“DON’T!” KAMRAN SHOUTED. “THE FIRE—”
The words died in his throat.
He watched Alizeh charge toward the thigh-high blaze with an astonishment so complete he sank to the ground, the cold of the stone floor seeping through the tattered silk of his trousers. Kamran had the benefit of heavy layers and jewel harnesses at least; the fire had been unable to devour him with any speed. But Alizeh—Alizeh wore little more than a whisper, so fine was the fabric of her gown.
The fire will melt the flesh from her bones.
He thought it even as she crossed the blaze without care, her gossamer dress inhaled in an instant by the fiery ring, an abomination magicked to life by the young Tulanian king. Cyrus, the monarch in question, stood just opposite Kamran, sword still held aloft in anticipation of a fatal blow, his hand stayed only by the sight of Alizeh, who headed toward him now. As if from outside himself Kamran watched as she batted away flames from her dress with bare hands, snuffing the fire as one might a light. He stared down at the remains of his own disintegrated garments, then at the blood dripping between his knuckles. Slowly, he looked back up at Alizeh, possessing clarity of mind enough to register that she’d emerged from the inferno unscathed, even as her gown suffered. He blinked at the impossibility of it; he was either dreaming or deluded. He could not make sense of her.
No, he could not make sense of anything.
Alizeh, who’d nearly tripped over the king’s fallen crown in her haste, had sent the weighty heirloom spinning toward Kamran as she ran. He stared at that crown now, stared at it as a sudden tremor seized him, shock and cold combining, reminding him—
His grandfather was dead.
King Zaal was supine before the world, blood pooling beneath his lifeless body in the imperfect oval of an open-mouthed scream. His grandfather had bargained with the devil to extend his life—and in the end Death had devoured the king swiftly and without dignity, the sovereign and his sins withering in unison. The limp, corded muscle of twin white snakes still soldered to the pale shoulders of a beloved king painted a scene so grotesque it inspired in Kamran a sudden impulse to heave; he braced his unsteady hands on the icy floor and wondered, with increasing horror, how many street children had been sacrificed for his grandfather’s serpents.
It was an imagining too monstrous.
Kamran was ill with disillusion, with denial. He willed himself to remain calm, to marshal his thoughts, but an unidentified agony clawed at his consciousness, the pain seeming to emanate from his left arm. He wished to be someone else. He wished to turn back time. Above all he wished, without a mote of hyperbole, that Cyrus had been allowed to kill him.
The whispers of their heretofore silent audience had been growing steadily in the interlude and now built to an alarming crescendo, the din awaking in Kamran years of training and awareness. His mind sharpened against the gossip, duty piercing the fog of grief and replacing it with anger, focus—
A sudden clatter.
Kamran looked up in time to see Alizeh toss Cyrus’s sword to the floor, the young man flinching as glinting steel struck marble. The foreign king stared at Alizeh with an astonishment to rival Kamran’s, fear torpefying his features as she rounded on him.
“How dare you,” she said. “You horrible cretin. You useless monster.
How could you—”
“How—how did you—” Cyrus fumbled back an inch. “How did you walk through the fire like that? Why are you not—burning?”
“You despicable, wretched man,” she cried. “You know who I am, but you don’t know what I am?”
“No.”
Alizeh struck Cyrus across the face with the force of a bludgeon, the impact so violent the young king staggered, audibly striking his head against a column.
Kamran felt the shock of it in his bones.
He knew he should rejoice in this moment—knew he should celebrate Alizeh’s actions against the depraved royal—but his mind would not submit to relief, for the scene unraveling before him did not align with reason.
Cyrus appeared entirely too unnerved.
The trepidation in his eyes, his astonishment at her approach, the blind steps he took backward as she advanced—it made no sense. Alizeh had insisted to Kamran but moments ago that she did not know the southern king; yet Cyrus, who’d more than proven his ruthlessness, displayed every sign of alarm in her presence. If they were truly strangers, why would he cower now at the unarmed advance of a girl he did not know? She’d tossed
his sword to the floor, insulted him repeatedly, and slapped him in the face
—and the young king who’d minutes ago buried a blade in Zaal’s heart hadn’t so much as lifted a hand in his own defense. He’d only stood there and stared at her and all but allowed her to strike him.
