Every Spiral of Fate, page 3
Cyrus had erupted with feeling, backing away from her as if she’d brandished a sword. He’d promptly banished her from his room. Alizeh had been stricken.
“But I don’t want to leave you,” she’d said. “Please, let me stay—”
“I want nothing from you,” he’d cried desperately. “Get out! Get out—”
“I only want to help you,” she said, moving toward him in anguish.
“No,” he said, his eyes glazed with fever. “Get away from me—Leave me alone—”
She’d shaken her head, fighting back tears. “I won’t abandon you. I won’t neglect you in this state—”
“I want nothing from you but what I’m owed!” he shouted at her. “Get away from me—”
“What’s happening?” she said, her heart hammering. Everything felt wrong. Everything was wrong. She couldn’t fathom what he’d meant by what I’m owed.
Did he mean her vow to marry him?
Or her promise to kill him?
How had so much changed in so short a time? It was clear enough that he despised the very sight of her, and she could only imagine he was angry with her because of what she’d done to him—what she’d forced him to become—
But her instincts screamed something was amiss.
“Tell me what’s wrong,” she’d said, reaching for him without thinking.
He tore away from her, tangling in the sheets, nearly falling off the bed. “Stop,” he said. “Stop—”
“Cyrus—”
“You offer me nothing,” he said furiously. “I want nothing from you except what I’m owed—”
She felt suddenly panicked. “Please—”
“GET OUT,” he’d cried.
Alizeh, a sob caught in her throat, had practically flown from the room.
There’d been a great deal to occupy her time, of course.
There was the small matter of a wedding to plan and travel arrangements to be made. She’d let herself into Cyrus’s rooms and easily retrieved her Book of Arya from his locked cabinets, which she’d been poring over as she tried to imagine the post-wedding trek to the legendary mountains. The wedding itself was already so delayed that she couldn’t bear the thought of putting off the greater journey any longer. She’d told Hazan she wanted to leave for Ardunia the very morning after the wedding, and she could only hope the plan wouldn’t change once again. She’d grown rather desperate to get her magic. To be useful. To do something more than languish in this misery.
She’d grown desperate, full stop.
Day after day she tried to reach Cyrus, overcoming her honor to beg at his door, beseeching Hazan to let her help him—
All to no avail.
Instead, Alizeh had been kept busy and had kept herself busy—but never enough to silence her fears. Cyrus, she knew, was suffering terribly in her absence. The fact that he’d chosen literal agony in lieu of her company was perhaps the greatest injury her pride had ever sustained, and in the end, Alizeh had tired of everything.
She hadn’t the stomach even to see her friends.
She was angry with Hazan. She’d grown tired of Kamran’s derision; she’d tired even of Huda, who disagreed with Kamran on nearly everything save the subject of Cyrus. Omid, whose company she might’ve welcomed, was asleep. And Deen—
She stiffened at the sound of rustling paper. Alizeh emerged slowly from her reverie.
Deen had unfolded the square of parchment clipped to his sweater, then unclasped the glasses from his collar and hooked them around his ears. “I think I may have a prescription for your problems,” he said abstractedly. “If I may be so bold as to present it for your consideration.”
Alizeh sat at attention. “A prescription?” she echoed.
“Yes,” he said.
“You mean like poison?”
“What? No—”
“Some kind of potion?” She frowned, lowering her voice. “Deen, you should know that the pain of a blood oath cannot be remedied with tonics—”
“What?” he said again. “No, I know that—”
She craned her neck to peer at his paper. “What is it, then?”
“This?” He leaned away from her, then looked at the page he was holding. “This is an order for a supply of new beakers I forgot to place this morning.” He shook his head, refolding the paper. “I’d pinned it to my sweater and still I forgot to send it in.”
Alizeh sank back in her seat. “Oh.”
“No,” he said briskly. “The solution to your problem sits squarely in my mind. I’ve no need of writing it down.”
