“I’m so very sorry,” Alizeh whispered.
Sarra canted her head. “When Cyrus killed my husband, I didn’t believe it. Not at first, of course. I gave my child a chance to deny these horrors, to confess it had all been a terrible accident—or even to tell me he’d been framed. He did none of those things. Instead, Cyrus looked me in the eye and told me he’d murdered his father—a man who’d loved him more than life—because he was unfit to be king. He showed no remorse. He did not regret his actions.”
Horrified, Alizeh clapped a hand over her mouth.
“One day,” the woman said softly, “Cyrus was my son. The next day he was not.”
“Why do you stay?” Alizeh asked, her hand falling away from her face, disbelief coloring her voice. “Does he threaten your life? Do you have nowhere else to go?”
“Motherhood is complicated,” said Sarra, turning away. “In nearly every way, I have disowned him in my heart. I will never forgive him. I cannot love him. But I’ve learned that there are some things I can’t bring myself to accomplish. Invain I’ve tried to do the deed myself, but I’ve found that this is the line I’m unable to cross.” She met Alizeh’s eyes then. “I need you to stay because I cannot do this on my own.”
“I don’t understand,” Alizeh said, even as her heart pounded in her chest, her instincts screaming at her to keep quiet, to ask no further questions. “What can’t you do on your own?”
“Kill him, darling. I need your help to kill him.”
Eleven
THE SMELL OF WET STONEfilled Kamran’s head, the dark path before him illuminated by a series of torches affixed to the dank walls, their collective glow casting flickering shadows across the filthy stone floors underfoot, occasionally throwing into stark relief the scuttle of spiders fleeing the light. His footfalls echoed in the tall, narrowing passage, the sharp sounds and smells of his surroundings inspiring in him a deep dread and a desire to escape. Earlier he’d been in a hurry to get here, to finish this ugly business with Hazan and move forward with his life, but now he found he’d rather be anywhere else, anywhere but following the same circuitous path to the dungeons he’d walked just two nights prior—the dingy, dripping walls closing in on him as he went.
His grip tightened around the handle of the carpet bag.
Memories haunted him as he moved, his emotions clouded, complicated. Two days ago his grandfather was still alive; two days ago they’d walked this track together, and yet—it was one of his worst memories of the late king, who’d accused him that night of treason, and who’d been ready to lock him in the dungeon, threatening to behead him if he resisted the sentence.
A single day his grandfather had been dead, and of all thebetter memories they’d shared,thiswas the recollection that besieged him.
It was a tragedy of the current chaos that Kamran hadn’t been afforded more than minutes to mourn the loss of King Zaal. He’d been unable, as a result, to sort out his feelings about the man. He wished someone might simply tell him how to feel, or at least teach him to make sense of the unspeakable horrors his grandfather had committed.
How was Kamran meant to condemn someone who’d debased himself in the interest of his own protection? How, when he’d known eighteen years of love and devotion from his grandfather, was he supposed to compartmentalize his feelings now, when his mind was battered by grief, when he lacked the tools necessary to hack apart the chambers of his heart? Was it possible, he wondered, to love and detest a parent simultaneously?
As a child his convictions had been stronger; the world had seemed simpler, his opinions more absolute. He’d thought with age and experience his ideas of the world would grow only more certain; instead, the opposite had proven true.
The more he lived—the more he endured—the more convinced Kamran became that he knew nothing at all.
It was impossible to unbraid the many pains and horrors tangled in his head just then; impossible when his trek was nearly at an end, when the dungeons and the lone young man trapped within them were now nearly in sight. It was humbling, indeed, to realize that the last time he’d walked this path he’d lacked the perspective to understand that his problems had been minuscule—even as they’d loomed so large.
What he wouldn’t give to turn back time now.
Kamran strode past the guards stationed at the mouth of the main chamber, all of whom shouted something he didn’t bother hearing. In one hand Kamran clutched Alizeh’s modest carpet bag; in the other, a small, sealed jam jar, the thin lid of which he’d speared several times with his mother’s dagger, poking holes so the insect inside might be able to breathe in its confinement.
Finally, he came upon the man in question.
The dim outline of Hazan’s body was legible through the wrought iron bars of his cage: his back rested against a filthy wall, his long legs outstretched in front of him, his face obscured. Hazan’s head hung low over his chest, a mop of dirty-blond hair occasionally glinting in the tremble of firelight. His former minister moved not an inch, not even when a fleet of guards followed Kamran into the chamber, falling to their knees at his feet as they encouraged him, breathlessly, to leave the inmate alone.
“We didn’t know he was a Jinn, sire—he’s already destroyed two of the other cells—
“Took twelve of us to restrain him—”
“He’s been violent, Your Highness, you shouldn’t be alone with him—”
“We had to knock him senseless—
“Put him in shackles, made specially for his kind, but he’s like a beast, out of his mind—”
“Unbelievably strong one, sire—best if you let us deal with him—”
“Get out,” Kamran said, his voice like thunder. “All of you.I can handle him just fine.”
The cluster of guards froze, stood upright in unison, bowed en masse, and rushed out the door, which closed with a violent clang behind them. Only when he was sure they were alone did Kamran draw closer to the rusted bars of the cell.
