MISS HUDA WAS WAITING FOR him inside the morning room, unmistakable and severely out of place, clothed in an ensemble so hideous that even Kamran, who did not know the difference between a ruffle and a petticoat, could not help but condemn.
The situation was dire, indeed: she was a broad young woman, the sharp slashes of her chin and cheekbones hinting at a regal bone structure one could only imagine was repeated in the lines of a figure presently swathed in the skin of a deflated sun. She wore yellow from ruff to hem, the billowing folds of her gown inhaling her, occasionally pinching in places he took care not to study. Aside from the tragedy of her costume, the miss looked well enough despite being visibly nervous, her eyes darting around and unable to settle. Kamran watched her a moment from the doorway, noting, with a start, the bulging carpet bag at her feet, the sight of which sent a bolt of feeling through his chest.
Quietly, he cleared his throat.
Miss Huda sprang up at once, curtsying with a grace that contradicted the inelegance of her dress. “Your Highness,” she breathed, her eyes pinned to the floor. “You must know how grateful I am that you made time to see me this morning. I know we’ve never been formally introduced, but after the events of last night I felt I must breach propriety in the hopes of pressing into your arms an item of great— That is, not that I would ever press it directly into your arms, I’d never dream of taking such liberties, I only meant that I wished to deliver you— I wished— Oh—”
Kamran had by then already crossed the room and retrieved the carpet bag from the floor. Only when he stepped back did Miss Huda finally look up, after which she gaped at him, her mouth hanging open like a codfish.
“Your face,” she gasped.
“Thank you for the bag. You may go.”
“But what happened to your face?” she insisted, astonishing him with her rudeness. “Was it that terrible king? Did he do this to y—”
“Miss Huda,” he said, jaw tensing, “if you would please—”
“Oh but never fear, sire, you are still quite desperately handsome,” she assured him in a breathless rush, her hands fluttering about her waist. “I didn’t mean to imply you’d lost your appeal, only that you’ve a much more tragic look about you now, something some might even consider more attractive—depending, of course, on their individual tastes, but then I—”
“Miss Huda.”
Like a tractable child’s toy, she suddenly snapped shut.
Her mouth closed, her hands clasped, her heels clicked together. She straightened as best she could in that travesty of a yellow gown, and pinned him with a look of intense mortification.
“Yes, Your Highness?” she whispered.
“Unless there is anything else of note you wish to impart about the young woman to whom this bag belongs”—he nodded to the small luggage he still held—“I’m afraid I must be on my way.”
“Anything,” she said nervously. “I’ll tell you anything you’d like to know. I’ve already looked through the bag, sire, and while I wasn’t able to discern anything of great significance, I did find a few medicinal salves stamped with the seal of the local apothecarist, who I thought might prove a worthy lead should you choose to pursue an investigation—”
“I already know about the apothecarist,” Kamran said curtly.
“Right.” Miss Huda took a sharp breath. “Well. I suppose all that remains is to ask whether you might return me my gown, which I can’t imagine is of any relevance to your interests, but which I was hesitant to remove from the luggage for fear of tampering with what might be considered a body of evidence—”
“Return you your gown?” Kamran cut her off, dropping the bag to the floor before pinching his nose between thumb and forefinger. First she had the audacity to give him investigative advice, and now she had the nerve to ask him for clothes? Lord, but this woman was giving him a terrible headache. “Are you feeling ill, Miss Huda? What business might I have with your wardrobe?”
She went slack a moment, still as a pillar of salt before she laughed in a sudden, terrible burst, clutching a hand to her chest as she assured him, with not a small bit of hysteria, that she did not think he would have any business with her wardrobe, that she was only referring to the unfinished garment still stuffed into the carpet bag, and “which I’d dearly love to have returned, sire, for the gown is still pinned quite neatly in all the right places, and I think I might be able to convince my maid to finish the job Alizeh had started—”
Kamran flinched.
Her name struck him like a stone when she spoke it, filling his head with the sound of wind and birdsong and a sharp, blistering pain that forced him to turn away. He pressed the heel of his hand against a sudden spasm in
his neck, along the fissures snaking up his skin, trying in vain to understand what the devil was happening to him.
“Forgive me, sire,” said Miss Huda, misinterpreting his abrupt motion. “I didn’t mean—”
“I don’t understand a word you’re saying,” he managed to get out, turning once again to face her. “She was a servant, not a seamstress, and you indicated to The Daftar that you’d only met her shortly before the ball, so it doesn’t follow that she’d even have time to alter a gown for you, and never mind the fact that she’d have no reason to do such a thing.”
“I see,” she said, surprise widening her eyes. “So you’ve already read the article.”
