She’d not slept in what felt like days; she was delirious, frozen, almost entirely naked, and still dripping slowly in the morning light. She stared down at her bare feet, then at her makeshift shackles, the iron grip Sarra kept upon her hands. Were it not for the adrenaline coursing through her veins, Alizeh doubted she’d be able to remain upright for much longer. She was at a terrible disadvantage.
Steeling herself, she said softly: “Very well.”
Cyrus’s gaze sharpened at that, his eyes betraying a flicker of surprise. With a small cry of pleasure, Sarra finally released Alizeh’s hands, clapping her own together in delight.
Alizeh drew back at once.
The southern king followed, stepping cautiously toward her, watching Alizeh with the wariness of a hunter approaching a rabid wolf.
“You will come willingly?” he asked, his brows drawing together. “You will marry me without protest?”
They were close enough then that Alizeh could touch him had she wanted to. She could lift a finger to the silky copper lock curling across his forehead, his golden skin gleaming in the reflected light. His blue eyes were luminescent and somehow frigid, and for the briefest moment Alizeh thought she sensed in him what she still carried within herself—
A vast, bottomless grief.
She stood on tiptoe, asking with her body that he come closer—which he did, drawing toward her then without seeming to realize what he’d done, not until she nearly grazed the shell of his ear with her lips, when she whispered, for all the world as if they were playful lovers, “Choose your weapon, sire.”
Cyrus drew back so suddenly he nearly stumbled, newborn anger flaring to life between them. His chest heaving, his jaw clenched, he looked as if he might implode with fury.
“This is terribly inconvenient for me,” she said, drawing her shoulders back, planting her feet firmly beneath her. “But I’ll have to kill you now.”
Alizeh heard Sarra laugh.
Seven
KAMRAN STRODE DOWN THE HALLmuch like a stallion finally allowed to bolt. He moved with a swiftness that almost betrayed his nerves, his steps ringing out in the silence, his presence met only by occasional scurrying snodas, all of whom stopped in place at the sight of him and promptly fell to their knees, nearly dropping copper trays in the process, the sounds of crystal clattering between them.
The prince strode past these strange displays without betraying his surprise, but he was made uncomfortable nonetheless, for he was unaccustomed to this level of servility. It would be another week before he was crowned king; in the interim, he didn’t know whether this behavior was normal.
Once again, his mind drifted to Hazan.
Hazan, upon whom he’d always relied to keep him abreast of precisely such things; who’d always been there to correct and inform and guide him. Surely it had notallbeen a lie?
No, Kamran was too perceptive.
He trusted his own instincts too much to believe such a feat was even possible. Hazan’s betrayal had to have been a recent development. What Kamran couldn’t understand waswhy.
Why, after years of loyalty, would Hazan turn on him—turn his back on an empire his own family had been servingfor decades? Had he somehow known of King Zaal’s crimes? Had Hazan been exacting revenge upon his grandfather by assisting the monster foretold to destroy him?
“Hejjan?”
Kamran bristled at the sound of the familiar voice.
“Hejjan, septa—”Sire, wait—
He did not wait.
The prince felt his cape billowing about his shoulders as he moved, the steady knock of his boots against the green marble acting as a metronome against which he kept pace. Hazan was shackled in the dungeons waiting to die, and Kamran wanted to get the hateful business over with as soon as possible, for he was plagued by an uneasiness that made him feel ill. In an honest moment he might even admit that he did not, in fact, desire to kill the only person he’d ever called a friend, and if he failed to execute the traitor straightaway, he feared he’d lose the will to do it at all.
Omid jogged to keep up with him, slightly out of breath when he said, in Feshtoon, “Lotfi, hejjan, septa.”Please, sire, wait.“There’s something I need to tell you.”
Kamran did not slow his pace. “Is he ready?”
“Han, hejjan. Bek—”Yes, sire. But—
“Then I must get on.”
“Bek—”
