That King Zaal had died at all had been reason enough for Kamran to rage, but it was the aftermath, he realized, that had broken him the most, for in the wake of his grandfather’s murder, fear and grief had muddled the prince’s otherwise inviolable instincts, causing him to question everything that’d felt so certain only hours prior. Once again, his emotions had overruled him.
Of all the trials ahead, Kamran was beginning to fear that his greatest obstacle would be overcoming himself.
“Your Majesty,” came Deen’s sharp voice, returning the prince to the present. “I beg you: please dismiss me from this circus. I should’ve been home for dinner by now, and my loved ones will begin to fear for my safety—”
“Loved ones?” Mrs. Amina made a sound of contempt. “You’ve got loved ones, have you? While the rest of us must marry our work, warm our beds with pain, and give birth only to bitterness—”
“Enough,” Kamran practically roared.
In a hundred ways he’d been tested throughout his life—in battle and death and devastation—but there was something about being forced to stand still and listen to a pack of idiots speak nonsense in front of his face that made him want to self-immolate. “I don’t want to hear another word,” he said in a deathly whisper. “Fromanyof you—”
The words died in his throat.
An eerie wave of sensation flared along his tortured skin as his heart thundered in his chest, the sound of his own breathing intensifying in his ears. He turned slowly, expecting to see a Diviner, and instead discovered Zahhak, the slippery man slinking toward him now with a cloying smile.
The defense minister came to a stop before him, clasping his hands as if in prayer. “I thought I heard a commotion,” he said, taking in the broad details of the unfolding drama with no apparent interest. He returned his blank eyes to Kamran. “I’ve been waiting for you all day, sire. Perhaps now, we might finally speak.”
Another tremor of sensation awoke along the prince’s golden veins, just as three Diviners drifted suddenly into view.
Twenty-Three
CYRUS WOULDN’T WAKE.
Iblees had tortured him until long after darkness had shed its skin upon the sky. Alizeh, who knew how to mark time with only her hands and the movements of the sun, had been able to estimate the time they’d lost, the hours Cyrus had been brutalized by the devil. The flower field, which had been so colorful and ethereal in daylight, was rendered a vast lake of pitch in the night. Alizeh did not know where they were; she did not know how to get back to the castle; and every time she closed her eyes for even a moment, she heard Cyrus screaming.
For what had seemed an eternity, she’d watched him suffer.
Bruises had bloomed and diminished all along his face and, she had to assume, his body, where the bluish stains occasionally spread just beyond his collar or cuffs; but the lesions never lasted longer than a minute. His ribs never seemed to break, though he’d clutched them many times in agony. His skin revealed no lacerations, though he’d bled for hours.
When Cyrus had finally stopped seizing, the moon stood high and bright in the sky, and Alizeh had held on to this miracle of light like a lifeline, terrified she’d succumb to herown fears before he even awoke.
Distraught, Alizeh had drawn Cyrus’s heavy head into her lap, assessing up close the evidence of his suffering. His face was nearly unrecognizable in such a grisly state, but his clothes and coat, at least, had absorbed most of the evening’s bloodshed. The moon occasionally threw into stark relief the damp stains glimmering across his garments, provoking in her each time a new wave of heartache. She’d mopped the remaining blood from his face with the skirt of her white dress, and used the wet of her own silent, unceasing tears to gently scrub the lingering stickiness from his eyes, his skin. Then, when none of this seemed to rouse him, she’d stroked his hair in careful, tender motions. Even then she marveled at the thick silk of his copper locks, the way they gleamed in the moonlight.
She’d begged him to wake.
He did not stir.
It’d been at least thirty minutes since the creases between his brows had smoothed and his body had stabilized, during which time Alizeh had lived with the terrifying likelihood that Cyrus might be dead. It shocked her to discover how much this possibility affected her. She should have rejoiced in his pain; she should have fled while he was unconscious; instead, she astonished herself by remaining firmly by his side, fearing for him, pleading with him to open his eyes.
These were feelings she did not wish to examine.
With a fumbling effort she’d discovered a weak pulse at his throat, giving her reason to hope; but alone in the expansive darkness her imagination was unkind to her. Her memoriesreplayed the last hours on a sickening loop, and the more she turned over the devil’s savagery in her mind, the more she felt a spiraling trepidation—a fear of what was yet to come.
Alizeh wiped desperately at her tears.
She watched Cyrus’s closed eyes for any sign of life, but his rust-colored lashes rested heavily, undisturbed. Only then, when she was feeling quite desperate, did she dare to touch her trembling fingers to his face, drawing her hand down the stunning softness of his cheek. When still he was unresponsive, her motions grew more assured, more intentional. She caressed him with great care, brushed the backs of her knuckles along the sharp line of his jaw, grazed the elegant slope of his nose. It was strange to see him so defenseless, his expression so unguarded. The harsh edges of his tense and stoic expressions were smoothed away in sleep, the planes of his face rendered milky in the starlight.
She would never again deny that he was beautiful.
She whispered to him over and over, beseeching him to return to his body, to this present moment, and was again stroking the curve of his cheek when he caught her hand—weakly—and she went suddenly, deathly still.
Relief flooded through her even as her pulse sped up, for his fingers slowly closed around her own. He drew the back of her hand gently against his lips, and then, so softly she might’ve imagined it, he kissed her.
Alizeh’s heart beat chaotically in her chest.
“Cyrus,” she said, hating the broken sound of her voice. “Are you awake?”
He moved only a little, letting their clasped hands fallagainst his cheek. He did not let go. He did not open his eyes. He tore open his mouth with some difficulty, wetting his lips before he drew a deep breath. On an exhale he said, “No.”
