His business conducted, Cyrus had looked up, arrested by the force of her gaze upon him.She, too, had changed before addressing the crowd, wearing now one of Cyrus’s cloaks, which he’d insisted would be both a protection from the cold and a cover for her stained dress. Soon she felt the heat of his inspection elsewhere, lingering first at her neck, then drawing down the hidden lines of her body. He took in the billows of her borrowed garment, the too-long sleeves, the several inches of hem pooling around her feet.
His eyes held all the inconstancy of an eclipse: his anger nearly overwhelming his need.
Alizeh had grown light-headed under this careful gaze, her skin prickling with awareness where his eyes had touched her. She didn’t know how to describe this feeling, this breathless languor. No one had ever looked at her the way he did, as if the sight of her might be fatal. Her lips had parted under the weight of his silent want, her mouth growing heavy with the sound of his name and a desperate, foolish impulse to whisper the word against his skin.
Mercifully, sharp gasps and cries of astonishment punctuated the melee, and the trance was broken; Alizeh turned, startled, to witness palace servants winding through the mass of Jinn with gilded trays, each piled high with cups and pitchers of water.
Presently, Alizeh sniffed against the chill numbing her nose, squeezing her eyes shut against the dizzying night sky. The scene that ensconced her was beautiful, no doubt – but neither her head nor her heart were equipped to appreciate the present.
Besides, she knew not where she was.
She’d found this site only after haunting Cyrus through midnight turns of the royal city. After the mob had been settled – after the people accepted that she was well, that she’d only just arrived in Tulan, that she’d made no firm decisions about marriage, and that she’d address them officially just as soon as she rested a while – the crowds had very slowly dispersed. It was when their small party withdrew into the castle – Sarra’s face contorting as if she might scream and Alizeh thinking of nothing but sleep – that the young king had spoken an efficient five words to the wall:
“I’m afraid I must go.”
Without further explanation, Cyrus had left her in the custody of his horrified mother.
Sarra had made a choking sound before staring at Alizeh with wide, blinking eyes, and for a moment, Alizeh felt sorry for the woman. In a shocking reversal of character, Sarra, once a shrewd and complex adversary, had lost her nerve. After witnessing Alizeh’s quiet power before the unruly crowd, the woman now appeared terrified even to share oxygen with the girl. It seemed the Queen Mother was worried she’d made a dangerous mistake asking Alizeh to murder her son.
If only she were able, Alizeh might’ve laughed at the absurdity.
Instead, she’d bid good night to the trembling Sarra and, once she’d found herself alone in the hall, quickly donned invisibility and trailed Cyrus at superhuman speed, taking care to evade all eyes, for fear of being spotted by Jinn servants. It wasn’t long before she’d followed him off the palace grounds,foreign scenes melting into blackness as they traversed the chilling night.
Now Alizeh sighed.
There were peculiar woodlands here, bone-white trees with bone-white branches that shone from within, a small stand of which glowed softly at the edge of the salt flat.Thiswas as far as her search had taken her, for Cyrus had soon evaporated into a literal puff of smoke upon approaching the illuminated forest, and here – alone and off course – was where she’d landed, cursing herself for her stupidity.
She pulled the borrowed cloak more tightly about her shoulders, struggling against the urge to inhale the familiar scent of its owner. She’d come to know this cologne of him, the floral notes of rose infused with the masculine spice of his skin – though she wasn’t entirely sure how. It was perhaps the hours she’d spent holding Cyrus’s body, breathing him in even as she cried. She could still feel the silk of his hair sliding between her fingers, the down of his cheek under her hand. For her efforts she’d been rewarded this unrelenting burn beneath her breastbone, a ripple of feeling so powerful it spasmed without reprieve, refusing to settle even when her thoughts turned to anything and anyone else. Her body had never felt so alive, so electrified.
When had she allowed Cyrus to take up so many rooms inside her?
Nothing had evenhappenedbetween them.
The paroxysm of feeling she endured now, the emotional wreckage she was forced to sift through in the aftermath ofwhat was, by most metrics, a nonevent–
It made no sense.
Worse: Cyrus was under the command of the devil.
This statement alone should’ve been conclusive enough to condemn him, but heaven help her, she had other reasons, too. Among other horrifying crimes, he’d stolen her precious Book of Arya and refused to return the item, holding it hostage under lock and magic. He’d slaughtered Ardunia’s Diviners, murdered King Zaal, killed his own father, and crowned himself her enemy whether she liked it or not. So when he’d fled the palace on a mysterious – and likely nefarious – quest, she’d felt compelled to follow.
Too bad, then, that she’d been a fool.
THREE
OF COURSE CYRUS KNEW HEwas being followed.
She possessed all the subtlety of a dragon in slumber. As if she could draw near him without his knowledge – as if he couldn’t hear the dragging hem of his borrowed cloak on her body. It was torture enough to imagine her wearing his clothes, but it was an altogether different torment to envision her determined stride, her furrowed brow, the slight pout to her lips that appeared only when she was thinking too much. The resolve with which she pursued him now – as if she had any idea what she was doing – was so endearing it angered him. For as long as he lived he feared he’d know the scent of her, the sound of her walking toward him. She was a fool to think otherwise.
He was a fool to think of her at all.
Cyrus sighed and strode onward, the icy eve raising puffs of frost from his lips. Towering evergreens glinted along the path, ghostly fingers of moonlight pushing through branches as if to seize him. Night birds jeered; oblivion threatened; the clean fragrance of pine filled his head. The hour was late and unusually frigid.
If only she would leave him.
A ghastly journey lay ahead, and after all he’d endured this night, Cyrus had hoped for a single mercy: solitude.He wanted a moment to collect himself – to steady himself before entering the next phase of torture. Her clinging shadow made this small dream impossible.
Several times already he’d heard her softoofas she tripped over the hem of her cloak, and he’d gritted his teeth to keep from turning to help.
