body like a shiny new blade to murder the Afshin. His stomach churned.
From the corner of his eye, he saw the ceramic pitcher start to shake on the table behind his brother. God, he could sense it; he could feel the water aching to burst free. The realization shook him to the core.
His father squeezed his hand. “Look at me, Alizayd. The Afshin is dead. It is over. No one need ever know.”
But it wasn’t over. It never would be: sweat was pouring from Ali’s brow even now. He was changed.
“Ali, child.” He could hear the worry in his father’s voice. “Talk to me, please . . .”
Ali sucked in his breath, and the water pitcher behind Muntadhir exploded, sending clay fragments skittering across the floor. The water gushed out, and Muntadhir jumped, his hand going for the khanjar at his waist.
Ali met his eyes. Muntadhir dropped his hand, looking slightly ashamed.
“Abba . . . he can’t be seen like this,” he said quietly. “We need to get him out of Daevabad. Ta Ntry. Surely the Ayaanle will know better . . .”
“I’m not giving him to Hatset’s people,” Ghassan said stubbornly. “He belongs with us.”
“He’s making water pitchers explode and drowning in his own sweat!” Muntadhir threw up his hands. “He’s second in line for the throne. Two heartbeats away from controlling Suleiman’s seal and ruling the realm. For all we know, the marid is still in there, waiting to seize him again.” Muntadhir met Ali’s frightened eyes. “Zaydi, I’m sorry, I truly am . . . but it is the height of irresponsibility to let you remain in Daevabad. The questions your condition will provoke . . .” He shook his head and looked back to their father. “You were the one who gave me the lecture when you made me emir. Who told me what would happen if the Daevas ever suspected how we won the war.”