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The desert lay sprawled below them, the moon reflected on white sand that stretched on endlessly. Despite having seen little else but sand for the past few days, somehow the view still took Nahri’s breath away. The wind whipped her hair, and the night air should have chilled her, but Dara seemed to radiate constant warmth, and as paradoxical as it may be, hurtling through the sky on nothing but a piece of fabric with an unpredictable, bristly warrior beside her, she felt safer than she had in a long time.
With a sigh, she rolled onto her back, her bare feet hanging from the edge of the carpet. Dara lay beside her, eyes closed, as tight-lipped and reclusive as ever. She was acutely aware of how small the carpet was, how they were rarely beyond an arm’s length away from each other. Nahri didn’t mind. For one, his proximity prevented her from dying of hypothermia, but the djinn was also nice to look at. Very nice to look at, she amended to herself. His emerald eyes were always feverishly bright, thick eyebrows furrowed above them as if he was always deep in thought. Sometimes she’d catch him looking at her, the heavy weight of his gaze unreadable but somehow, it made her feel both exhilaratingly dangerous and uncomfortably vulnerable. But despite their constant physical nearness, he would not tell Nahri a thing.
Half to fill the silence and half to let out something that had been nagging at her since she’d met Dara, Nahri said, “Yaqub will be worried about me.” When he didn’t respond, Nahri thought he had fallen asleep. But then he spoke.
“Who is Yaqub?” He simply asked quietly.
“He-” Nahri sighed, unsure of how to proceed. “He is a friend,” she decided to say. Silence fell again, but she wasn’t cowed by the lack of a response. “He owns an apothecary near where I lived. I think he’s the only person who would even notice that I’m gone.” A lump rose in her throat at that, and she swallowed it down.
“Maybe he’ll think your criminal ways have caught up with you,” Dara said, without a trace of humor to his words. She rolled her eyes, but she knew he was right. How often had Yaqub told her that she would get herself into trouble?
“It’s probably best that he thinks that. Better than knowing that the girl who he so often fed and gave marriage advice to is half-djinn, whisked away by another murderous djinn, and is currently traveling east on a flying carpet!”
“You are not half-djinn,” Dara spat the word, his feature contorting with disgust. “You are Daeva. A Nahid. And I would once again ask that you stop sullying the name by referring to yourself as djinn.” Oh, he was infuriating, and she didn’t know how to tell him that she couldn’t care less about the technicalities without provoking another sullen lecture.
“Daeva, then,” she scowled. As silence descended between them once again, Nahri looked up at the stars. This time, it was Dara who broke it.
“Marriage advice?”
“Honestly, I think he worried about me, and perhaps the constant nagging to find a husband was his way of showing it. Maybe a husband would be able to give me a roof to live under… maybe I’d feel safe.” Nahri’s voice got quieter the longer she spoke. She was unsure why she was telling him all this. Talking to him often felt like talking to a brick wall, but perhaps it was the fact that he didn’t care in the slightest that the words rolled off her tongue so easily.
“You weren’t safe?”
“Young women are never safe-- especially not when they’re living on the streets, but that’s why I learned everything I learned. I learned to handle them all. Drunk men, foreign soldiers, religious zealots and corrupt nobles… they see someone who they think is vulnerable, and they descend like vultures. I was a child when I taught myself how not to trust,” she paused, remembering what she could of her childhood. “When people see a lost, orphan child wandering the streets alone, some of them feel a pang of sympathy. They’re eager to help. When the child starts speaking a tongue nobody can understand, knowing things she should not have been able to know, the very same people are just as eager to treat her like she doesn’t exist.”
She heard Dara shift, but the words were tumbling out now with a mind of their own. She felt a wet sheen on her eyes, the stars blurring in her vision, and she quickly blinked away the tears. “Feeling invisible was awful at first,” she admitted. “The other children wouldn’t speak to me because their parents had told them not to. The mosque in the neighborhood closed its doors, the imam muttering something about Iblis and evil. I don’t think anyone has ever held my hand, which seems like a silly concern in the grand scheme of things…” she trailed off. “But I learned that being invisible can have its advantages, and I learned how to get by.”
“You stole.” It wasn’t a question, but a mere statement. Nahri bristled, and snapped her head to glare at him, expecting him to be lying on his back, unmoved, uninterested. Instead, she was surprised to see him on his side, propped on an elbow, looking at her with an intensity that took her aback.
“I stole.” She couldn’t quite meet his gaze. Those eyes… she thought if she looked into them for too long, she’d be scalded. Instead, she looked at his neck, his broad shoulders and lean chest… anywhere except for his face. “I stole food from vendors, jewels from unsuspecting women that I pawned for more food, and shoes from mosques when my old pair would grow worn with use. I got better at it. Learned how to steal bigger. Learned how to read people.”
“Read people?” Dara muttered.
“Their tells. For example, some people crack their knuckles if they’re nervous, or some people clasp their hands behind their backs if they’re lying.” Dara suddenly reached out, his hand coming to rest on her cheek. Nahri stilled in surprise. But she liked the way his warm palm felt against her cold cheek.
“Like you bite your bottom lip when you’re trying to hold your tongue.” Nahri finally looked at him, heat rushing to her cheeks. Dara realized the moment their eyes met that he had said something he hadn’t quite meant to. He blinked in rapid succession, pulled his hand back like he had been shocked, and returned to lying on his back. “It was just a casual observation,” he insisted.
“Okay.” Nahri closed her eyes, still flustered, a smile playing on her lips. Perhaps she’d been wrong. Perhaps he wasn’t as disinterested as he seemed if he was watching her so closely. She’d have to fix her little tell, however; it wasn’t good for business.
As Nahri drifted off to sleep, thinking of mosques made of sand and the smell of the apothecary, she felt Dara take her hand and hold it close.