Kamran scowled in response.
“I am grateful,” she said carefully, “to understand now why you’re so reluctant to speak with me, though I fear you’ve formed a terrible impression of my character, and I must now assure you, sire, that I spoke to The Daftar only briefly, sharing only a small part of what I know, and only because I was accosted by a journalist not long after that odious king released me from his fire. I was feeling vulnerable and was caught quite off guard, you see, but I swear to you I told them but a fraction of the truth, for even if you will not accept that I acted on principle, you might believe that I’d withheld the whole story in the pursuit of protecting my own interests— for the truth would’ve landed me in a great deal of trouble with my parents, sire, so I could not have risked the lot of it being printed in a paper for all to read.”
At long last, the exasperating miss had piqued Kamran’s interests. He regarded her carefully. “Get you into trouble how?” he asked.
Miss Huda took a bracing breath. “Well, I’d quite stealthily engaged the services of Miss Alizeh—”
“Don’t,” he said sharply, clenching his fists through a fresh bolt of pain. “Don’t say her name.”
Miss Huda took a startled step back. She blinked at him a moment, then studied her hands. “Very well, sire. I won’t say her name. But I had engaged her services,” she said, swallowing, “to design me several new gowns, for Mother is always forcing me to wear some monstrosity she’s commissioned, and as I have a little pin money from Father, I thought perhaps I might circumvent these little tortures inflicted upon me by finding my own modiste.”
“Once again, Miss Huda, I will remind you that the young woman in question worked as a snoda, not a seamstress.”
“Oh, but she did, sire,” Miss Huda said eagerly. “She did both.”
“That’s impossible. She worked, at minimum, twelve-hour shifts at Baz House—she was in the employ of my own aunt, I saw her working there—” “Yes, sire, quite true. But she came to me at night, after her shift was
done.”
Kamran stared at her, dumbfounded. “If that is true, when did she sleep?
When did she eat?”
These were such strange questions that even Miss Huda fell silent. She stared curiously at the prince, and Kamran, realizing too late that he’d exposed something essential about himself, quickly appended his questions with another, this one more damning:
“When did she find time to conspire with the Tulanian king?” The spell broke.
Miss Huda nodded, her eyes lit now with a new fervor. “That’s just it, sire. She—that is, the young woman I shall not name—could not have conspired with him. She didn’t even know who he was.”
Kamran’s spark of interest evaporated.
“Not only is what you allege impossible,” he said unkindly, “it also contradicts what you yourself told the paper—for you claimed on record that she’d been betrothed to the Tulanian king for some time.”
“I did think it possible, yes,” said Miss Huda, taking a step toward him before remembering herself and drawing back. “She did confess to be some manner of forgotten nobility, and often such matches are made in infancy. Royals are all the time betrothed to people they do not know.”
“Not in this case,” he pointed out. “The two were well-acquainted.”
Miss Huda shook her head vigorously. “I was there the first time they met—I saw the way the two looked at each other, and they were strangers.”
“Where was this?”
“In my room, sire, the night of the ball. Aliz— That is, she was meant to have finished the aforementioned gown—which you will discover buried in her luggage—ahead of the festivities, but had come to me that evening in a bit of a panic, claiming she could not complete the job in time. Only after I pressed did she admit she was running for her life from some unnamed entity—shortly after which the southern king all but magically appeared in my room, and, Your Highness, she hadn’t the faintest idea who he was.
Neither of us did. He wouldn’t even tell us his name; he insisted she call him Nothing—”
“What a convenient way to protect his identity,” said Kamran, leveling Miss Huda with a dark look. “Yes, I’m sure they both did a fine job pretending not to know each other in your presence.”
Miss Huda paled. “Oh, no, I assure you, even when she opened that strange box of shoes—which had been delivered to me ahead of her arrival
—she was entirely shocked, you must believe me, her manners were quite unrehearsed—”
“What strange box of shoes? What on earth are you talking about?”
Miss Huda bit her lip; wrung her hands. “I do apologize, sire. I’m more than a little nervous and I fear I’m telling the story entirely out of order . . .” Kamran was forced to listen then, with mounting irritation, as Miss
Huda described the delivery of a mysterious package, which had only revealed its contents to Alizeh herself, and had contained in its depths a disappearing note and a beautiful pair of shoes, whose matching gown Alizeh had already possessed upon arrival at Follad Place.
“Enough.”
The prince squeezed his eyes shut, his headache threatening now to split open his skull. The proof of Alizeh’s traitorous behavior was almost too much to bear. He felt sick at the revelations, at the descriptions of her thoughts and movements prior to the ball. While he had been replaying their stolen moments together, dreaming of her like a lovesick fool, she’d been plotting all the while against him, no doubt laughing at how easily he’d been brought to his knees by her beauty, her charm, her performances of grace and compassion.
