Every Spiral of Fate, page 2
Well, she was overwrought.
She was overwrought, and she hadn’t known how to soothe herself. She’d needed a place to retreat; she’d wanted a respite from prying eyes and welters of gossip, and she’d been certain she’d find the kitchen abandoned at this late hour. Clearly, she’d misplaced her good sense.
She’d focused so intensely on the fact that she was supposed to be getting married tomorrow that she’d somehow forgotten the logistics associated with the fact that she was supposed to be getting married tomorrow.
The household was in a frenzy.
She felt there was nowhere she might go to escape the weight of her own mind.
It was bad enough that the very world was in a state of chaos; she’d abandoned all hope of marshaling her many fears about the future. The crowds swelling beyond the Diviners’ land had grown to unthinkable numbers, for people—Jinn and Clay alike—had been pouring in from all over. Many were arriving to pledge their allegiance to Alizeh, but more wished only to spectate the royal wedding. It was frankly embarrassing each time they’d postponed the ceremony.
Yet each delay brought in only greater crowds.
Were it not for the Diviners, who’d taken on the work of managing these unwieldy masses, Alizeh had no idea how they might’ve policed the pandemonium. It bothered her immensely that she’d neither seen nor spoken to her people since the recent attempt on her life. But then, without a crown she had no right to speak to them anyway, given that she had nothing to say.
She needed her magic. She needed an empire. She needed—
Heavens, she was supposed to be getting married.
Alizeh could feel her temper spiking, which seemed to be happening all the time now. This was meant to be the eve of her wedding day, and she’d never imagined such a night could be so bleak. She felt alone and confused and distracted, and the only person she wanted to speak with was refusing to see her.
In point of fact, he’d barred her from his rooms.
Alizeh startled at a series of sharp gasps; she’d been so buried in thought she hadn’t realized she’d walked directly into the great hall, where a dozen busy servants had gone still at the sight of her, a few falling to their knees with a cry.
Alizeh came to a halt.
“Good evening,” she said, forcing herself to regain her composure and smile. “I beg you do not inconvenience yourselves on my account. Please do carry on.”
There was a moment of silence before the snodas slowly, carefully, reanimated.
It was as if the room released a sigh.
Despite Hazan’s many warnings that she not wander the halls alone, Alizeh found it impractical to always await a chaperone and unhelpful to imagine that everyone was trying to murder her. In any case, the servants needed more time to familiarize themselves with her, and she with them. After all, this palace was to be her home—
The thought struck her like lightning.
Alizeh’s heart beat faster, her skin pricking with uncomfortable sensation.
This palace was to be her home.
She would soon become mistress of this castle; this staff would be hers to manage; this land hers to rule; these citizens hers to govern. She’d own it all, though she’d kill her husband before she could claim any of it.
She felt suddenly ill.
Unease lancing through her, Alizeh moved blindly toward a chair by the roaring fire, the unseen eyes of snodas following her every move.
Surreal, to think they were once her peers.
There’d been a time in her life when she’d appealed ardently for such employment. Far preferable to decaying slowly in the streets, she’d prayed for the opportunity to scrub floors under a solid roof in a secured home. Her position in life had been defined utterly by the tulle mask she wore over her eyes and nose, reducing her to an unseen nothing.
Oh, her fears had seemed so great then.
Once upon a time Alizeh had felt certain that power and position would bring her protection. She’d been the feeble tree fearing the tremble of fruitless branches; but now, weighed down with plenty, she feared the rot of all this bounty and the blade that might cut her down for daring to flourish. Only now was Alizeh learning that fears did not disappear as stations changed in life.
They only complicated.
Alizeh drew a breath before taking her seat, having chosen a soft, high-backed chair close to the crackling fire. She tucked the silk cape and sewing kit neatly into her lap, and nearly closed her eyes in exhaustion.
