Chapter 3: Nahri

Nahri awakens far from Cairo in a desert oasis opposite the daeva warrior who saved her. Startled and defensive, she learns little at first, but Dara questions her relentlessly, testing her uncanny fluency in languages and probing her solitary past. Nahri describes her healing—sensing illness and sometimes mending by touch—while Dara reacts with shock and suspicion, hinting at a forbidden Nahid lineage.

Fearing for her livelihood, Nahri begs to return to Cairo, but Dara declares it impossible: their laws forbid it and the ifrit are likely tracking her. He labels her shafit—mixed blood—and links her powers to the Nahid family of legendary daeva healers. He withholds firm answers, exhausted from the previous night’s magic, and sends her to bathe while he waits for help.

After washing and donning Dara’s seamless garments, Nahri tests her healing sense on the sleeping daeva and perceives him as strangely “unfinished,” lacking human bodily processes. Before she can dwell on it, a birdlike being—the peri Khayzur—arrives. Dara confides that Nahri healed before his eyes and speaks all tongues; Khayzur, astonished, believed the Nahids extinct. They share tea that restores Nahri and weigh the danger: the ifrit already know of her.

Khayzur urges immediate travel to Daevabad, the Nahids’ ancestral city, whose veil blocks ifrit. Dara balks, citing his enemies there and the shame of bringing a Nahid shafit, alluding to an ancient war. Khayzur presses responsibility on Dara as Afshin and warns the ifrit will kill Nahri if they delay.

Shaken but persuaded, Dara concedes that Daevabad offers Nahri the best protection from the ifrit. Khayzur departs to seek information, advising speed and subtlety. Dara gathers weapons, refuses further questions, and, despite Nahri’s protests, launches their makeshift flying carpet into the sky toward the hidden city.