Almost as if he feared her.
Kamran dared not breathe as a terrifying suspicion dawned in his mind, the thought provoking in him a spasm so acute he thought his chest might crater.
From the first, Kamran had been mystified by Alizeh’s transformation at the ball. In a matter of hours her injuries had miraculously healed, she’d discarded the iconic snoda of her servant’s uniform, and her drab work dress had been replaced by an extravagant gown no maid could ever afford
—and still he’d denied the truth, so desperate was he to absolve her of artifice. Finally, he understood.
He had been deceived.
His eyes flickered again to the fallen figure of his grandfather.
King Zaal had tried to warn him; he’d begged Kamran to see how Alizeh was tethered to the prophecy, to the end of Zaal’s life—and only now that his grandfather was dead did Kamran understand the magnitude of his own folly. Every foolish word he’d spoken in her defense—every stupid, childish action he’d taken to protect her—
Without warning, Cyrus laughed.
Kamran looked up; the southern king appeared pale and disordered. From where he knelt, Kamran could not see Alizeh’s face; he saw only the horror in Cyrus’s eyes as he looked her over. The young man had killed his own father for the throne of Tulan; he’d newly murdered King Zaal, the ruler of the greatest empire on earth; he would’ve killed Kamran, too, had he been granted but a moment more to accomplish the task. Now the copper-headed tyrant steadied himself slowly, blood seeping from his lips, smeared across his chin. Of all the adversaries they might’ve encountered, it seemed they’d both been cowed by the poor, gentle servant of Baz House.
“Damn the devil to hell,” the Tulanian king said quietly. “He didn’t tell me you were a Jinn.”
“Who?” Alizeh demanded. “Our mutual friend.”
“Hazan?”
Kamran recoiled. He’d not been prepared for the blow of yet another betrayal, and the impact of that single word lanced through his body with a ruthlessness against which he had no defense. That she was somehow allied with Cyrus was torture enough—but that she’d gone behind his back with Hazan?
This was more than he could bear.
She’d playacted at fear and innocence, had outmaneuvered him at every turn, and worst of all—worst of all—he had fallen, madly, for her manipulations. In all the time he’d known her, Alizeh had clung to her snoda, fighting to hide her identity even in the midst of a rainstorm; now she stood unmasked before a sea of nobles, glowering at the formidable sovereign of a neighboring nation, declaring herself to the world.
All this time, Alizeh had been making plans.
Already Kamran had been attacked by grief and anger; he struggled even then to digest the magnitude of the last moments, could hardly piece together his discordant thoughts about his grandfather—but now— Now he was expected to make sense of this? He, who prided himself on the strength of his instincts—he, who believed himself to be a capable, intuitive soldier
—
“Hazan?” Cyrus laughed again, his hand trembling almost imperceptibly as he wiped blood from his mouth. “Hazan? Of course not Hazan.” Cyrus locked eyes with Kamran and said, “Pay attention, King, for it seems even your friends have betrayed you.”
Alizeh turned suddenly to face him—eyes wide with panic—and her obvious flush of guilt was all the evidence Kamran required. Just hours ago he would’ve sworn an oath that her desire for him was as palpable as the press of satin against his skin; he’d tasted the salt of her, had felt the exquisite shape of her body under his hands. Now he knew it had all been a lie.
Hell.
This was hell.
But to say that this revelation had broken his heart would be to misrepresent the truth; Kamran was not heartbroken, then, no—he was incandescent with rage.
He would kill her.
Any naive, lingering softness in Kamran’s heart evaporated. He’d been seduced by a siren while being deceived by his own friend—and had all but
spat in the face of the only person who truly cared for his well-being. King Zaal had sold himself to evil in the pursuit of Kamran’s happiness—and the man was repaid with only disloyalty and treason. This dark night had been wrought by Kamran’s actions alone; he understood that now. The entire Ardunian empire had been left vulnerable because he’d been frail of mind and body.
Never again.