Kamran hated himself then, hated himself so thoroughly he thought he might make himself ill.
With tremendous effort he composed himself, saying calmly, “The series of events you describe to me now present a trail of evidence so clear
—and so incriminating—I cannot imagine how you might misunderstand it. Altogether these details paint the very picture of an elaborate scheme and, contrary to what you might believe, the young woman was—is—conspiring with the king of an enemy nation who wishes to destroy me. There can be no questioning this fact.”
“I do question it, sire— Forgive me, but I do question it, for I spent many hours in her presence and I am unconvinced she is, as you imply, an
evil young woman. In fact, I am convinced of quite the opposite, for she was terribly kind to me; she all but offered to defend me with her life, sire, even in the midst of her own life-threatening trials, which I’m sorry to say is a generosity no other person has bestowed upon me, and I cannot now in good conscience abandon her, not when I fear she might be in great danger, and if there’s any chance of finding her, I’d love to be able to assist—”
“Your inconstancy is maddening,” Kamran cried, no longer able to control his anger. “First you out her to the papers, then you demand to save her? Have I not made it clear that she is a traitor to this empire?”
“Forgive me, sire, I don’t mean to be maddening—Mother is always telling me how maddening I am, and I see now that there might be some merit to her claims, but I confess I’m also confused by your anger, for I’d hoped— You see, I heard the way you called after her last night, and I’d thought maybe you, too, would worry about what that terrible man might do to her—”
“You trouble yourself for no reason.” Kamran was furious, and he fixed the young woman with an unrelenting stare. “I am not concerned about her well-being. In fact, your confessions this morning have only cemented my certainty that she should be hanged, drawn, and quartered. That she was wise enough to prey upon your emotions is proof only of a tactical manipulation, and certainly not evidence of a generous heart. You have been exploited, Miss Huda. Accept this fact. She is not your friend.”
This last line seemed to strike Miss Huda with a powerful force, for she took a step back, trembling a little as she looked away. She met the prince’s eyes only briefly before averting her gaze again, her own eyes glinting with emotion.
“Quite right,” she whispered. “Yes, I hear it now—I hear how it sounds when I say it aloud. What reason would she have to show me kindness if not to mock and abuse me? It would certainly align more closely with all my other experiences. I am hard-pressed, you know”—she looked up, attempted a laugh—“to find friends among my peers. I was perhaps too eager to believe she meant the kind things she’d said to me. Forgive me, sire, I am terribly stupid.”
Kamran did not know what to do with this watery display. He felt frozen in the face of it, uncertain what to do with his hands, where to rest his eyes. He thought perhaps he should deny the unkindness she’d leveled against herself—but he, too, thought Miss Huda was terribly stupid.
“Thank you for the carpet bag,” he said quietly. “You may go.”
“Yes.” She took a sharp breath, struggling to pull herself together. Then she unlatched the carpet bag on the ground between them, withdrew an armful of wrinkled green fabric from its depths, and bundled it in her arms. “Thank you, sire, for your—”
A small insect shot up from the inside of the open luggage with a speed that startled them both. Miss Huda gasped and swatted at her face, but the pest launched itself across the room, knocking itself against tables and lamps as if it might be drunk. Its tiny body ping-ponged off nearly every surface before it suddenly bopped Kamran in the forehead, triggering a flash of memory from the night before.
Hazan.
The insect was disoriented. It was trying to escape, now throwing its hard body against the closed door over and over in a failed attempt to find the keyhole. Cautiously, Kamran moved closer to the exit, and in a swift motion, trapped the tired insect under his hand. He felt the bug struggle against his skin, and carefully scooped it into his palm, where it pelted the inside of his hand with the frenetic motions of a small firework.
“What on earth?” Miss Huda wondered aloud. “How strange—I’ve been trying to catch that little thing all morning.”
Kamran turned to her with a frown. “This bee came from your house?” “I found it buzzing around my room when I returned home from the
ball.” She wiped at her damp eyes. “I tried to catch it several times, but it was too fast. And it’s not a bee, sire, it’s a firefly. I saw its little bottom glowing in the dark. I can only imagine it snuck into the carpet bag when I opened it.”
“A firefly?” Kamran frowned, then froze, the gears in his mind spinning wildly. Why did this revelation seem so significant? Why did it sound so familiar?
“Sire?” said Miss Huda, her brows furrowed in dismay. “Are you quite all right?”
But Kamran did not hear her.
“That lying bastard,” he said softly.
