ALIZEH TRAVELED CAUTIOUSLY, TAKING CARE not to tread on the overlong hem of her robe as she moved. Her extremities had deadened with cold; she’d finally admitted defeat and begun the trek back to the palace. The stars

withdrew as a new day threatened, black skies now feathered with gray.

Despite this promise of light, the journey seemed more menacing now that she traveled alone, and it was odd to think she’d felt safer with Cyrus about.

Nevertheless, there had been no point in waiting for him to reappear; he

was too wise, she’d realized, to retrace his steps upon returning home, and she’d refused to waste another minute waiting for him.

In fact, the whole business had left her feeling angry and foolish.

It had been hard to accept that her efforts to track Cyrus had come to naught; but it had been a grave error, too, thinking she could crack the

enigma that was the king of Tulan, for he possessed advantages Alizeh was unable to match. She’d followed him and he’d vanished. His use of magic, she’d felt, was deeply unfair.

With a sigh she strode on, absently smoothing her hands down her cloak as she went, brushing away lingering salt from her garment. Her palms prickled, and she shook them, slightly, before pulling the heavy hood forward, hiding her face as much as was practical. She advanced in the direction of the castle, its magnificent spires beckoning in the moonlight, and wondered what more awaited her here, in this foreign land.

Both the king and his country perplexed her.

Tulan was a much smaller empire than Ardunia, yet its geography still managed to impress. Alizeh didn’t know whether it was the abundance of magic in this region that made it so, but Tulan appeared home to various microclimates and geographical variations. From the middle of the salt flat she could count the teeth of a distant mountain range, savor the scents of

night blooms, hear the muted hush of waterfalls, shrink from the eerie calls of jackals. With its dynamic landscape and elevation changes, Alizeh was beginning to see how rare such a piece of land might be, situated as it was along the Mashti River – and parallel to the sea.

It was no wonder to her that Ardunia desired to possess it.

Still, she struggled to understand how an empire as powerful as Ardunia had been unable to overtake the humble nation. No doubt many had tried and failed to conquer this fertile piece of land. Tulan seemed a place both

accessible and unfathomable; diminutive yet vast. It was the kind of contradiction she often felt repeated in herself: that she was both useless and powerful; unimportant and essential.

If only she might learn how to reconcile all these feelings.

Then again, her life had changed so dramatically in so short a time that it was easy to imagine why she felt emotionally uncertain; indeed, if she agreed to Cyrus’s offer for the Tulanian throne, she might never return to Ardunia. Already she’d accepted that she’d never again see Kamran, whose own life had recently been eviscerated – and she stopped, suddenly, nearly tripping over her cloak at the thought of him. She wondered how he was managing in the wake of so much ruin. She wondered whether he would

one day look back upon the days during which their lives had so serendipitously intersected, and she wondered how – or whether – he might remember her.

With her whole heart, she wished him well. Wished him peace, wherever he was. She’d always be grateful for his kindness. For truly seeing her when no one else had.

Alizeh shivered, curling inward as an icy wind blustered against her back. Her heart had grown heavy under the weight of her thoughts, making her body harder to carry. Never again would she see her trio of unlikely friends. Never again would she see Hazan, who was doubtless buried in an unmarked grave. Her breath caught at this last thought, her chest constricting as she felt acutely the pain of loss, of loneliness.

And yet – somehow – she was no longer alone.

Hours ago she’d addressed a crowd of thousands as their queen.

Even so, between her shocking scene with the southern king and her subsequent performance before a surging mass of Jinn, Alizeh had begun to worry that, upon her return to the palace, she might discover herself the center of extraordinary scandal. She didn’t relish the idea of becoming fodder for gossip. Moreover, she had no interest in dealing with Sarra –

whose recent insistence that she murder Cyrus remained an unresolved issue. Heavens, but the woman was peculiar.

With a final sigh, Alizeh summoned the last of her strength to propel herself, with preternatural speed, back to the castle. She all but flew as she ran, her murky surroundings bleeding together, and soon enough she was back on the palace grounds, gasping for air as the deafening roar of water inundated all with its clamor.

She took a moment, easing her shaking body against the trunk of a towering tree. It had been a hellish few weeks, and she wasn’t sure she could go on like this, at this breakneck pace. She desperately desired sleep, but she needed a minute more before she embarked upon the final,

impossible task of finding her rooms in the mountainous castle.

She clenched her teeth against the icy gusts of air lifting off the waterfalls, absently patting down the countless folds of her cloak in search of pockets. She’d thus far been curling her fists in the extra length of her sleeves, but the bitter chill was proving unconquerable, and it was with great relief that she shoved her frozen hands into the fleece-lined pockets, clenching and unclenching her fists to warm them. It was then that she felt something like a shock – an electric heat sparking painfully against her fingertips.

Alizeh froze.

Her heart thudding in her chest, she pulled one hand free, lifting the offending digits to the moonlight.

The tips of her fingers had turned blue.

Quickly she rubbed at them, grateful to discover a strange dust shifting from her skin. Still, there was no relief. The friction caused more sparks to course through her fingers, the feeling not unlike flint striking against stone until the pain crescendoed and she cried out, nearly doubling over as she heard the wisp of a familiar whisper, the chokehold of a familiar terror –

Pain exploded behind her eyes, seared her throat. She nearly fainted from the force of it, sweat breaking out across her forehead as her body shook with terrible tremors. A scream was building in her chest, fear snaking through her veins.

This was the devil.

She knew this feeling, knew this slithering terror, knew these horrors, and yet he’d never come to her like this, never broken her mind with such violence –

Alizeh didn’t know when she’d fallen down, only that the earth was cold and damp beneath her face, tendrils of moss tickling the inside of her nose with every inhalation. Dirt and lichen nudged at the edges of her lips, but her head was leaden, immovable. She soon became aware that she’d

injured herself in the fall – that there was a cool plane of rock wedged under her cheek where a separate pain had begun to bloom. Still, the discovery felt slippery; dreamlike. More present was a disembodied voice shrieking

indistinguishable nonsense as her mind spun, sparks still flaring beneath her skin, pain expanding relentlessly inside her. She made only a pitiful sound

as she lay there, pinned to the ground by an impossible gravity, when a

single word finally separated from the noise. There was no doubt now that the voice belonged to the devil – but the sound was distorted, skipping as if caught in a broken loop, as if the rest of the sentence had been lost on the wind.

Eyes Eyes Eyes Eyes