Never again would he allow a woman to own his emotions; never again would he be made weak by such base temptations. He swore it then: this monster from the prophecy would die by his hand—he would drive a blade through her heart or die trying.
But first, Hazan.
Kamran caught the eye of a guard hovering—awaiting orders—and with a single glance he issued his first decree as king of Ardunia: Hazan would hang.
Kamran experienced no victory as he watched his former minister seized, then dragged away; he felt no triumph at the sound of Hazan’s feeble protests ringing out through the astonished silence of the room. No, Kamran suffered only the ascent of a terrifying madness as he forced himself upright, daring to bear weight on his injured arm in the process, and realizing only in the excruciating effort that his legs, too, had been badly burned. His skin and clothes were sticky with blood; his head felt leaden. It was a truth he was loath to admit: that he did not know how much longer he could stand here without the aid of a surgeon. Or a Diviner.
No. The royal Diviners were dead. Slaughtered by Cyrus. Kamran’s eyes squeezed shut at the reminder.
“Iblees.”
His eyes flew open at the sound of her soft, traitorous voice. Kamran’s heart began pounding anew, startling him with its intensity. He couldn’t decide then what disturbed him more: to realize that she and Cyrus shared a mutual friend in the devil, or to discover that his body still wanted her, still heated at the mere sound of her voice—
She had disappeared.
Panicked, Kamran searched for her and was unsuccessful; instead he saw Cyrus, still staring intently at what could only be Alizeh, who’d a moment ago been speaking—
Without warning, she materialized.
Alizeh stood in precisely the same spot, except now she appeared hazy, oscillating in and out of focus with a dizzying consistency.
Was she doing this to him? Had she access to dark magic?
Where once was Alizeh stood now a milky blur of movement, her voice warped and waterlogged, reverberating as if she were speaking from inside a glass jar.
“Ssssttt you you sspeakthe the the vvvvil . . .”
Kamran dragged bloody hands down his face. As if each revelation weren’t already more annihilating than the last—he was now blind and deaf, too?
“Ssssssendyyou you iiiinterest heeeee my my llllife?”
His injured legs failed as his mind fractured; he trembled, hands grasping at air as he sought purchase, and fell hard onto one badly burned leg. He nearly cried out in agony.
But then, a mercy—
The Tulanian king spoke, his words lucid: “Is it not obvious? He wants you to rule.”
A terrible thunder filled Kamran’s head. There was no time to rejoice in the restoration of his hearing. The demon-like monster with ice in its veins had been foretold to have formidable allies, and here was further evidence of the Diviners’ wisdom, of his grandfather’s warnings—
The devil himself was assisting her.
The crowd was growing louder now, and he could hear them, too, whispers having evolved into shouts and hysterics. Kamran was reminded once more that all the nobles of Ardunia were collected in this room; the highest ranking officials from across the empire had been brought together for an evening of decadence and celebration; instead, they would bear witness to the fall of the greatest empire in the world.
Kamran did not know how he would survive it.
He heard Cyrus laugh again, heard him say clearly: “A Jinn queen to rule the world. Oh, it’s so horribly seditious. The perfect revenge.”
Again, Kamran attempted to draw himself up. His head pounded with a vengeance, his eyesight still an uncertain thing. The room, the floor—Cyrus himself—were all perfectly clear, but Alizeh remained more nimbus than person, a series of halos stacked in the general shape of a body. Then again, just knowing where to aim might be enough.
This evening’s admissions had more than proven his grandfather’s every warning about the girl—and Kamran would die before he failed the man twice. His sword lay a few feet away, and though the distance seemed insurmountable, Kamran would force himself to clear it. He might be able to bury the blade in her heart now, kill her now, end this tragedy tonight.
He’d just managed to take an agonizing step toward his sword when the haze of her shifted away from Cyrus; then, in a flash of kismet, Kamran could see Alizeh’s face.
She looked terrified.
The sight speared him through the chest at the precise moment the cataracts in his eyes seemed to clear; her figure came suddenly into sharp focus and, oh, this was a cruel fate, indeed. Alizeh was an enemy possessed of a power he never could’ve imagined. Even now her shining eyes glittered with an emotion that destroyed him. Her guile was so graceful, so natural; she searched the room as if she were truly frantic.