“Oh.”
He carefully affixed the folded parchment once more to its paper clip and said, “You must go to him.”
Alizeh, who’d been holding taut in anticipation, felt herself deflate in disappointment.
She cast a weary glance at her friend.
“I’ve already tried that,” she said, turning her gaze to her hands, which were still catching petals. Then, as quiet as she could make her voice: “Over and over I’ve tried. It’s made not a bit of difference. He’s been painfully clear he doesn’t wish to see me.”
“My dear,” said Deen, pushing the slim pair of spectacles down his nose to peer at her. “When a man is on fire you don’t ask permission to extinguish him. I gather you will find your peace only once you’ve broken down his door.”
Five
CYRUS WAS NOT IN THE mood for theatrics.
He was shirtless and restless, prowling his room like a tiger in a cage. A sheen of sweat clung to his skin, his chest heaving as he struggled to breathe. His eyes were glassy with illness; his jaw tight, his brow pinched, his skin sallow. He was hollowed out by exhaustion and hunger, his trousers hanging loose at his hips. He hadn’t eaten in days, for his stomach could hold nothing down. Over and over he stalked the length of his room, his fists clenching and unclenching, strikes shattering his bones like belts of steel, the torture relenting only by infinitesimal degrees as the hours wore on. He could not sleep. He could not stand still. Magic could do nothing for him now but help keep his eyes open, staving off the kind of lunacy induced by acute sleep deprivation. Only his years of training with the Diviners had imbued him with the restraint necessary to bear this pain without tearing Hazan limb from limb.
“It’s the night before your wedding,” the Jinn was saying. “Will you not spare her feelings—”
“I warn you, Hazan, if you do not cease this diatribe I will not be held accountable for what happens to your head.”
“My head?”
“I shall separate it from your body,” Cyrus bellowed, even as he hissed against a fresh onslaught of brutality.
Hazan only glared at him. “You’re a raving idiot. This is going to kill you. You haven’t eaten—you haven’t slept. She wants nothing more than to offer you an inch of comfort—”
Cyrus trembled, gritting his teeth as the assault went on. He lengthened his strides, struggling for breath as rivulets of sweat ran along his collarbones, snaking down the powerful expanse of his chest. Only his reduced state could prompt him to respond with anything close to truth. “You have no notion of what might offer me comfort,” he managed. “You could never understand why I might prefer this torture”—he clenched his jaw as the pain crescendoed—“to the agony of her companionship.”
Hazan stepped forward, his eyes blazing. “You know nothing of what I might understand or the hells I’ve endured,” he said, his voice rising dangerously. “I am not without compassion, you fool. I know you love her. I have eyes; I see the way you look at her. I am in possession of a working brain—”
“And still you cannot imagine—”
“I can well imagine,” Hazan cried, cutting him off. “Do you think me a halfwit or a knave? Why else do you think I’ve kept her from you? Why else would I be foolish enough—disloyal enough—to allow you your grief? It is precisely because I can imagine how it must destroy you to be touched by her when you are to die by the very hand that might wipe your fevered brow!”
Only then did Cyrus come to a cataclysmic halt.
He nearly collapsed as he fought for balance, swallowing hard as he lifted his head, and when he finally managed to look at Hazan, it was as if for the first time: the cold fire in the Jinn’s eyes took on fresh meaning.
The man was harboring secrets.
Cyrus wanted to say more—to argue—but his body shook dangerously with torment. No longer in motion, he wasn’t sure he was hale enough to stand. He fought for breath, galvanic spasms cratering his chest. He felt he might perish from the strain of it, from the days of sustained torture. His mind seemed impaled; his very teeth ached in his mouth. He felt drugged. Drunk. He shook his head and the effort cost him dearly.
“I can’t bear to look at her,” he breathed.
Hazan only stared at him. “I know.”