Candlelight glittered from a mammoth chandelier overhead; pools of lamplight gleamed in arched alcoves buttressing darkened windows; silk threads in lush, intricate rugs glimmered underfoot. The room was exquisitely appointed, anchored by a behemoth of a stone mantelpiece and dotted with elegant furnishings, the plush seating upholstered with both comfort and beauty in mind. Often Alizeh had wanted to curl up by the fire in this room and rest, but she enjoyed little to no privacy in open spaces, and hesitated to lose her placid smile for fear of feeding new gossip.
Today, none of this seemed to matter.
She didn’t want to return to the cold guest room she’d lately occupied to be closer to Cyrus. She felt she might go mad if she had to spend another minute staring at the same blank wall, imagining his agony. How could she hope to rest when she knew how he suffered? How could she calm herself when the tether between them pulsed within her as palpably as her own heart?
His blood surged even now through her veins, hot and heady. Even were she to lose her sense of sight and sound she knew she could forge a path to him; indeed she’d been walking a path to him now, she realized.
Alizeh was growing desperate.
She hadn’t seen Cyrus in four days.
In a turn of events she’d never anticipated, the enigmatic Tulanian king, who was enduring what was arguably the most excruciating period of their recently minted blood oath, hadn’t been sighted by anyone but Hazan. If the king communicated at all, it was only through Hazan.
Cyrus had refused admittance to all others.
It was Hazan who’d stood sentinel in the doorway of the guest suite, head bowed in apology as he obstructed Alizeh’s path; it was Hazan who’d kindly but firmly asked her to maintain her distance; it was Hazan who’d turned her away despite her insistence that Cyrus was suffering—that her nearness would offer him relief as the magic ravaged his body.
Hazan would not be moved.
Neither would he elaborate on the king’s condition. He’d only politely asked her forgiveness and forbearance, setting a firm boundary before informing her that Cyrus would require another day to recover—
Then another; then another.
They’d postponed the wedding three times now.
Never had Alizeh foreseen a day such as this one, a day when she’d grown so furious with Hazan she’d dearly wanted to pummel him. Shout at him.
Fight him.
Four days, and no sign of the king.
Alizeh calmed herself with another deep breath, in the process inhaling the intoxicating aroma of luscious blooms. Cyrus’s enchanted pink roses had pushed their way into the castle through cracks in casements, nosing their way across walls and ceilings, weeping petals on every surface. Soft pink drifts were piling up in sinks and corridors, tumbling down staircases, breezing into parlors and bedrooms.
Managing the constant cleanup had driven Sarra, the Queen Mother, near to fury.
Alizeh looked up as a corolla glanced off her cheek. Her hands, open upon her lap as if in prayer, were filling slowly with petals. She couldn’t decide whether the reminders of him made her feel better or worse.
Somehow, both.
Cyrus, naturally, could not be called upon to put an end to the enchantment he’d cast across the city.
Four days.
Wedding cakes had been frosted and eaten, frosted and eaten; menus had been drawn up and discarded; cleavers had been hung back on their hooks, fatted chickens clucking far longer than expected. Trays of food for the king were often returned to the kitchens untouched; unopened missives and misshapen packages piling in teetering stacks in the butler’s pantry; while nobles and farmers alike had been dismissed at the entrance doors with hand-wringing apologies.
But it was on the second day of the king’s seclusion that stranger things had begun to happen.
“Might I— Would you mind if I joined you?”
Alizeh drew back and looked up, surprised at the sound of the familiar voice.
Three
DEEN WAS PEERING DOWN AT her, tall and narrow and tightly smiling, his hands tucked into the pockets of his trousers. He wore a roughly knitted dark red sweater, from the collar of which was clasped a slim pair of spectacles; two paper clips; and a neatly folded square of paper, affixed to a third paper clip.
“Yes, of course,” said Alizeh with feeling, softening as her surprise subsided. “Do sit down.”
Seldom did Deen emerge from his workroom.
The apothecarist had been spending his days productively and companionably with the palace alchemist—a matchstick of a woman named Ayla. Tall and wiry herself, she was a dry and unyielding character whose brusque efficiency had appealed to the Ardunian apothecarist as rain might appeal to roses.
The two had formed an instant friendship.
