The City of Brass (The Daevabad Trilogy, #1)

by S.A. Chakraborty

“I’m not sleeping alongside you in some temple dedicated to fish orgies.”

“Can I swim?” he snapped, as if the very idea offended him. “Can you burn?”

“It’s not haunted,” Wajed countered. “It simply … misses its founding family.” “The stairs vanished under me the last time I was there, uncle,” Ali pointed out. “The water in the fountains turns to blood so often that people don’t drink it.” “So it misses them a lot.”

There was something about the silence and lonely beauty of the fresh snowfall that made the solitude more intense.

“Your mother,” he wheezed. “We made a deal with Manizheh.”

“I’m coming back, Nahri,” he promised. “You’re my Banu Nahida. This is my city.” His expression was defiant. “Nothing will keep me from either of you.”

“Yes,” Darayavahoush said, his voice thick with sarcasm. “I murdered the emir and then decided to return to Daevabad and crow about it because I always wondered what it would be like to have my head on a spike.”

Ali drew up, looking indignant. “You should not be here, Afshin. The Banu Nahida’s time is precious. Only those who are ill or injured—” Dara abruptly raised a fist and then smashed it through the heavy, sandblasted glass table. The top shattered, sparkling shards of hazy glass cascading over the Afshin and the floor. He didn’t even flinch; instead, he raised his hand and looked at the jagged pieces of glass embedded in his skin with mock surprise. “There,” he deadpanned. “I’m injured.”