“You want answers now? Why? So you’ll be better informed when the ghouls devour you?” Dara snatched for her ankle, but she danced back. “Nahri, please! You can ask me whatever you want once we’re gone, I swear!”
But she wasn’t convinced. What was to stop him from changing his mind as soon as they were safe?
Then it came to her.
“Tell me your name, and I’ll go with you,” she offered. “Your real name.” He had told her there was power in names. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
“My name doesn’t—” Nahri took a deliberate step toward the temple, and panic lit his face. “No, stop!”
“Then tell me your name!” Nahri shouted, her own fear getting the better of her. She was used to bluffing, but not with the threat of being eaten by the risen dead looming. “And be quick about it!”
“Darayavahoush!” The daeva pulled himself onto the stage. “Darayavahoush e-Afshin is my name. Now get over here!”
Nahri was certain she couldn’t have repeated that correctly even if she’d been paid, but as the ghouls screamed again, and the smell of rot swept past her face, she decided it didn’t matter.
He was ready for her, grabbing her elbow and pulling her down on the rug as he landed lightly beside her. Without another word, the carpet rose in the air, sweeping over the temple’s roof as three ghouls stumbled out onto the stage.
Dara was thoroughly riled by the time they’d risen above the clouds. “Do you have any idea how dangerous that was?” He threw up his hands. “Not only did you try to destroy our only method of escaping the ifrit, you were ready to risk your life just to—”
“Oh, get over it,” she said, dismissing him. “You’re the one who drove me to such straits, Afshin Daryevu—”
“‘Dara’ will continue to do just fine,” he interrupted. “You needn’t mangle my proper name.” A goblet appeared in his hand, filled with the familiar dark of date wine. He took a long sip. “You can call me a damn djinn again if you promise not to go running after ghouls.”
“Such affection for the shafit thief?” She raised an eyebrow. “You weren’t so fond of me a week ago.”
He grumbled. “I can change my mind, can’t I?” A blush stole into his cheeks. “Your company is not . . . entirely displeasing.” He sounded deeply disappointed in himself.
Nahri rolled her eyes. “Well, it’s time your company became a lot more informative. You promised to answer my questions.”
He glanced around, gesturing to the clouds. “Right now?”
“Are you busy with something else?”
Dara exhaled. “Fine. Go on, then.”
“What’s a daeva?”
He sighed. “I already told you this: we’re djinn. We just have the decency to call ourselves by our true name.”
“That explains nothing.”
He scowled. “We’re souled beings like humans, but we were created from fire, not earth.” A delicate tendril of orange flame snaked around his right hand and twisted through his fingers. “All the elements—earth, fire, water, air—have their own creatures.”
Nahri thought of Khayzur. “The peris are creatures of air?”
“An astonishing deduction.”
She shot him a dirty look. “He had a better attitude than you.”
“Yes, he’s extraordinarily gentle for a being who could rearrange the landscape below us and kill every life-form for miles with a single sweep of his wings.”
Nahri felt the blood drain from her face. “Truly?” When Dara nodded, she continued. “Are—are there a lot of creatures like that?”
He gave her a somewhat wicked smile. “Oh, yes. Dozens. Rukh birds, karkadann, shedu . . . things with sharp teeth and nasty temperaments. A zahhak nearly ripped me in two once.”
She gaped at him. The flame playing around his finger stretched into an elongated lizard that belched a fiery plume. “Imagine a fire-breathing serpent with limbs. They’re rare, thank the Creator, but don’t give much warning when they attack.”
“And humans don’t notice any of this?” Nahri’s eyes widened as the smoky beast left Dara’s arm and flew around his head.
He shook his head. “No. Those created from dirt, like humans, usually can’t see the rest of us. Besides, most magical beings prefer wild places, places already empty of your kind. If a human had the misfortune to come across one, they might sense something, see a blur on the horizon or a shadow out of the corner of their eye. But they’d likely be dead before they gave it a second thought.”
“And if they came across a daeva?”
He opened his palm, and his fiery pet flew into it, dissolving into smoke. “Oh, we’d eat them.” At the alarm in her face, he laughed and took another sip of wine. “A jest, little thief.”
But Nahri wasn’t in the mood for his jokes. “What about the ifrit?” she persisted. “What are they?”
The amusement vanished from his face. “Daevas. At least . . . they were once.”
“Daevas?” she repeated in surprise. “Like you?”
“No.” He looked offended. “Not like me. Not at all.”
“Then like what?” She prodded his knee when he stayed silent. “You promised to—”
“I know, I know.” He removed his cap to rub his brow, running his fingers through his black hair.
It was an entirely distracting motion. Nahri’s eyes followed his hand, but she shut her wayward thoughts down, ignoring the flutter in her stomach.
“You do know that if you have Nahid blood, you’re likely going to live a few centuries.” Dara lay back on the carpet to recline on a propped wrist. “You should work on your patience.”
“At this rate, it will take us a few centuries just to finish this conversation.”
That brought a wry smile to his face. “You have their wit, I’ll admit to that.” He snapped his fingers, and another goblet appeared in his hand. “Drink with me.”
Nahri gave the goblet a suspicious sniff. It smelled sweet, but she hesitated. She hadn’t had a drop of wine in her life; such a forbidden luxury was well beyond her means, and she wasn’t sure how she’d react to alcohol. Drunks had always been easy pickings for a thief.
“Rejecting hospitality is a grave offense among my people,” Dara warned.
Mostly to appease him, Nahri took a small sip. The wine was cloyingly sweet, more like a syrup than a liquid. “Is it truly?”
“Not at all. But I’m tired of drinking alone.”
She opened her mouth to protest, irritated that she’d been so easily tricked, but the wine was already working, rolling down her throat and spreading a warm drowsiness throughout her body. She swayed, grabbing for the rug.
Dara steadied her, his fingers hot on her wrist. “Careful.”
Nahri blinked, her vision swimming for another moment. “By the Most High, your people must get nothing done if you drink things like this.”
He shrugged. “A fair assessment of our race. But you wish to know of the ifrit.”
“And why you think they want to kill me,” she clarified. “Mostly that.”