“Servant?” Sarra stood frozen. “Housekeeper? What in heavens can you mean?”
“My queen has been in hiding for nearly two decades,” Hazan explained. “She’s taken odd jobs since the untimely deaths of her parents” – he touched two fingers to his forehead, then to the air – “doing what she could to stay alive.”
“How the drama unfolds,” Sarra breathed, clasping a hand to her throat. “But why would she need to be in hiding?”
“The Ardunian throne has been threatened by her existence for some time,” Hazan offered coldly. “Her parents – and most all others who knew her in childhood – died in a series of mysterious and calculated incidents. She’s lived in hiding ever since.”
At that, Kamran experienced a burn of shame.
It had been Zaal, his late grandfather, who’d hunted Alizeh as a child. The Diviners had foreseen Zaal’s demise – had predicted his end would be orchestrated by a formidable enemy with ice in its veins – and Zaal, who’d been searching for any whisper of such a foe, had found her long ago, spending many subsequent years thinking he’d successfully murdered the girl. It wasn’t hard for Kamran to imagine that Zaal had played a role in killing the others in her life as well. There were things about his grandfather he could neither reconcile nor condone.
“So she lived as a snoda?” asked Sarra. She’d picked up her fallen chair and was taking her seat when she glanced at Huda. “And a seamstress?”
“Yes,” she and Hazan said together.
“And now she is queen,” the woman said softly, her eyes dreamy.“Now she has the sovereigns of two empires vying for her hand. Now she – Wait –”
Sarra turned sharply toward the prince.
“The Ardunian throne was threatened by her existence,” she quoted. “Does that mean it was your grandfather who murdered her family?”
All heads swiveled to face him.
“Theoretically,” he bit out. “Though there is no proof.”
Sarra laughed. “You hope tomarrythe young woman whose entire family was slaughtered by your grandfather?”
“Again, it is not a certainty –”
“Your Majesty,” Hazan interjected, his voice urgent. “I fear we’re diverting from the subject at hand. Can you confirm that her identity has been revealed?”
Sarra met Hazan’s eyes then, and in the feverish depths of his gaze, she seemed to find focus. “Yes,” she said finally. “I don’t know how she was discovered; I know only that they came for her yesterday. Thousands of them. Shouting for hours. They only settled down after I begged her to speak to them –”
“She stood before them?” Hazan asked, paling. “She acknowledged, out loud, that she was their queen?”
Sarra hesitated. “Was it the wrong thing to do?”
“No.” Hazan blinked. “No, if she felt the time was right, then of course, it’s just – By the angels, this cannot be undone. The consequences –” He lifted his head, looking suddenly unnerved. “You must prepare yourself, ma’am. By now, word of her appearance has likely spread halfway around the globe.They’ll come for her from every corner of the earth – they’ve likely begun their pilgrimages already –”
“What?” Sarra said, visibly terrified. “How many will come?”
Hazan shook his head. “It won’t happen all at once. They’ll push through your borders in phases –”
“How many?” she cried.
“Millions,” Hazan whispered.
FOURTEEN
CYRUS HAD FALLEN INTO ANendless pit of darkness, the tug of sleep so severe that, at first, he wasn’t even certain he was dreaming. He’d seemed to plummet from a great height for what felt like centuries, lengths of smog tightening around him like bands of steel. His chest constricted as he hurtled toward this horrible infinity, his terror so consuming he could hardly draw breath to scream before cleaving, suddenly, through a lacework of night. This grotesque tapestry unraveled only to promptly ensnare him, his body a veritable bobbin as inky, tar-like strands caught around his head, his legs, his torso. Then, just as suffocation seemed a certainty, he broke his arms free and tore the greasy webbing from his face, drawing a frantic breath before hitting the ground with a horriblecrack.
His skull fractured as it struck stone, and pain exploded throughout his body. Cyrus made a sound of anguish as the crushed enamel of his teeth met his tongue, the grit growing slick as blood pooled in his mouth. It was difficult to ascertain the full extent of his damage, but he suspected his ribs were broken, and then, as he wheezed, that a lung had been punctured. One of his arms had effectively snapped, a jut of bone pushing through the dark wool of his sweater, and his legs – his legs felt wrong in ways he couldn’t decipher.
But then, this wasn’t new.
For eight months his nightmares had followed the same sequence, adhered to the same rules. Always, they began with darkness; always, they followed with agony. This imagined torture was as real to him as his mother’s hatred, and echoes of these miseries lingered on in his waking hours with a verisimilitude that haunted him.
Like a wounded animal Cyrus dragged his body across the pitted floor of this unknown hell, searching fruitlessly for an exit. The smell of sulfur filled his head, and he spat, with difficulty, the strange cocktail of blood and silt from his mouth, dazed by the dullplinkof a broken molar as it hit the ground. His jaw felt broken. A kneecap had shattered. He was breathing painfully, his head swimming as he struggled for oxygen. Somehow, he understood he was dreaming; somehow, his consciousness was able to break this fourth wall even as he heaved himself across the bleak planes of his imagination – and yet, the knowledge that he was dreaming offered him no comfort, for he could never be absolutely certain that a nightmare wouldn’t kill him.