“I’m not strong enough to survive her—she doesn’t understand that I am mere flesh and blood—”
“Cyrus?”
The sound of her voice was a finishing blow. Cyrus took it to the gut, nearly doubling over, and reached blindly for a wall to brace him. “No—”
“Cyrus,” she said, knocking, “let me in this instant, or I’ll break down the door!”
“Make her leave,” Cyrus said, searching the room in a panic. “I don’t want her to come near me—”
“Enough,” Hazan responded angrily. “I can no longer condone your actions. I will no longer make excuses for your behavior. You’re doing unconscionable harm to yourself, and in so doing you’re risking the promises you’ve made to her—”
“Cyrus,” she called for the third time, pounding harder. “You’re being ridiculous. I’m giving you one more chance to open this door.”
“No,” he said loudly, light flaring across his vision. “Please. I don’t want her to see me—not like this—”
He never should’ve stopped moving.
The room appeared to shift beneath his feet. Days of deferred suffering seemed to amass and thrash him all at once. He heard the rattle of the door handle, saw the thunder in Hazan’s expression. Everything sped up and slowed down at the same time, the pounding in his head growing so loud it seemed to come from outside himself, as if it were coming from the walls—
The door fell, with a resounding crash, clear off its hinges.
“I’m sorry,” she said primly. “I tried to warn you. I’m sure someone can mend the damage, but if not I—”
Alizeh gasped.
Cyrus heard her shock before he saw her face, the mere sight of her like a fatal strike, and he bore it badly. He could not look at her; he could not look away from her. Her beauty was its own violence, assailing his worn defenses even as chains of pain released him at her approach. She was like a panacea for all that ailed him, a braid of light and fury, the cause and the cure. The spate of savagery against his body had quieted to a dull hum in her presence, and in the free fall of relief Cyrus nearly fell to his knees before Hazan caught him under the arms. It was a good thing, then, that he was too delirious to remember to be proud. The Jinn hefted him, on watery legs, toward the bed, and Cyrus fell with a defeated sound onto the mattress. A faint tremble continued to animate his limbs, fever thrashing in his blood, but after four days, his eyes finally closed.
Cyrus felt his world shift as she sat lightly beside him, the remaining breath leaving his body as she placed her small, cool hand against his brow. He could not decide then whether he wanted to die from the pleasure or the pain. It was all the same.
“Forgive me, Your Majesty,” Hazan said quietly. “I shouldn’t have advised you to stay away.”
“Hazan,” he heard her whisper. There was a rare edge of fury in her voice. “Get out.”
Six
THE MORNING OF HER WEDDING day, Alizeh was planted like a trailing flower in the window, legs hanging over the sill, head tilted toward the breeze as the sun stretched itself into dawn. She’d finally been able to return to her own rooms, and she’d dearly missed these opulent views and lush gardens. For the first time in days, she was enjoying the serene scenes outside without worrying she might accidentally stare into a pair of stranger’s eyes.
No faces could reach the windows here.
There were no knuckles pecking at the glass.
Instead, a spider the size of a saucer lowered itself on a glimmering thread, softly spinning as it slowed, then turned to stare at her. Alizeh lifted a tentative finger to one of its furred legs and the spider retreated at once, hastily coiling itself back up into the lintel; and in so doing clearing her view of the locusts in the far distance. Their swarm had changed locations today, choosing to hover beyond her rooms in a heaving cloud that seemed to breathe in the sky as a single body.
Alizeh worried this was a bad sign.
That they’d chosen to haunt her on the morning of her wedding seemed like a harbinger of things to come; she couldn’t think what else to make of it. The buzz of their swarm provided a continuous hum of sound that was nearly overwhelmed by the rush of nearby waterfalls, which were so familiar to her now she hardly noticed the crash and clamor of the cascades anymore.
In fact, the sounds were altogether soothing.
Alizeh had wanted to detach from herself in the vibration of all this white noise; she’d wanted time to brace against the absurdity of her life, of all that was yet to come.