Kamran cursed the wretched organ in his chest, then pounded a clenched fist against his sternum as if to kill it. In response, a terrible anguish ripped through his body, so brutal the sensation it took his breath away; it was as if a tree had planted in a single shot at his feet, the trunk suturing to his spine, tremendous branches pushing violently through his veins.
He doubled over, gasping, almost missing the moment when Alizeh glanced up in his direction and then bolted without warning, exiting the inferno once again unscathed.
Had she seen him reaching for his sword? Had she gleaned his intentions?
Alizeh was a maddening sight even as she fled, the gauzy layers of her gown having now been incinerated twice. She flew past in little more than scraps of transparent silk; he could see every lush curve of her body, the lithe shape of her legs, the swell of her breasts, and he hated himself for wanting her, even now. Hated himself for the hunger he felt as he watched her go, hated the instincts that screamed at him, despite all logical evidence to the contrary, that she was in danger—that he should go to her, protect her
—
“Wait— Where are you going?” Cyrus shouted. “We had a deal— Under no circumstances were you allowed to run away—”
We had a deal.
The words rang in his head, over and over, each syllable striking his mind like a scythe, drawing blood. By the angels, how many more blows need his body survive tonight?
“I must,” she cried, the agitated crowd leaping apart to let her pass. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but I have to leave— I need to find somewhere to hide, somewhere he won’t—”
At once Alizeh doubled over, as if struck by an invisible force, and was promptly jerked upward, into the air.
She screamed.
Kamran reacted without thinking, a rush of adrenaline propelling him upright, dregs of stupidity compelling him to cry out her name. He pushed as close to the edge of the flaming bastille as he dared, the anguish in his voice no doubt betraying him to the world, if not to himself—but he could not think on it then. Alizeh was being launched higher and higher in the air, twisting and screaming, and Kamran condemned himself for his tortured response to her suffering; even then he couldn’t fathom the battle being waged inside his body.
“Make it stop,” she screamed. “Put me down!”
Sudden understanding forced Kamran to look Cyrus in the eye. “You,” he said, hardly recognizing the rasp of his own voice. “You’re doing this to her.”
Cyrus’s expression darkened. “She’s done it to herself.”
Kamran was prevented from responding by the sound of yet another tortured cry. He spun around in time to see Alizeh spiraling toward the rafters—she was without a doubt in the grip of a very dark magic—and promptly lost his battle with sense. He could not fathom this chaos into order, could not answer the multitude of questions that hounded him.
Kamran felt unmoored as he watched her.
Alizeh was a force so powerful she claimed the devil as a friend, knew the sovereign of an enemy nation as an ally. She’d used dark magic to create illusions so compelling he’d truly believed she’d suffered physical blows to her hands, her throat, her face. She’d tricked even King Zaal into believing she was a helpless, ignorant servant girl. And yet, she sobbed then with a hysteria so believable that even he—
“You can see her.”
The statement startled him. Kamran turned back to Cyrus, assessing in an instant his enemy’s copper hair, his cold blue eyes. Of all the things
Cyrus might’ve said, this was particularly strange, and Kamran was too discerning to dismiss it as meaningless. That Cyrus appeared surprised Kamran could see her seemed to point to a simple inverse—
Perhaps others could not.
It was a theory that explained nothing yet seemed somehow vitally important. Kamran wondered then about the source of his temporary blindness, and renewed fear branched up his back.
“What,” Kamran said carefully, “did you do to her?” Cyrus did not answer.
Lazily, the southern king pushed himself off the column before bending to pick up his sword. He walked toward Kamran with affected unconcern, dragging the blade behind him like a dog on a leash, the eerie exhalation of steel against stone briefly overpowering the sounds of Alizeh’s screams.
“I thought she broke through the fire to punish me,” Cyrus was saying. “I see only now that she did so to protect you.”
There was a flicker in those blue irises, and for a second Cyrus betrayed himself. Beneath his placid surface was something desperate and unrestrained, if not broken. Kamran cataloged the moment as a kind of mercy, for he realized then that the young man was a king weaker than he appeared.
