She understood, rationally, that Cyrus was guilty of bringing the devil into his own life, but she didn’t know how to turn away from the suffering of others. She stood there and watched, horrified, while he begged blindly for mercy, as he flinched over and over like he’d been struck. Soon, a thin line of blood began dripping slowly from the crown of his head, then his nose.
Cyrus wept.
He pleaded even as he suffered, blood dripping into hisopen mouth as he spoke. “Not the other one,” he gasped. “Please, I’m begging you, don’t take the other one—”
Cyrus would’ve died before exposing himself like this. Alizeh knew this, knew he would’ve willingly thrown himself off a cliff before betraying such emotion before her, and yet here he was, laid bare at her feet entirely against his will. She knew the mastermind behind this misery, and she suspected the devil was humiliating Cyrus on purpose—destroying him before her as a form of punishment, stealing from him his pride in the process, his privacy. She tried to avert her eyes, but how could she? When her pathetic heart snapped in half at the sight?
She was panicked, powerless in the face of his anguish, wishing stupidly that she might wrench him free from this trance, even as she knew any effort would be futile. For when Iblees invaded a mind, escape was impossible.
No, Alizeh knew better.
She was not naive; she understood that this episode had been orchestrated for her benefit. Iblees was torturing Cyrus in an effort to manipulate her sympathies. She saw her missteps quite clearly then, and with increasing despair, realized that she’d somehow betrayed herself.
She’d started to like Cyrus.
She’d begun to see him with complexity, with compassion. She did not, in fact, want to kill him. He was no longer a one-dimensional monster to her, but a perplexing character she hoped to understand.
She’d given Iblees this ammunition.
Indeed, Alizeh suspected she could put an end to thistorment right now if she said but one word:yes.
Yes, I’ll marry him.
Oh, she was tempted. She’d been deliberating over the choice all day—and she’d felt herself leaning toward an answer in the affirmative more in every hour. But if she allowed herself, in this moment, to be strong-armed into making such an important decision, she’d only be proving to Iblees that her emotions could in fact be controlled by such dark tactics—and then he might never stop. Alizeh couldn’t set such a dangerous precedent, certainly not now, when it was clearer than ever what misery she might face if she accepted Cyrus’s offer. Her only hope of unifying her people came with a steep price; marrying Cyrus would lead her directly into the devil’s arms, and she’d have to maintain a steely resolve in order to tread such treacherous waters. If she did not stand her ground now, where would this manipulation end? How many others would suffer? How many more lives would Iblees break before her in the pursuit of bending her will?
She released a shaky breath.
She could’ve prevented this. If only she’d been more guarded, if only she hadn’t cared. If only Cyrus hadn’t turned out to be so very, very human.
Slowly, Alizeh fell to her knees.
She took Cyrus’s limp hand in hers, and, like a fool, she cried for him.
Twenty-One
ON PERHAPS ANY OTHER EVENING,a previous version of Kamran might’ve complained aloud at the inconvenience of changing for dinner, for it had always seemed to him a senseless tradition. As a young prince, he’d managed to avoid such rituals more often than not, for Zaal had been indulgent of his grandson, who’d once loudly insisted that he couldn’t imagine the use in changing his clothes merely to eat a meal. He’d considered himself too practical for such nonsense.
In fact, just days ago he might’ve made some snide remark to his solemn valet about the waste of time, waste of fabric, waste of jewels. He’d thought himself above suchfrivolity, as he’d often described it. What was the point, he’d wondered, in such elaborate ensembles? What purpose did they serve?
For eighteen years, Kamran had been a fool.
A single day his grandfather had been gone, and already Kamran was beginning to understand that the hours the late king had spent in his dressing room were far from frivolous.
In fact, they were a small mercy.
While Kamran was being dressed, he could not be bothered. He was not asked to speak; he could not be questioned. There were no ministers to harangue him, no military maneuvers to put forth, no rivals to destroy. The enforced quiet was unexpectedly calming, the ritual requiring of himonly to remain still, allowing his mind to prepare for the trials ahead. The clothes, too, were a gift, each layer like a bandage wrapped around his vulnerable body. He welcomed the weight: the heavier the pieces, the steadier he felt; the better armored for the hours he would endure, the physical and mental blows he would no doubt sustain.
Kamran even had the presence of mind to realize that this quiet window in the company of his unobtrusive valet might be his last for a long while.
He would savor it.
In any case, the prince’s mind required silence to spin, for his apprehensions were tripling by the moment: he’d been unable to deduce Zahhak’s intentions in his grandfather’s rooms, and the unsolved mystery had left him uneasy. The problem was, Kamran had never been intimate enough with the late king’s personal effects to know whether anything had been disturbed or rearranged. As far as he could tell, all was as it should’ve been, the glittering quarters as meticulous as always. And while some part of him knew he ought to have conducted a more thorough search, he’d lacked the fortitude to linger in the space any longer than was absolutely necessary.
It had been too soon.
His grandfather’s scent had hung in the air not unlike a likeness of the man himself; his imagined form had been conjured from only sense and sensation. So powerful was this force that Kamran half expected Zaal to walk into the room at any moment, scolding him for the intrusion. Kamran had struggled to be surrounded by such potent memories;his chest had ached as he toured the museum of his grandfather’s life. The experience had affected him a great deal more than he cared to admit, for it betrayed a weakness in his character—a weakness of which his grandfather would’ve deeply disapproved.
The prince closed his eyes on an exhale then, Zaal’s painful words reanimating, unbidden, in his mind—
