Alizeh was struck straightaway by the intoxicating smell of rosewater.
The Wintrose Festival was one of the few things familiar to her in this foreign, royal city, for the Wintrose season was celebrated all throughout the empire of Ardunia. Alizeh had fond memories of harvesting the delicate pink blooms with her parents, straw baskets colliding as they walked, heads dense with perfume.
She smiled.
Nostalgia nudged her feet across the threshold, sensememory encouraging her legs, articulating her limbs. A zephyr moved through the alley, tumbling rose petals toward her, and she drew the heady, floral fragrance deep into her lungs, experiencing a rare moment of unqualified joy as the breeze ruffled her hair, the hems of her skirts. The sun was but a nebulous glow through an exhalation of clouds, painting the moment in diffuse, golden light that made Alizeh feel as if she’d stepped into a dream. She could hardly help her need to draw nearer to such beauty.
One at a time, she began picking the wind-scattered roses out of the snow, gently tucking the wilting blossoms into the pockets of her apron. These Gol Mohammadi roses were so heavily scented, their perfume would last for months. Her mother had always used theirs to make a rose-petal jam, saving a few corollas to press between the pages of a book, which Alizeh liked t—
Without warning, her heart began to race.
It was that familiar pinch in her chest, her pulse pounding in her bleeding palms. Her hands shook without warning, petals falling loose from her fists. Alizeh was struck with a frightening need to run from this place, to strip the apron from her body and tear across the city, lungs blazing. She wanted desperately to return home, to fall at her parents’ feet and grow roots there, at the base of their bodies. She felt all this in the span of a second, the feeling flooding her with a riotous force and leaving her, in its wake, strangely numb. It was a humbling experience, for Alizeh was again reminded that she had no home, no parents to whom she might return.
It had been years since their deaths, and still it seemed to Alizeh an outrageous injustice that she could not see their faces.
She swallowed.
Once, Alizeh’s life had meant to be a source of strength for the people she loved; instead, she often felt her birth had exposed her parents to bloodshed, to the brutal murders that would take them both—first her father, then her mother—in the same year.
Jinn had been viciously slaughtered for ages, it was true; their numbers had been decimated, their footprint reduced near to nothing—and with it, much of their legacy. The deaths of her parents, too, had seemed to the unsuspecting eye much like the deaths of countless other Jinn: random acts of hatred, or even unfortunate accidents.
And yet—
Alizeh was plagued always by an unsettling suspicion that her parents’ deaths had not been random. Despite their diligent efforts to keep Alizeh’s existence concealed, she worried; for it was not only her parents, but all those whose lives had once touched hers who’d vanished in a series of similar tragedies. Alizeh could not help but wonder whether the true target of all this violence had been someone else entirely—
Her.
With no proof to corroborate such a theory, Alizeh’s mind was unable to rest, devoured every day a bit more by the voracious appetite of her fears.
Heart still thudding in her chest, she retreated inside.
Alizeh had searched the back alley beyond the kitchen each of the twelve times she’d come downstairs, but the Fesht boy had never turned up, and she couldn’t understand why. She’d scavenged from the remains of breakfast a few chunks of pumpkin bread, which she’d carefully wrapped in wax paper, and hid the rations under a loose floorboard in the pantry. The boy had seemed so hungry this morning that Alizeh could not imagine an explanation for his absence, not unless—
She added firewood to the stove, and hesitated. It was possible she’d hurt the boy too badly during their scuffle.
Sometimes Alizeh did not know her own strength.
She checked the kettles she’d set to boil, then glanced at the kitchen clock. There were still many hours left in the day, and she worried her hands wouldn’t survive the onslaught. Sacrifices would have to be made.
Alizeh sighed.
Quickly, she tore two strips of fabric from the hem of her apron. Alizeh, who made all her own clothes, quietly mourned the ruin of the piece, and then bandaged her wounds as best she could with blistered fingers. She would need to find time to visit the apothecary tomorrow. She had some coin now; she could afford to purchase salve, and maybe even a poultice.
Her hands, she hoped, would recover.
Having wrapped her wounds, the sharp edge of her torment began slowly to abate, the modicum of relief unbolting the vise from around her chest. In the aftermath she took adeep, bracing breath, experiencing a prickle of embarrassment at her own thoughts, at the dark turns they took with so little encouragement. Alizeh did not want to lose faith in this world; it was only that every pain she owned seemed to extract hope from her as payment.
Still, she considered, as she refilled her buckets with freshly boiled water, her parents would’ve wanted more for her. They would’ve wanted her to keep fighting.
One day, her father had said,this world will bow to you.
Just then came a sharp knock at the back door.
Alizeh straightened so quickly she nearly dropped the kettle. She tossed another glance around the unusually empty kitchen—there was so much work to be done today that the servants were granted no breaks—and snatched the hidden parcel from the pantry.
Carefully, she opened the door.
Alizeh blinked, then stepped back. It was Mrs. Sana staring at her, the bespectacled housekeeper from the Lojjan ambassador’s estate.
