Not trusting herself to speak, she shook her head.
“God, you’re so beautiful,” he said, his smile vanishing. “Even when you lie to me.”
His admission awoke a flare of heat in her veins, a reaction she didn’t understand and was afraid to analyze. She knew not why he’d say such a thing to her, nor why his words had made any impact, and she didn’t want to think on it. She knew only that Cyrus’s eyes had darkened with an emotion she was afraid to name; and she had no idea what he was going to say next.
She was realizing she never did.
Cyrus stood up suddenly, stepped closer, towered over her. He all but blotted out the light with his height, casting her in shadow, causing her to shiver in the absence of the sun.
He touched her then, shocking her with a tenderness she wasn’t expecting, tracing the line of her jaw so lightly her lips parted on a sudden breath.
She couldn’t seem to move.
Her body had betrayed her.Her body had betrayed her, even as her mind screamed.
“Wicked girl,” he whispered. “You’ve been making deals with my mother.”
Thirteen
“YOU GAVE MY JOB TOthechild?”
Hazan threw open the door to the war room with an unchecked anger that was beginning to feel familiar. The former minister had bathed and changed; he’d not been imprisoned long enough to have lost his rooms and belongings, so it was with some efficiency that he was able to return to a semblance of normal.
With one great exception.
“Omid saved my life,” Kamran said without looking up. He sat in the war room alone, drinking tea as he paged through a fresh stack of reports from the different reaches of the empire.
“Yes, so you said. Though I’d not realized he’d relieved you of your good sense in the process.”
“Did you know,” Kamran said, lifting a sheaf of paper as he scanned it, “that in recent months there’ve been a dozen reports of unexplained avalanches—in three different mountain ranges across the empire?”
Hazan ignored this as he strode into the room, slamming the door shut behind him. “You hired an uneducated twelve-year-old to succeed me, and you expect me not to take offense? As if my job were so simple—and I, so easily replaced?”
Kamran put down the papers. “Do you not think it strange?”
“Strangeis too gentle a word—I think it verifiably crackbrained—”
“Not the situation with the child, you fool, the unexplained rockslides.” Again, Kamran glanced at the report. “Four in the last month alone, though our troops have found nary a trace of explosives. By all accounts, the occurrences—in the Istanez, Pouneh, and Sutoon mountains—are random disturbances of nature, which I was happy enough to accept until this morning, when, just as I was contemplating the astonishing devolution of my life,” he said with a wry smile, “two more were reported. With the recent inrush of Tulanian spies I can’t help but wonder whether there’s more to this than we previously considered. Perhaps they’ve been hiding out in the mountains, making a bit of a mess in the process; perhaps there’ve been other rockfalls in more remote regions with no witnesses—making the real number much higher. What do you think?”
“I think you’re a righteous ass.”
“Throw a fit if you like,” Kamran said, setting the papers aside to take another drink of his tea. “But I’m not firing the boy. In the last several hours he’s already proven quite capable.”
“Capable?” Hazan’s eyes widened. “Capable of what? Snatching purses? Emptying out the treasure houses? Have you even thought to make certain your gold is still there?”
“I will allow,” said Kamran, lightly clearing his throat, “that I was perhaps not entirely in my right mind when Imade the decision. Still, I would argue that your judgments of the child are too reductive; in my estimation, Omid has proven a great deal less conniving than the members of our own parliament. The nobles of the Seven Houses will likely never change, but with proper guidance, the boy might yet make something of himself.”
“And I? What am I meant to make of myself?”
“I intend to confer knighthood upon you.”
Hazan scoffed in anger, preparing to argue—when he realized, with a visible shock, that Kamran had spoken in earnest.
“You wish to make me a knight?” he said, stunned. “But I’m not even a soldier.”
“I have proof enough of your valor, Hazan.”
The former minister fell back, fell silent. He stared for a moment at the floor as a rare heat burned across his cheekbones, the tips of his ears.
