Kamran turned his head with difficulty, his skull swinging with the grace of a pendulum as he searched the room for his assailant. At least the miracle of his release had a clear enough explanation: the glittering scarlet dagger had cut through his enchantment, which meant the weapon had once been fortified by the Diviners, the better to empower its owner against an enemy whose armor might be coated in magical protections.
In and of itself, this was not a notable discovery, for suchfortifications were common in the reinforcement of royal weapons; Kamran’s own swords boasted the same benefits. Far more interesting was the near assassination itself; for in his mind there existed but one person alive who would risk killing Kamran in the pursuit of his survival.
The dagger had belonged to his mother.
Unsuccessfully, he scanned the room for her face, increasingly perplexed by her actions. His mother had saved him. Why, then, had she abandoned—
Kamran went deathly still.
It was not magic this time, but fear that paralyzed him anew, for he’d glimpsed his reflection in a bank of shattered mirrors gracing an adjacent wall. Dumbstruck, he lifted an unsteady hand to his chin, his cheek, the delicate lid of one eye.
Earlier, the decorative mirrors had adorned the ballroom at intervals to great effect, enhancing the flicker of crystal and fire and the fractured light of a hundred glimmering chandeliers—elevating, in the process, the ambience of a dignified evening to dizzying heights.
Now the broken glass cast back only monstrous scenes, chief among them a likeness of himself he was not yet ready to fathom into words. He lacked the privilege of time even to process the transformation, for it was but an instant later that Zahhak fell, theatrically, to his knees.
At once, the sheep encircling him followed suit.
“Your Highness,” Zahhak cried. “We’d not dared to hope for such a miracle! There can be no doubt but that our empire has been blessed by the heavens!”
Kamran studied the sea of nobles kneeling before him with a vague disgust. Even now their duplicity was on display; these sycophants bowed without a word, motionless as glass even as their uncrowned king failed to stand upright, his broken body bleeding. They did not rush to his side, call for a surgeon, order a litter to carry him to safety—
No, they did not seem to care that he was dying.
And Kamran was indeed dying.
The restoration of his movements had returned him to himself, yes, but the rewiring of faculty and flesh had awakened, in the process, every brutal devastation his body had sustained this night; Kamran could feel that something was irrevocably wrong with him. It was more than the grisly transformation of his face—his lungs rattled when he inhaled; galvanic pain pulsed in his eyes; his vision faded in and out as bright, white light overexposed his sight with increasing frequency. His charred arms and legs still bled profusely, and worse—would no longer obey a command to desist shaking. There was something the matter with his chest, too; his heart felt both fast and sluggish, an ache like bones breaking where a soft organ was meant to beat.
He’d lost too much blood, perhaps—or sustained a blow to his lungs—or maybe he’d been frozen for too long, his many injuries growing only more gruesome in the interim. Whatever the reason, his death seemed now an inevitability. Without the immediate application of a powerful, restorative magic, Kamran knew he would soon lose the ability even to speak, for it was growing only more difficult to breathe. Thathe maintained his composure at all was a result only of violent determination, and it was a miracle that he managed to speak clearly when he said, breathing hard—
“Fetch me the nearest Diviner. With all possible haste.”
“Yes, sire. Right away, sire.”
Compelled into motion, Zahhak barked at a footman to ready a team of horses, snapping orders at gaping servants who’d materialized from the shadows only in the wake of Kamran’s reanimation. If he survived this infernal night, the gossip alone would be hell to endure.
“The rest of you,” Kamran said, staring blearily into the genuflecting crowd, “go home.”
When the petrified mass made no move, Kamran grew light-headed with anger.
“Now,” he bellowed, his lungs seizing in the effort.
The horde unfolded with a series of shrieks before bolting for the exits, silk and tulle shuddering as the ballroom was evacuated in a single exhalation.
Finally, he was alone. Or at least, appeared to be.
Kamran suspected there lingered wide-eyed servants in the wings, still watching him, but he could neither move nor risk raising his voice again, for his last attempt had so diminished his intake of air that every breath felt like pulling gasps through a pinhole. There was nothing for it; Kamran finally sagged to the floor, grimacing through the relentless pain still ravaging his body. The room tilted as he collapsed, supine in a sea of devastation, his only companion the body of a dead king, the cold blood of his beloved grandfatherpooling ever closer to his own shaking limbs.
Were Kamran a different sort of man, he might’ve acquiesced then to a terrifying compulsion. He felt in that moment nothing greater than an ancient impulse to cry, valiantly resisting the instinct even as a flare of grief tore through him. He had never felt more desperately alone in the world than he did then, trapped in the set piece of a nightmare, in the failing flesh of his own body. His mother had done him a mercy, but she’d promptly vanished. There was no one left he might trust, no one upon whom he might rely. The thought threatened to break him, and he vehemently refused it residence in his mind.
He would not die.
Dying would mean he’d failed his king twice—and this, Kamran could not allow. He fought to stay conscious even as violent spasms wracked his bones; he had to live long enough to murder those who’d wronged him; to avenge his father, his grandfather. He would survive this barrage of murders upon his soul; if he had to, he would lift this broken empire upon his own shaking shoulders—
“Sire?”
Kamran’s heart seized. His every instinct screamed at him to pull himself upright, but his limbs would not obey. He could only lay there, his chest cratering, until without warning his line of sight was crowded by a mop of red curls hanging over a cowed, freckled face. Omid Shekarzadeh, the street urchin whose attempted thievery had set in motion every recent, horrific turn of Kamran’s life, stared straight into his eyes.
“You,” Kamran managed to gasp.
