She didn’t know why, but the woman’s words felt almost like a challenge. “I assure you,” she said, limping toward the sink. “I can endure a bit of pain.”
Alizeh grabbed a length of toweling from a lower shelf and ran it under the faucet; she intended to clean the mess of her neglected injuries while the tub filled. Gritting her teeth, she gently patted at the congealed blood along her leg, careful lest she cause the lacerations to reopen.
All the while, Sarra watched her with an undisguised curiosity. “You know, I had no idea what to expect beforeyou arrived,” she said, perching along the edge of the tub. “Despite everything Cyrus told me about you, I wasn’t sure what you’d be like.” She paused. “Then again, I wasn’t even sure you’d come.”
Alizeh froze at that, then straightened. She tossed the soiled towel in the sink. “When, exactly, did he start talking about me? And what did he say?”
Sarra waved a hand, dismissing her own words as she said, “Oh, it was a few months ago. He strode into the dining room unannounced one day, and, with no preamble, declared in front of all the servants his intention to marry. He told me to begin preparing your rooms; he said you wouldn’t have the right clothes—or even a trousseau—upon arrival, and that I was to begin assembling such items, and never mind that he never offered me a clue as to your measurements.
“Naturally, I had thousands of questions, but his answers were bloodless. He told me your age, that you resided up north. He said that you’d been orphaned but that you were descended from a forgotten royal line, insisting you had noble blood despite lacking a proper upbringing, and that you might present as a bit uncivilized as a result of your incomplete education—”
Alizeh’s eyes widened in outrage. “Ibegyour pardon—”
“Oh, I wouldn’t take it to heart, my dear,” Sarra said, a wry smile curving her lips. “It’s clear to me that you’re well in possession of your faculties. Then again”—her eyes glittered with mirth—“you did make a rather unorthodox first impression, and I found I was grateful for the warning. Had I not been prepared to meet with a rather wild young woman,I might’ve been too shocked to proceed.”
Chastened, Alizeh’s mouth snapped shut.
“Nevertheless,” Sarra went on with a sigh, “it was obvious even then that he had no idea who you really were, for his descriptions gave me no indication of your character or personality. In point of fact, whenever I forced him to discuss you he did so with palpable revulsion.Severaltimes he spoke aloud his hope that you weren’t stupid, and never once did he spare me a detail about your physical attributes, despite the fact that”—she looked up, giving Alizeh an appraising glance—“well, even bedraggled as you are now, you’re quite astonishingly lovely, aren’t you? You’d think he’d have mentioned such an obvious detail. Instead, his most pressing concern was that you’d turn out to be an incurable idiot.”
Alizeh blinked at the woman, stunned. Sarra had not lied once. “I take it he didn’t mention, then, that he was being ordered to marry me by decree of Iblees himself.”
“Of course he did,” said Sarra, cutting off the water.
Alizeh’s stupefaction at this answer would have to wait to unfold, for the tub had filled to its limit. The added herbs caused the water to bubble and froth, the fragrance of eucalyptus and jasmine scenting the humid air. Alizeh’s heart soared at the sight, the familiar smells.
Sarra stepped into the doorway, presenting Alizeh with the back of her red head in an offering of privacy.
Alizeh, for her part, did not delay; she stripped off the remains of her gown with pleasure, hesitating when she remembered the nosta, which had so far been hidden expertly away inside her corset. Thinking of no otheralternatives, she first glanced at the back of Sarra’s head to make certain she was alone, then retrieved the little marble and popped it quickly into her mouth, where the orb fit easily inside her cheek. She piled her destroyed corset and her tattered undergarments in a neat little heap atop the dress, all of which she studied with a vivid feeling of disorientation.
It was still surreal to her that she was here.
She stood stark naked in the belly of a foreign empire, trapped in a bathing room with the mother of a ruthless king unapologetically tethered to the devil, and hadn’t the slightest clue what horrors awaited her here.
It was almost too much to hold in her mind at once.
Even as she carefully lowered herself into the foaming, frothing bath, Alizeh wondered whether she was mad for trusting Sarra not to have filled the tub with poison—but then the water touched her wounds and Alizeh’s pain grew so loud she could think of nothing else. She didn’t know whether to moan in relief or cry out in anguish.
“Give it a few minutes,” Sarra said from the doorway. “The pain will ebb, I promise. And then it will feel much better.”
Alizeh squeezed her eyes shut, muscles tensing as the medicine seeped into her flesh. “I don’t understand,” she said, speaking slowly so as not to dislodge the nosta from her cheek. “You mean to tell me you know about Cyrus’s alliance with the devil? That he’s told you everything?”
Sarra laughed. “I never knoweverything.”
“But you know the details of your son’s treachery—that he’s determined to marry me against both his will and mine, all in the interest of fulfilling some terrible debt owed toIblees? You know this and yet—you do not seem to care.”
Sarra’s voice took on an eerie stillness when she said, quietly, “It’s not that I do not care. It’s that I no longer believe him. For the last several months, my son has blamed all his bad decisions on the devil. Never does he take accountability for his actions. He’s always begging me to understand that he has no choice—even as he makes demands of me, of his own people—he insists he does so only because he’s shackled against his will.”
“But”—Alizeh frowned, her eyes still closed—“he confides in you, then? He comes to you with the truth? I’d not expected so tyrannical a young man to seek out his mother’s counsel.”
Again, Sarra laughed darkly. “He does not seek out mycounsel. He only unburdens himself in what I have discovered to be the deluded pursuit of my absolution. He is still young and foolish enough to think that confiding in me will earn him my compassion, but I’ve become inured to his self-pity. Of course Itried,” she said with a sigh. “I tried, initially, to guide him, but I learned quickly enough that he only talks—and never listens. I’ve had to accept that I no longer have any influence over him; that in fact no one does. He might blame Iblees, but in the end Cyrus acts as he wishes; it is clear enough that we are all but pawns in his schemes.”
Alizeh opened her eyes.
It was a strange sensation, to feel the nosta flash its heat inside her mouth. Stranger still that Sarra’s confounding revelations were true, for Alizeh had not imagined Cyrus to be so forthcoming with his mother. And while she had nointerest in defending the loathsome king, Alizeh was herself too well-acquainted with Iblees to deny the pressures of his influence. It seemed unreasonable to deny that Cyrus might be acting under extreme duress.
“To be fair,” Alizeh said quietly, “the devil has ways of tricking even the smartest among us. And I’m sure you know that the only way to withdraw from a deal with Iblees is, at minimum, to forfeit your life in exchange. Cyrus would have to willingly die should he wish to walk away.”
“One might counter,” Sarra said sharply, “that the best course of action would’ve been to never make a deal with the devil in the first place. Iblees approaches every newly crowned sovereign with the bait of a disadvantageous bargain; Cyrus has known this his whole life, and he was forearmed to face it—to walk away from such temptations as all others did before him.” She shook her head. “His excuses have grown tedious in the retelling, my dear, and my patience has worn thin.”