“You know her name,” Cyrus said softly.
Kamran felt a pulse of trepidation but said nothing.
“How,” Cyrus demanded, “did you come to know her name?”
When Kamran finally spoke, his voice was heavy, cold. “I might ask you the same question.”
“Indeed you might,” said Cyrus, who was lifting his sword by inches. “But then, it’s my prerogative to know the name of my bride.”
A sharp pain exploded in Kamran’s chest just as an earsplitting crash broke open the room. He fought back a cry, clasping his ribs as he fell once more to his knees, heaving through the brutality of the blow. Kamran had no idea what was happening to him, and there was no time to hazard a guess. He could only force his eyelids open in time to witness not merely the destruction of his home but the arrival of an enormous, iridescent dragon, the sight of which seemed to drain the blood from his body.
The Diviners would never have allowed a foreign beast to enter Ardunian skies.
But the Diviners were dead.
Kamran watched the dragon catch Alizeh just as she began a sudden, dizzying descent, the monstrous creature seating the young woman firmly on its back before launching upward once more. The animal gave a stalwart roar, flapped its leathery wings, and, in a blink, both beast and rider were gone, vanishing into the night through the cavernous hole newly blown through the palace wall.
In the proceeding chaos, Kamran could no longer deny the devastation of his mind.
The grief of losing his grandfather had only just begun to penetrate, and each subsequent betrayal had broken him not unlike a series of other small deaths, each one a violent injustice, each one demanding a period of mourning.
Zaal had been false. Hazan had been false. Alizeh— Alizeh had ruined him.
Somehow he still heard the uproar of the crowd, felt the oppressive heat of his cage, the insistent cold of the marble floor under his knees. He lacked the strength to stand; pain was streaking relentlessly across his body in a steady rhythm that showed no signs of abating. Slowly, Kamran lifted his head, looked Cyrus in the eye. He felt so raw his throat seemed to bleed as he spoke.
“Is it true?” he asked. “She’s really going to marry you?” Cyrus stepped forward, his sword at the ready. “Yes.” Kamran would not recover.
He grimaced as fresh pain exploded up his neck, across his shoulders.
The action was so unrehearsed even Cyrus frowned.
“Fascinating,” said the Tulanian king, who then lifted Kamran’s chin with the tip of his sword. Kamran, who could hardly breathe through the torment, still managed to jerk backward, the movement provoking a fresh deluge of suffering. “You appear to be dying.”
“No,” Kamran gasped, bracing his hands against the stone floor.
Cyrus almost laughed. “Unless you intend to follow in your grandfather’s footsteps, I don’t believe you have a choice in the matter.”
From where he drew the strength, Kamran did not know, but he heaved himself up off the floor with the kind of fortitude borne only of a broken man, a reckless one.
Kamran had been hollowed out.
In the space of an hour the threads of his entire life had come apart. He felt mad and feverish in the aftermath; a bit like he was moving through a nightmare. Somehow, the horrors had fortified him. He felt he had nothing left.
Nothing to lose.
He reached for his sword as if his arm wasn’t still bleeding out, as if the flesh of his legs had not been recently charred. It seemed a miracle at all that he managed to lift the blade, face his opponent.
He heard a storm of footfalls then, a chorus of concerned voices as a brigade of guards surged closer to the fiery ring—but Kamran stayed them with a single hand.
This was his fight to finish.
Cyrus glanced at these armed onlookers, then considered the prince for what felt like a long time.
“Very well,” the southern king said finally. “Never say I’m not merciful.
I’ll make this quick. You will not suffer.”
“And I,” Kamran said, the rasp of his voice like gravel, “will make certain that your torment is never-ending.”
A flash of anger and Cyrus’s sword cut through the air in a single, blinding strike, which Kamran met with surprising force, even as his broken body shook in the effort. His legs trembled, his arms screamed in anguish, but Kamran would not capitulate. He’d rather die fighting than surrender— and it was this thought that heated his chest, that generated within him a second life, a terrifying adrenaline.
