@geziri sent : ❝ you’ll do this one thing, you return home a changed man, an honorable man? just like that? ❞
WIND CATCHES ON THE EDGE OF HIS SCARF, tugging it out of place. He spends a few moments putting himself to rights, adjusting the scarf so that it once again covers the lower half of his face to guard his nose & mouth from the sand. It’s unnecessary, since he does not require breath, but it is that echo of familiarity, the touch of mortality and its comforts, that keep him grounded. The pause also enables him to quell the spark of rage that flares at the emir’s taunting question.
He cannot fault the man for trying to bait him. He must be a tempting target – an ancestral enemy, a bogeyman come to life, the monster hiding under all the al-Qahtani royal beds for generations suddenly walking and talking and threatening their tidy little sense of superiority. Yes, he is a threat. No, he does not plan on making himself smaller or lesser. They should be afraid. Muntadhir al-Qahtani should be worried.
Dara doesn’t have any plans right now besides seeing Nahri established as the Banu Nahida, but simply because he does not have any firm ideas of which action to pursue does not mean he hasn’t been entertaining the possibilities.
“I do not know what you want from me, al-Qahtani.” He will not call the man emir, not to his face, not if it can be construed as a title that he has earned and that Dara should be calling him. This wine-soaked djinn is no prince of his, and he has not sworn allegiance to this usurper dynasty. He never will.
“Do you wish for me to tell you of my regrets? Or perhaps to get down on my knees, weeping, spouting some nonsense of how I ache for forgiveness for the wrongs I dealt to your family a millennia ago?”
Dara’s face splits into a feral smile, though the man can only see his eyes, glinting like emeralds in the afternoon sun. He hopes he frightens Muntadhir. He hopes the man feels the threat of Darayavahoush e-Afshin in the rush of his blood, the thrum of his heart.
He doesn’t mean the emir any personal harm. Not yet, anyway. That can always change.
“I am afraid I will have to disappoint you. I do this only for my Banu Nahida.”
They’ve lost the trail of the ifrit, but that does not mean they cannot find it again. And he grows tired of this posturing. Muntadhir al-Qahtani could not, in any world, pose a threat to him. His gaze returns to the ground before them, searching for signs of which path to take next.
“Come,” he says, all ferocity in his voice finding a new direction. “If we do not hurry we will lose the light.”
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