She wanted, for a moment, to simply be.
She drew in the all-familiar scent of roses, peering above her head at the flower vines that had relentlessly invaded her rooms. Here, too, scattered petals had decorated everything, whirling across the rugs and tables, occasionally steeping in her tea. Fallen blooms eddied around her whenever a gentle breeze blew in through the window, and the experience was each time so tender it nearly brought her to tears.
So long as she denied her every other thought and emotion and focused only on this moment, Alizeh thought she felt almost content.
She decided to claim that as a victory.
From here, she could pick out the bright bodies of dragons prowling the grounds, and watched, breathlessly, as a gleaming green beast broke the surface of the waters in the distance, releasing an angry roar as it shot upward into the sky, its scales shimmering in the morning sun. She wondered then what it might be like to be so freely enraged; to scream into the heavens and simply fly away.
She realized it was a maudlin thought.
All night she’d been caught in a maelstrom of feeling, and anger had been outpacing every other emotion by far. This was an unsettling discovery for Alizeh, who was no stranger to suffering; while grief and sorrow had trod well-worn paths within her, she rarely befriended wrath. She’d been trained from childhood to reach for compassion when invited to anger, for the latter was deemed volatile and unproductive. She hadn’t even thought herself capable of so inelegant a feeling as rage, and yet she’d been inching every day closer to this unknown territory, and she hardly recognized herself for it.
Alizeh turned away from the sun, her eyes unfocusing as she gazed into the middle distance. There was so much on her mind she occasionally imagined reaching into her skull and shucking her brain from its shell; she imagined scouring the tired organ in warm, soapy water, then letting it bake gently in the sun.
Had anyone ever been tender with her mind? she wondered. The poor thing was brutalized.
Just then, a single locust seemed suddenly to separate from the sky, landing without warning beside her, and Alizeh startled. The large bug studied her a moment, wings shifting as it canted its little head, then leaped, without warning, atop her lap.
Alizeh was so surprised she almost laughed.
When it made no move to flee, she walked her fingers gently toward its body, allowing the insect to decide whether to climb aboard her hand.
It appeared to consider her. The creature had just made a tentative move in her direction when Huda flung open her bedroom door in a panic.
“Where have you been?” she cried.
Alizeh nearly fell to her death, she was so startled. The locust seized the opportunity to toss itself desperately elsewhere.
“I’ve been here,” Alizeh said quickly, clambering off the ledge. “In my room. What’s wrong—”
“Cyrus has run away! He’s jilted you! He’s somehow broken his oath!”
Alizeh released a sigh of relief, her heart rate slowing as she retied her rumpled dressing gown. “What makes you think Cyrus has jilted me?”
“He’s not in his room! He’s nowhere to be found—and on the morning of his wedding!”
“Come, sit down,” Alizeh said gently, leading Huda to a small table. She’d rung for tea not long ago, and the pot was still warm. “Cyrus has not jilted me. He’s just there”—she nodded her head at the nearest wall—“in the adjoining room.”
Huda boggled. She did not sit down. “He’s just— Forgive me, but did you say, He’s just there?” She, too, nodded her head at the nearest wall. “In the adjoining room?”
“Yes.”
Huda gaped. “Doing what?”
“Taking a bath.”
“Taking a bath?”
Alizeh fought back a smile. Huda’s hysterics were a welcome distraction from the sharp turns of her own mind. “Huda,” she said, “please sit down.”
Again, Huda did not sit. Instead, her voice fell to a conspiratorial whisper. “Do you mean to tell me the king is naked? In your room? Splashing about in a tub?”
Alizeh took her seat, then began needlessly rearranging teacups. She would not admit to herself what it provoked in her to hear the word naked associated with Cyrus. She’d been feeling all kinds of things this morning: breathless things; furious things; desperate things. “I don’t know about splashing,” she said impassively.
