“Yes,” she said, blinking. Then, “What is your name?”
“Of all the non sequiturs. Why do you need to know my name?”
“So that I may hate you more informally.”
“Ah. Well, in that case, you may call me Cyrus.”
“Cyrus,” she said. “You insufferable monster. Where on earth are we going?”
Her insults seemed to have no effect on him, for he wasstill smiling when he said, “Have you really not figured it out?”
“I’m entirely too agitated for these games. Please just tell me what horrible fate awaits me now.”
“Oh, the very worst of fates, I’m sorry to say. We are currently en route to Tulan.”
The nosta burned hot against her skin, and Alizeh felt herself go rigid with fear. She was stunned, yes, and horrified, too, but to hear the king of an empire denigrate his own land thus—
“Is Tulan really so terrible a place?”
“Tulan?” His eyes widened with surprise. “Not at all. A single square inch of Tulan is more breathtaking than all of Ardunia, and I say that as a discernable fact, not as a subjective opinion.”
“But then”—she frowned—“why did you say that it would be the very worst of fates?”
“Ah. That.” Cyrus looked away, searched the night sky. “Well. You remember how I said I owed our mutual friend a very large debt?”
“Yes.”
“And that helping you was the only repayment he would accept?”
She swallowed. “Yes.”
“And do you remember how I told you that he wanted you to rule? To be a Jinn queen?”
Alizeh nodded.
“Well. You have no kingdom,” he said. “No land to lord over. No empire to lead.”
“No,” she said softly. “I don’t.”
“Well, then. You are coming to Tulan,” Cyrus said, taking a quick breath. “To marry me.”
Alizeh gave a sharp cry, and fell off the dragon.
She heard Cyrus unleash a torrent of foul language as she fell—the wind rushing up against her feet—and found, to her surprise, that though she actively pitched toward what could only be certain death, she could not summon the appropriate response.
Alizeh did not scream; neither did she experience fear.
This unusual reaction to a sudden plummet from the heavens was in part precipitated by an ambivalence toward the direction her life had recently taken—for Alizeh had thought, in absconding with the dragon, that she would at the very least be running away from the machinations of Iblees. She’d not realized that her actions, inadvertent or otherwise, had in fact delivered her directly into his diabolical plans. Alizeh did not think of herself as a particularly maudlin person, but just then she couldn’t bring herself to care whether she survived.
Then again, her uncommon calm was perhaps a result of a far simpler reasoning:
Alizeh knew she would be saved.
She’d hardly generated the thought when she heard the diminished roar of an inconvenienced dragon, the flap of its heavy wings funneling fierce gusts in her direction. This was twice in the same hour that Alizeh had fallen from a great height, and as the frigid wind tore at her body, chapping her skin, she realized with a detached sort of amusement thather yards of black curls had come loose of their pins entirely. The midnight locks lapped at the air around her like strange tongues, several restless tendrils curling around her eyes, her mouth, her throat, her shoulders. Alizeh was blinded by her own body, thoroughly windswept, downhearted, and quite possibly frozen solid.
True, Alizeh was always cold; the ice that marked her as heir to an ancient kingdom ensured that she rarely, if ever, enjoyed a bout of warmth. Couple this with the brutality of the winter night, the unrelenting winds that walloped her now, and the fact that she wore mere scraps in place of a gown—
It was a surprise to Alizeh that she was not yet a corpse.