Here in Tulan, where apothecaries and alchemists had access to greater stores of magic, Deen had contracted a giddy enthusiasm for his own profession. Under Ayla’s guidance, he’d been learning a great deal about how to mix new potions and elixirs; which meant Alizeh rarely saw Deen for more than brief periods at a time, for he headed to the workroom every day with the manic gleam of a dotty inventor.
She’d never seen him so happy.
Alizeh studied her friend as he took the other chair nearest the fire, wondering what might’ve inspired his visit, or else whether he’d come to ask her for something.
To her surprise, he said nothing.
Instead, they sank into a congenial quiet as the logs popped and snapped between them. Deen cleared his throat lightly, then turned his eyes up to the ceiling, tracking the rose vines that continued to invade the hall. Absently, as if he’d grown accustomed to the issue, he brushed a stray petal from his hair, then two more from his sweater. He nodded toward a bay of windows.
“Still no solution to the spiders, then?” he said.
Alizeh shook her head with a stifled sigh.
He raised an eyebrow. “What of the locusts?”
“They came back,” she said. “They always come back.”
“But they leave, occasionally?”
She nodded, then noticed a pair of snodas hovering in her periphery. The tension within her coiled tighter.
Deen frowned as he sat back in his chair. “Peculiar,” he said, almost to himself.
“Very,” she agreed, afraid to say too much.
On the second morning of Cyrus’s absence, bright green locusts were seen surging around his abandoned wing of the castle, swelling and scattering in eerie exhalations. As if this weren’t odd enough, masses of bumblebees swarmed the palace next, dispersing only to nestle in the king’s roses as they tired, several fuzzy bodies to a flower. Not long thereafter clutters of spiders had taken up positions in doorways and windows, dangling like pendants from lintels, batting gently against glass panes in the breeze.
At first, all this had been dismissed as unfortunate infestations; for no matter the efforts of the household, the insects and arachnids couldn’t be banished permanently.
But then the groundskeeper had discovered a skulk of foxes dotting the grass at dusk, each with an apricot held between its teeth, which they deposited quietly onto the lawn. Then came a scream of crows—hundreds of winged inkblots landing upon the roof at once, rattling shingles and rafters in a furor. Then, most alarming, were the dozens of snakes found slithering up the steep faces of the castle, writhing like so many gleaming sickles.
The groundskeeper’s aging heart couldn’t take it—the poor man had fallen over in fright.
Alizeh had summoned the apothecarist at once.
It was Deen who’d brewed the draught that revived the groundskeeper that day. It was Deen who’d locked eyes with Alizeh in the melee, sending her an unspoken, searching look.
“A snow leopard appeared at the back entrance this morning, not long after dawn,” Alizeh said presently, turning her eyes to Deen. “Cook was returning from the market and found it sitting there, licking its paws. It, too, brought with it a half-bitten apricot, which it left behind the door.”
“More apricots?”
“Just one this time,” she said.
He made a thinking sound.
“The feline was apparently quite forbidding,” Alizeh added. This felt safe to share aloud, for the servants already knew this story. “Cook’s scream woke half the house.”
Deen raised his eyebrows. “That was Cook screaming this morning? I assumed it was Sarra.”
“Well,” Alizeh said absently. “It can be hard to tell who’s screaming these days.”
On the third day of the king’s absence, shrieking snodas had come upon a parliament of owls perched upon tables and chairs in his unoccupied rooms, dead mice being quietly devoured as they blinked their unsettling eyes. More apricots had been reported then, half a dozen said to have been decaying softly on the priceless rugs. The sage birds didn’t so much as twitch a wing as servants flung their dusters at them in a panic, and this was so strange a response that it seemed clear, suddenly, that the animals might be waiting for something.
For what, no one knew.
They were none of these beasts aggressive; all of them patient; and they could not be convinced to leave, no matter how many times a broom had cleared a full set of eight-legged ornaments from a window.
