“Hazan?”
“Hazan?” The copper-headed king laughed at that, wiped a bit of blood from his mouth. “Hazan?Of course notHazan.” To Kamran, he said, “Pay attention, King, for it seems even your friends have betrayed you.”
Alizeh swung around to meet Kamran’s eyes just in time to see the way he looked at her—the flash of shock, the pain of betrayal—before he shuttered closed, withdrew inward.
His eyes went almost inhumanly dark.
She wanted to go to him, to explain—
Kamran exchanged a look with a guard, scores of which now swarmed the ballroom, and Hazan, soon revealed to be the sole person trying to flee the crush, was seized not moments later, his arms bound painfully behind his back. The silence of the room was momentarily deafening; Hazan’s protests piercing the quiet as he was dragged away.
Alizeh was gripped then by a violent terror.
With agonizing slowness, she felt a tapestry of truth form around her; disparate threads of understanding braiding together to illustrate an answer to a question she’d long misunderstood.
Of course not Hazan.
Hazan had never planned this fate for her. Hazan had been kind and trustworthy; he’d truly cared for her well-being. But this—this was all a cruel trick, was it not?
She’d been deceived by the devil himself.
Why?
“Iblees,” she said, her voice fraught with disbelief. “All this time, you have been speaking of the devil. Why? Why did he send you to fetch me? What interest does he have in my life?”
The Tulanian king frowned. “Is it not obvious? He wants you to rule.”
Alizeh heard Kamran’s sharp intake of breath, heard the rumblings of the crowd around them. This conversation was madness. She’d nearly forgotten they had an audience—that all of Ardunia would hear—
Again, the southern king laughed, but louder this time, looking suddenly disturbed. “A Jinn queento rule the world.Oh, it’s so horribly seditious. The perfect revenge.”
Alizeh felt herself pale then, watched her hands begin to tremble. A fragile hypothesis began to take shape in her mind; something that shook her to her core:
Iblees wanted to use her.
He wanted to bring her to power and control her; no doubt to ensure the mass chaos and destruction of the Clay who wronged him; the beings he blamed for his downfall.
Alizeh began slowly backing away from the blue-eyed king. A strange madness had overtaken her, a fear beyond which she could not see. Without thinking, she glanced up at the clock.
Five minutes to midnight.
Alizeh bolted for the exit, fleeing the fiery circle for the second time unscathed; the remains of her gown going up in flames once more. She beat the fire from her dress even as she ran, even as she knew not where she was headed.
The Tulanian king called after her.
“Wait— Where are you going? We had a deal— Under no circumstances were you allowed to run away—”
“I must,” she said desperately. She knew it sounded crazed even as she said it, for there had never been escape from the devil, never a reprieve from his whispers. Still, she could not help the anguish that overcame her then. It made her irrational.
“I’m sorry,” she cried. “I’m sorry, but I have to leave— I need to find somewhere to hide, somewhere he won’t—”
Alizeh felt something catch her in the gut then. Something like a gust of wind; a wing. Her feet began kicking without warning, launching her body upward, into the air.
She screamed.
“Alizeh!” Kamran bellowed, rushing up to the edges of his fiery cage. “Alizeh—”
Panic filled her lungs as her body soared. “Make it stop,” she cried, her arms pinwheeling. “Put me down!”
