“In the dungeons earlier,” Kamran explained. “I saw you studying it, as if it looked familiar to you.”
Hesitantly, Hazan said, “I’m not certain of the owner. I have only an unsubstantiated theory.”
“Go on.”
“I think it belongs to Alizeh.”
Kamran gripped the table, anticipating pain, and instead he felt only a gentle heat, a flutter in his chest, a heavenly fragrance filling his head. He hadn’t realized he’d squeezedhis eyes shut until he forced them open and was met with a look of astonishment on Hazan’s face.
Slowly, Kamran released the table. “How,” he said, clearing his throat, “do you know it belongs to her?”
Hazan only gaped at him. “What just happened to you?”
“Nothing.” He sighed. “I don’t know. Just don’t say her name again.”
“Who? Alizeh?”
“Bastard,” Kamran muttered as renewed feeling lanced through him, birdsong filling his head, a warm, not unpleasant sensation sparking along the disfigured lines of his neck, his cheek, his changed eye. “You did that on purpose.”
“I swear I didn’t,” said Hazan quietly, studying Kamran closely now. “I don’t understand. You can’t hear her name without experiencing... what? Pain?”
The feeling was slowly abating, and Kamran drew a steadying breath as he shook his head. “It’s not always pain. I feel... different things each time, and it only started this morning. You don’t happen to know what’s wrong with me?”
“I’m afraid not,” said Hazan, concern etching his forehead. “But if she has some kind of hold on you from so far away, only a powerful magic can be involved. I know little more than that.”
Kamran fell silent, recalling the way he still felt when he thought of her—the way some chamber of his heart thrashed against his better judgment, demanding to see her, to speak with her despite everything—and could not help but agree.
He took a sharp breath. There was no use in thinking of their time together. If he thought too long about the tearsshe’d shed in his presence, the fears she’d exposed, the smiles she’d shared—
No.
Some baser part of his mind wanted desperately to find reasons to exonerate her, and he refused to be so weak. The only way to armor himself was to forget the brief moments they’d had; he refused to remember the softness of her lips; refused to recall the way she’d surrendered to his touch, the sound she’d made when he’d kissed her. She’d looked into his eyes like he was worth something, had touched him like he might be precious. Her soft curves had fit perfectly in his hands, against his body. He’d wanted to unravel her slowly, strip her down to nothing, press his face to her heated skin and live there, devour her. He’d never admit aloud that he’d done as much in his dreams, losing himself in her over and over, only to wake in a fevered, painful state of frustration. She had gouged a hole in him from which he feared he’d never recover. Not once in his life had he felt such a powerful attraction to anyone. He’d never even known a kiss was capable of such power.
“Kamran?”
“Yes.” The single word was breathless.
“Where did you go?”
“Nowhere,” he said unsteadily. He took another ragged breath, his body tense. When he looked up, he stared only at the wall. “Let us focus, for the moment, on the questions wecananswer. How did you know this bag belonged to her?”
“I saw her carrying it,” said Hazan, “the night she was to be murdered by the king.”
That cleared Kamran’s head in an instant.
He looked sharply at Hazan, his brows pulling together. “So my grandfather was right,” he said. “She did have help. It wasyouwho assisted her in defeating those ruffians.”
“Not at all.” Hazan laughed. “She did that entirely on her own. I only watched her from the shadows, waiting to intervene should she need assistance, which she never did.” He shook his head. “Your grandfather was so convinced she’d had access to a complex arsenal, when in fact she’d murdered those men with little more than her own sewing supplies.”
“These, you mean?” Kamran turned the bag on its side, dumping its contents in a contained scatter across the table. Among them was a small silky pillow and matching quilt; cases of pins and needles; scissors; spools of thread; salves and strips of linen from the apothecary; small bags containing various notions; gilded scrolls inviting her to the royal ball; a number of heavy, faded garments—
“Where did you get this?” Hazan said, dumbstruck. He stared at the table, then at Kamran, then back again. “How did you get your hands on her things?”
“Miss Huda delivered the luggage to me this morning.”
“The daughter of the Lojjan ambassador?” Hazan frowned. “The screaming one from last night? With the candelabra?”
Kamran nodded. “She thought its contents might be helpful to me in my search.” He relayed to Hazan the information Miss Huda had shared with him that morning: all about the magical shoes; the dress; how Cyrus had appeared as if from nowhere in her room at Follad Place; how he’d threatened tokill her before whisking them all away to the ball without notice, where Miss Huda had arrived terrified and without a voice. “Your queen left behind her bag by accident,” Kamran said archly. “She hadn’t time to take it with her.”