It had, of course, occurred to Alizeh to wonder whether these many creatures were searching for Cyrus—for the tissue between their arrival and his seclusion was material enough to present a connection. Moreover, she distinctly remembered, on a single occasion, having seen a half-eaten apricot in his private room.
Spoken aloud, this did not present as strong evidence.
Many people ate apricots, did they not?
Alizeh wouldn’t know; she’d never eaten an apricot. The greater trouble was that the theory itself made no sense. What reason could a swarm of locusts have to concern itself with the whereabouts of a king?
The very question seemed absurd.
Even Sarra, the disturbed Queen Mother, couldn’t seem to decide between suspicion or celebration where her son’s confinement was concerned. Worse, there were no experts to turn to on the matter, and no one to offer a ready explanation. Diviners had been summoned to no avail, for the priests and priestesses had refused to explain or remove the menagerie. The appearance of the rangy snow leopard this morning was deeply concerning, but still not so concerning to the royal household as the team of colossal dragons that every day prowled the palace grounds, their thundering footfalls sending terrible tremors through the walls. The beasts pawed angrily at the soft grass, talons shredding the earth, and repeatedly singed the spires with their incendiary roars.
“Do you think they wish to eat him?” Huda had wondered aloud yesterday, plucking an infant snake from the stonework. The creature had stared at her, and she’d stared back, fascinated, as its wisp of a tongue peeped in and out of its mouth. “I can’t tell if they’re happy Cyrus appears to be dead, or angry they didn’t get the chance to kill him first.”
As if in response, one of the dragons gave a roar so violent it nearly set the palace on fire.
Huda startled, her hair blowing back from her face.
She’d dropped the small snake to the ground and turned to Alizeh, her eyes wide. “That was a coincidence, right?”
It seemed more like an omen.
Four
“ARE YOU QUITE READY, THEN? For tomorrow?”
Alizeh was returned to the present by the pinched sound of Deen’s voice, the audible effort he was making to sound neutral.
She studied her friend with burgeoning awareness, blinking softly as she read the worry in his gaze. It occurred to her—as she noted the flex of his hands, grasped tightly in his lap, then the heaviness in his expression as he studied her eyes—that he’d come to sit with her for no reason but to offer her comfort. It was a gesture both small and great, and the kindness was so unexpected that a carefully held parapet inside her gave way. Fear and anguish stormed her heart.
Half the royal gossip these days was speculation over what Alizeh might’ve done to make the king disappear. Many inches in the local papers had been dedicated to claims he was suffering from a terminal case of regret. After all, the arrival of the Jinn queen in Tulan had caused an enormous disturbance not merely for the nation but for the world at large. With so many public revisions to the wedding date, numerous wagers had been made that the king might simply jilt her at the altar, and few seemed to think less of him for it.
The truth was, Alizeh had begun to share their doubts.
“No,” she breathed in response, hardly daring to enunciate the word. Then, even more quietly: “I’m afraid Cyrus won’t show.”
The apothecarist sighed, unsurprised, though his brow furrowed more deeply. “You still haven’t seen him?”
Alizeh looked both ways before shaking her head. “He won’t let me near him.”
Despite the unbreakable bind of the blood oath, she couldn’t help but wonder whether Cyrus had changed his mind about her altogether. She knew it made no logical sense to feel uncertain, for Cyrus was physically incapable of going back on his word, but she couldn’t account for his absence nor his many delays, and Hazan had offered little clarity on the matter. He’d only assured her that Cyrus would make it to the altar tomorrow.
He’d sworn it.
But then, he’d sworn this every other day as well.
Alizeh had turned recent events over and over in her mind, desperate to draw a line from cause to consequence. The first night of the blood oath Alizeh had refused to leave Cyrus’s side. She’d been sleeping in a chair in the guest room, watching over him so he might suffer less in the wake of their fresh bond. At dawn she’d been startled awake by the sound of him screaming and she’d rushed to help. They’d shared what she’d felt was a supremely tender moment before he’d finally succumbed, once more, to sleep—so she was taken entirely by surprise when his eyes alighted upon her in the glare of day and he’d all but lost his head.
