He rolled his neck, stretching tense muscles as he sighed. He sank down a few inches, his head perilously close to his pillow. “Alizeh,” he whispered, even as his lashes fluttered, his exhaustion proving unconquerable. “Don’t lie to me.”
She said nothing to this, not knowing how to respond. She only clasped her hands tightly against her stomach, feeling herself tying ever more tightly into knots.
Finally, like slowly sinking sediment, Cyrus’s heavy body succumbed. He slid with a soft hush against his sheets, his head hitting the soft down of his pillow. He did not lift his weary arms to draw the blanket above his shoulders, but here was where Alizeh walked away, for the truth was she’d reached her limit the moment Cyrus had removed his shirt.
She swallowed.
It wasn’t right to be so attracted to a man she was meant to kill. Besides, Cyrus had no idea what he was doing. He was out of his head, his common sense dimmed by something dangerous. If he had any idea of the things he’d said to her— If he had any idea how he’d been acting around her—
Just then came a sharp knock at the door.
Alizeh bit back a shriek, her heart resuming its desperatepounding. She heard the soft call of a maid’s voice, asking for leave to enter, and looked desperately at Cyrus, who didn’t stir.
The servant called out again.
Alizeh knew what happened next. She’dbeenthat snoda. For a brief window in the evening, during which time the occupants of a house were expected to be downstairs for dinner, a servant would come into a room to stoke the fire, refresh the linens, and attend to small tasks. The protocol was to ask permission thrice, waiting each time for a response before accepting silence as tacit consent to cross the threshold.
One more knock, and the snoda would enter the room.
The maid would almost certainly have a heart attack—and worry dearly for her job—once she discovered the undressed king lying in his bed, but it would be at least a minute or two before the snoda reached this chamber, Alizeh was realizing, for Cyrus, as sovereign, likely lived in the largest and most opulent wing in the castle. There had to be at least several large rooms between the bedchamber and the entrance.
Which meant she might havejustenough time to hide.
Frantically, she whipped around.
Angels above, if she were discovered in the king’s bedchamber—if she were even discovered in hisrooms—the scandal would no doubt disseminate through the empire in under an hour. She’d either be expected to marry him or be denounced as a harlot; either way the repercussions would horribly complicate her life.
Alizeh had learned her lesson this afternoon: there wereJinn working in this palace, and not only were they ready and eager to spread news about her, but she couldn’t rely on her invisibility to help her now, for those efforts worked only on Clay eyes. Perhaps if she found Cyrus’s dressing room, she might hide in his closet—
But when she heard the door open, a moment later, her mind went blank. She bolted down the hall and yanked open the first door she could find.
Twenty-Seven
THE NIGHT WAS BLISTERING.
Kamran clambered to his feet and dusted off his cloak, taking a moment to calibrate after having been so incapacitated, and only moments later he was shivering. The stone floor underfoot was icy in places, frost having recently chased the rain. The silence was serrated by the devoted chitter of crickets, occasionally stirred by the hoot of a hunting owl; terrible gusts howled and battered the tower skylight, the wind not knowing how to navigate the narrow opening.
Kamran looked up.
This small, distant window, he was realizing, was both a blessing and a cruelty in this dire place, for while it provided what was no doubt a welcome light during the day, it also exposed its prisoner to the elements at night—proving to Kamran once again that pleasure and torture were often delivered in the same blow.
It made him think of Alizeh.
It was impossible not to think of her then, to be reminded of the linchpin of the tragic story that had become his life. Alizeh, who’d awoken in him emotion he’d never before experienced, who’d opened his eyes to a kind of glorious madness he hadn’t even known was possible—and then, with a tender smile, so delicately snapped in half his entire world.
She’d risen up from dust, come to life on a breeze, and left a trail of perfumed flowers in her wake as she ushered in the fall of a king who’d ruled the greatest empire on earth for nearly a century. The true wonder was how she’d done it. Without lifting a finger—without even raising her voice—
She’d simply stood tall, and his world had collapsed.
She spoke, and the Diviners had been slaughtered; she spun, and his grandfather had been murdered; she laughed, and his body had been disfigured; she breathed, and his mother had vanished; she sighed, and his aunt no longer spoke to him; sheleft, and his own people had turned on him. Kamran could not even hear her name without taking it like a shot to the chest.
Even then, he wondered whether he’d ever see her again.
With great effort he forced himself to clear his mind of her, and, as his gut twisted, he felt a quiet gratitude for the icy chill that braced him, for it was an excruciating blessing: this cold was likely the only reason Kamran could breathe through the stench of his revolting cell. He was afraid even to move, for his foot had a moment ago brushed against a soft heap of what had to be a stock of dead animals. The feathered among them he could not explain, but the furrier beasts whose carcasses littered this floor had no doubt fallen to their deaths from the lip of the skylight. He supposed he’d know more about his rotting inmates upon sunrise; until then, he was left with only the curse of his imagination, for it painted him a terrifying picture of his days ahead.
Still, he was not without a sliver of hope.
For some perplexing reason the Diviners had not strippedhim of his weapons before locking him in the tower, and he wondered whether he might not, in daylight, be able to use his daggers to scale the stone wall; he could perhaps wedge his blades between bricks bit by bit, carefully levering himself up the steep incline. It would place an excruciating demand upon his body, one he wasn’t sure he was capable of, but even the possibility of escape granted his lungs the necessary inch they needed to expand, and finally, he was able to draw breath.
