Hazan, who’d gone silent during the explanation, was now frowning. “But I thought the two of them were on good terms. Why would Miss Huda wish to assist in the capture of her friend?”
“So you knew, then,” said Kamran, irritated in a flash. “You knew she worked as a seamstress in addition to being a snoda?”
Hazan shot him an imperious look. “Naturally,” he said. “When I learned of her existence, I uncovered all I could about her.”
“And you didn’t think to tell me?”
“As you will recall, sire, I was at the time withholding a great deal of information from you.”
“For the love of God, Hazan,” he said with a sigh. “Do cease being useless to me.”
“I promise to consider it.”
“Miss Huda only wants us to find the girl,” Kamran pressed on, “because she thinks the Tulanian king might do something terrible. She claims to be worried about her.”
Hazan raised his eyebrows. “I see I have an unexpected ally in Miss Huda, then.”
Kamran wanted to make a quip, to name them allies only in idiocy, but he found he could not make his mouth form the necessary words. He’d never wanted to hate Alizeh, andhe’d be lying if he said the collective opinions of those around him were not beginning to destabilize his convictions on the matter. Still, the evidence stacked against her was damning.
And confusing.
“Very little of note inside,” he muttered. “I’ve already searched everything thrice, broken open the seams of the pillow and quilt, turned pockets inside out, studied even the most minuscule items for evidence... of anything.” He looked up, his apprehension spiking as he spoke, recalling the many discrepancies in her character, her actions, the prophecy itself. “She doesn’t own a single weapon.”
“As I’ve already told you,” Hazan said flatly. “She has no aspirations to topple any empire. What reason would she have to stockpile weapons?”
“The inconsistency is not lost on me, Hazan,” he said quietly. “But then, there is something else, too.”
From within the depths of the overturned bag, Kamran retrieved a slim, clothbound volume the rough size and shape of a novel, which he slid across the table, toward Hazan.
“What do you make of this?” said the prince.
The cloth cover was worn and faded; what was once a bright blue was now washed out, nearly gray. The blank pages were stiff and waterlogged, the book warped by time and moisture.
Hazan studied it without a word, looking grim about the mouth as he did, and when Kamran flipped the book over so his friend might read the inscription on the back, Hazan drew a sharp breath.
In faded gold letters, it read—
MELT THE ICE IN SALT
BRAID THE THRONES AT SEA
IN THIS WOVEN KINGDOM
CLAY AND FIRE SHALL BE
Fourteen
ALIZEH REMEMBERED HERSELF A MOMENTtoo late, jerking away from Cyrus’s hand with the shock that she’d allowed him to touch her at all. She studied him warily in the intervening silence, his eyes as startling as her own, her heart pounding in her chest with a delayed fear. Alizeh had been wrong; she could not manage him. She had been wrong, too, to underestimate him.
Always Cyrus seemed to be one step ahead of her, and somehow she knew it would not do to lie to him now, for he seemed preternaturally attuned to deception.
It made her wonder whether he owned a nosta, too.
“What did my mother convince you to do?” he said quietly, tilting his head as he took her in. “Did she ask you to kill me?”
Alizeh could hardly mask her astonishment.
The fact that he might guess at Sarra’s dark, decidedly unnatural intentions was alarming, and crowded her head with only more confusion. How twisted was the tale of his family, and what was this trap she’d walked into? How many players were in this game?
