“And you are the worst coward,” he said. “Even while you pretend at bravery.”
“How dare you,” she said, her fists clenching. “How dare you slander my person when you knownothingabout me—”
“A hypocrite, too, how divine,” he said lazily. “Meanwhile, I was forced to listen to you disparage me at length in front of my own mother, and still I managed not to take up arms against you.”
“Perhaps because you found it difficult to disagree with my assessment of your character.”
“Character?” He raised his eyebrows. “Oh, yes, do let’s discuss your character. You’ve been threatening to kill mefor hours—despite having had ample opportunity to do so—and now you’re picking a fight when you know full well that I won’t lift a finger against you—that Ican’t, even if I’d love nothing more than to see your smart mouth shut forever.
“You think you’re so cunning,” he said, stepping toward her now, “but these last few hours have already taught me everything I need to know about yourcharacter.”
Alizeh wanted to throttle him.
“Choose your weapon,” she said again, but he was still striding forward, his eyes catching intermittent rays of light as he moved, the flash and flare constricting his pupils at different rates. The effect on his eyes was strange; his irises seemed incapable of deciding on a color, vacillating between shades of blue and making him appear occasionally inhuman. It caused Alizeh to wonder whether that was how people saw her, as well.
The fraction of a moment would cost her.
Too late, Alizeh realized that Cyrus was not slowing down. She was forced to stumble back as he stalked toward her—his forward strides increasingly confident, her hasty retreat ever more fumbling. Only when she became suddenly, desperately aware of the fact that she was mere inches from the edge of the cliff did her instincts reassemble; quickly she halted him with her hands, staying his march with a firm shove he met with strength of his own, pushing valiantly against the force she exerted and somehow conceding only inches in the process.
Alizeh didn’t understand. She was much stronger than him—she should’ve been able to throw him back—
But Alizeh was weak, too.
She still trembled with cold, with the deliriousness of one who’d hardly slept in days, with the fatigue of a mind that had been all but shattered. Alizeh did not need food, but she still required sustenance—and the taste of mist in her mouth upon arrival had been her only drink of water in several hours. Adrenaline was losing its effect on her; she was beginning to buckle under these myriad pressures, and worse: Cyrus was confusing her senses. He no longer wore a coat, for the article he’d lent her earlier had been tossed into turbulent skies, and in fighting her strength now he was only pressing himself more firmly into her hands, the thin sweater he wore doing little to mask the firm musculature of his body, the soft strength of his chest. The distracting heat and sensation of him was proving altogether too intimate an experience. She did not want to know him like this.
“What are you doing?” she practically gasped. “I told you to choose—”
Unexpectedly, Cyrus smiled.
For the first time since she’d met the reprobate, he truly smiled. He grinned like a boy, not a man, the infinitesimal flash of his white teeth rendering him almost childlike, softening him into something more mischievous than vengeful. The sight was distracting enough that she failed to notice her hands had fallen from his chest, thathishands had wasted no time landing at her waist. He gripped her firmly, stepping so close their bodies nearly aligned in all the wrong places; he was crowding her with his heat, with his height, with his unrelenting stare. She could hardly fuse together the wiresin her brain; she was too tired, too unaccustomed to such closeness, too overwhelmed by the scent of him, the stubble along his jaw, the strength she felt in his hands, on her hips, his fingers sinking into her flesh. It was but a moment that she froze, confusion costing her the opportunity to regroup, and she knew two things then with absolute certainty: First, that she had failed.
Second, that he had lied.
How had the nosta failed to sense this?He was going to kill her.He was laughing when he lifted her off her feet, laughing when, without warning, he tossed her off the cliff.
Alizeh screamed.
“I choose dragons,” he called after her.
Her arms and legs pinwheeled as she fell backward into the sky, hands fumbling in vain for purchase as she cried out in fear, in rage, plummeting all the while from a terrible height for the third time in less than a day.
She didn’t understand why this kept happening to her.
Alizeh, who had enough experience now for comparison, could say with confidence thatthiswas the most terrifying fall of the three, made worse by the fact that she was falling in the wrong direction, growing only more disoriented as she tumbled, her limbs tangling as she struggled to right herself. The drop was so immeasurable she could hardly make out the river below, and she braced herself for the force of impact, praying she’d at least die instantaneously upon hitting the water. It’d be far worse to survive the fall, she knew, and sustain injuries that would kill her slowly. Either way, she could look forward to excruciating pain.
Oh, Alizeh was tired.
Tired of feeling she had no control over her life, tired of being manipulated by the devil, tired of living in fear, tired of fear itself. The dark truth she seldom revealed even to herself was that sometimes she wanted nothing more than to break, to be weak, to tear off her armor and give in.
How long would she be forced to fight for her life? More important: Was her life really worth so much effort?
It troubled her that she had no answer.
Her emotional and physical exhaustion were in fact so acute she almost welcomed the idea of closing her eyes forever, and with a terrible shudder, she squeezed them shut.
Alizeh had no idea whether she would die, but she knew she could expend no more energy fighting gravity. She let her limbs be flung akimbo, let her hair snake around her face, listened to the tatters of her dress rap relentlessly in the wind. She was finally surrendering her life to fate when she heard an unmistakable, deafening roar.
Alizeh’s eyes flew open.
