Alizeh stood in precisely the same spot, except now she appeared hazy, oscillating in and out of focus with a dizzying consistency.
Was she doing this to him? Had she access to dark magic?
Where once was Alizeh stood now a milky blur of movement, her voice warped and waterlogged, reverberating as if she were speaking from inside a glass jar.
“Ssssttt you you sspeakthe the the vvvvil...”
Kamran dragged bloody hands down his face. As if each revelation weren’t already more annihilating than thelast—he was now blind and deaf, too?
“Ssssssendyyou you iiiinterest heeeee my my llllife?”
His injured legs failed as his mind fractured; he trembled, hands grasping at air as he sought purchase, and fell hard onto one badly burned leg. He nearly cried out in agony.
But then, a mercy—
The Tulanian king spoke, his words lucid: “Is it not obvious? He wants you to rule.”
A terrible thunder filled Kamran’s head. There was no time to rejoice in the restoration of his hearing. The demon-like monster with ice in its veins had been foretold to have formidable allies, and here was further evidence of the Diviners’ wisdom, of his grandfather’s warnings—
The devil himself was assisting her.
The crowd was growing louder now, and he could hearthem, too, whispers having evolved into shouts and hysterics. Kamran was reminded once more that all the nobles of Ardunia were collected in this room; the highest ranking officials from across the empire had been brought together for an evening of decadence and celebration; instead, they would bear witness to the fall of the greatest empire in the world.
Kamran did not know how he would survive it.
He heard Cyrus laugh again, heard him say clearly: “A Jinn queento rule the world.Oh, it’s so horribly seditious. The perfect revenge.”
Again, Kamran attempted to draw himself up. His head pounded with a vengeance, his eyesight still an uncertain thing. The room, the floor—Cyrus himself—were allperfectly clear, but Alizeh remained more nimbus than person, a series of halos stacked in the general shape of a body. Then again, just knowing where to aim might be enough.
This evening’s admissions had more than proven his grandfather’s every warning about the girl—and Kamran would die before he failed the man twice. His sword lay a few feet away, and though the distance seemed insurmountable, Kamran would force himself to clear it. He might be able to bury the blade in her heart now, kill her now, end this tragedy tonight.
He’d just managed to take an agonizing step toward his sword when the haze of her shifted away from Cyrus; then, in a flash of kismet, Kamran could see Alizeh’s face.
She looked terrified.
The sight speared him through the chest at the precise moment the cataracts in his eyes seemed to clear; her figure came suddenly into sharp focus and, oh, this was a cruel fate, indeed. Alizeh was an enemy possessed of a power he never could’ve imagined. Even now her shining eyes glittered with an emotion that destroyed him. Her guile was so graceful, so natural; she searched the room as if she were truly frantic.
Kamran cursed the wretched organ in his chest, then pounded a clenched fist against his sternum as if to kill it. In response, a terrible anguish ripped through his body, so brutal the sensation it took his breath away; it was as if a tree had planted in a single shot at his feet, the trunk suturing to his spine, tremendous branches pushing violently through his veins.
He doubled over, gasping, almost missing the momentwhen Alizeh glanced up in his direction and then bolted without warning, exiting the inferno once again unscathed.
Had she seen him reaching for his sword? Had she gleaned his intentions?
Alizeh was a maddening sight even as she fled, the gauzy layers of her gown having now been incinerated twice. She flew past in little more than scraps of transparent silk; he could see every lush curve of her body, the lithe shape of her legs, the swell of her breasts, and he hated himself for wanting her, even now. Hated himself for the hunger he felt as he watched her go, hated the instincts that screamed at him, despite all logical evidence to the contrary, that she was in danger—that he should go to her, protect her—
“Wait— Where are you going?” Cyrus shouted. “We had a deal— Under no circumstances were you allowed to run away—”
We had a deal.
The words rang in his head, over and over, each syllable striking his mind like a scythe, drawing blood. By the angels, how many more blows need his body survive tonight?
“I must,” she cried, the agitated crowd leaping apart to let her pass. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but I have to leave— I need to find somewhere to hide, somewhere he won’t—”
At once Alizeh doubled over, as if struck by an invisible force, and was promptly jerked upward, into the air.
She screamed.
Kamran reacted without thinking, a rush of adrenaline propelling him upright, dregs of stupidity compelling him to cryout her name. He pushed as close to the edge of the flaming bastille as he dared, the anguish in his voice no doubt betraying him to the world, if not to himself—but he could not think on it then. Alizeh was being launched higher and higher in the air, twisting and screaming, and Kamran condemned himself for his tortured response to her suffering; even then he couldn’t fathom the battle being waged inside his body.