Happily, he would perish in the effort.
With a guttural cry he managed to push against his opponent, launching Cyrus backward, freeing his sword. Kamran advanced without delay, moving now with shocking swiftness as he lunged, as Cyrus parried. For a time all Kamran heard was steel; he saw nothing but the sheen of metal, waves of blades crashing, escaping.
Cyrus feinted, then sprang forward with surprising alacrity—and too late, Kamran felt the burn of his injury. He heard the panicked shrieks of the crowd, but he couldn’t see the laceration; in fact he was hardly able to identify which aspect of his body had been injured.
There was no time.
Kamran moved to stave off a second attack, experiencing a brief moment of triumph when Cyrus fell back with a muttered oath. The
southern king rallied without delay, meeting Kamran blow for blow in a series of strikes so precisely choreographed even Kamran was not immune to the beauty of it. There was a rare pleasure in fighting a worthy adversary; in testing, without restraint, the potential of one’s power. But this evidence of Cyrus’s prowess—and lightning-fast reflexes—only cemented Kamran’s certainty that the southern king had earlier allowed Alizeh to overpower him. To the prince, this behavior pointed to one of only two explanations: either she was his superior in their arrangement, or he hadn’t wanted to hurt her. Perhaps both.
Maybe they really were betrothed.
This shattering thought brought him alive with an alarming strength, the breadth of which remained unfamiliar to him. He knew only that his instincts were sharper than he’d ever felt them, and he soon saw a faint strain in Cyrus’s face, the sheen of sweat at his brow no doubt mirrored upon his own features. Both were breathing hard, but even as blood dripped down Kamran’s hands, his every motion staining the marble underfoot, he did not tire.
Again, he advanced—
The young men crossed swords in a movement so violent Kamran felt the tremor move through his entire body. They were trapped in a herculean standstill; adversaries locking eyes through the glimmer of their blades.
Then, for no fathomable reason, Cyrus faltered.
It was only a fraction of a second that the Tulanian king frowned, that his focus was distracted, but Kamran did not misuse the opportunity; with brute force he bore down, compelling Cyrus to fall back into a crouch. Kamran had the advantage now—all he had to do was break his opponent. There would be great satisfaction in spearing Cyrus through the heart; Kamran already knew he would have him disemboweled. He would display the bloody organs under a glass cloche in the town square, let the maggots find them and feast freely.
“I feel you should know,” Cyrus said heavily, the fatigue of exertion apparent on his face. “That something is happening to you. To your skin.”
This, Kamran ignored.
Cyrus was trying to unsettle him, and he would not allow it, not when he was this close to victory. With a sudden cry, Kamran propelled his opponent back a final time—and Cyrus fell to the floor with a harsh exhale, his sword clattering as it struck marble.
Kamran wasted no time, approaching his fallen rival with a ferocious determination. One final time he raised his sword—
And froze.
A breathtaking paralysis took hold of his body where he stood, so severe the sensation that Kamran could hardly breathe. He watched, as if pressed between panes of glass, as Cyrus clambered to his feet, sheathed his sword, retrieved his staff, and searched for his hat. Once the strange article was settled firmly on the tyrant’s head, he walked up to Kamran’s statue and smiled.
“There is very little honor left in me, Melancholy King. Certainly not enough to die when I deserve it.”
In the distance, someone screamed.
Kamran thrashed against the prison of his own body, but he felt his lungs weakening by the second, his organs being compressed from the outside in.
Cyrus’s smile did not waver.
“Unfortunate as it is,” he went on, “a flicker of humanity persists in animating my flesh. So I will leave you tonight with a beating heart. Anyway, it’s better if you live, isn’t it? Better for you to suffer consciously, to grieve your vile grandfather, to live every day with the knowledge that you have been betrayed not only by those you loathe, but by those you love
—and to fail, tremendously, while trying to lead a pathetic empire.”
Kamran felt his heart seizing in his chest, his eyes burning with the threat of emotion.
No, he wanted to cry. No, no—
“I look forward to fighting you again,” said Cyrus softly, tipping his hat. “But first, you’ll have to find me.”
Then he vanished.
