CYRUS MADE NO MOVE.
He only stared at Alizeh, hatred flashing in his gaze with a fervor that— for a moment—nearly scared her.
It was a good thing, she reasoned.
Cyrus had been vicious with his tongue, true, but he’d been otherwise docile, presenting no threat of physical harm—which had lulled her into a false sense of security. This was dangerous; were Alizeh to underestimate him she’d pay dearly for the oversight—as Cyrus, she would take care to remember, could be quite frightening indeed. She’d not allow herself to forget how easily he’d murdered Zaal; how casually he’d suggested killing Miss Huda; how confidently he’d lifted his sword to slay Kamran.
Kamran.
She still didn’t know whether he was dead.
A sharp pain bore through her at the realization, steeling her resolve anew. If he’d killed Kamran, she’d gouge his eyes out. She’d gouge his eyes out and force them down his throat.
“I said choose your weapon,” Alizeh repeated angrily.
Still, Cyrus did not move. “And you? From where will you procure a weapon of your own?”
“I do not require one.”
He actually laughed at that, a dry sound that inspired no change to his stony expression. “Of all the trials I’ve recently endured,” he said, turning his face up to the sky. “You are by far the most excruciating.”
“I’m pleased to hear it.”
“It’s not a compliment,” he said with some heat, meeting her eyes again. “And I will not fight you.”
“Then let me go.”
He made a small bow, a faint gesture with his hand. “Go.”
Alizeh stared at him a beat, then spun around, taking in the landscape to which he’d gestured, the sights she’d already seen: the cliffs, the waterfalls, the devastating drop to the river below. He was all but suggesting she die to escape him.
Heavens, but she was dealing with a madman.
Cyrus shook his head at her, almost smiled. “Is the fall not worth your freedom?”
Her anger only intensified. “You are despicable.”
“And you are the worst coward,” he said. “Even while you pretend at bravery.”
“How dare you,” she said, her fists clenching. “How dare you slander my person when you know nothing about me—”
“A hypocrite, too, how divine,” he said lazily. “Meanwhile, I was forced to listen to you disparage me at length in front of my own mother, and still I managed not to take up arms against you.”
“Perhaps because you found it difficult to disagree with my assessment of your character.”
“Character?” He raised his eyebrows. “Oh, yes, do let’s discuss your character. You’ve been threatening to kill me for hours—despite having had ample opportunity to do so—and now you’re picking a fight when you know full well that I won’t lift a finger against you—that I can’t, even if I’d love nothing more than to see your smart mouth shut forever.
“You think you’re so cunning,” he said, stepping toward her now, “but these last few hours have already taught me everything I need to know about your character.”
Alizeh wanted to throttle him.
“Choose your weapon,” she said again, but he was still striding forward, his eyes catching intermittent rays of light as he moved, the flash and flare constricting his pupils at different rates. The effect on his eyes was strange; his irises seemed incapable of deciding on a color, vacillating between shades of blue and making him appear occasionally inhuman. It caused Alizeh to wonder whether that was how people saw her, as well.
The fraction of a moment would cost her.
Too late, Alizeh realized that Cyrus was not slowing down. She was forced to stumble back as he stalked toward her—his forward strides increasingly confident, her hasty retreat ever more fumbling. Only when she became suddenly, desperately aware of the fact that she was mere inches from the edge of the cliff did her instincts reassemble; quickly she halted him with her hands, staying his march with a firm shove he met with strength of his own, pushing valiantly against the force she exerted and somehow conceding only inches in the process.
Alizeh didn’t understand. She was much stronger than him—she should’ve been able to throw him back—
But Alizeh was weak, too.
She still trembled with cold, with the deliriousness of one who’d hardly slept in days, with the fatigue of a mind that had been all but shattered. Alizeh did not need food, but she still required sustenance—and the taste of mist in her mouth upon arrival had been her only drink of water in several hours. Adrenaline was losing its effect on her; she was beginning to buckle under these myriad pressures, and worse: Cyrus was confusing her senses. He no longer wore a coat, for the article he’d lent her earlier had been tossed into turbulent skies, and in fighting her strength now he was only pressing himself more firmly into her hands, the thin sweater he wore doing little to mask the firm musculature of his body, the soft strength of his chest. The distracting heat and sensation of him was proving altogether too intimate an experience. She did not want to know him like this.
“What are you doing?” she practically gasped. “I told you to choose—” Unexpectedly, Cyrus smiled.
For the first time since she’d met the reprobate, he truly smiled. He grinned like a boy, not a man, the infinitesimal flash of his white teeth rendering him almost childlike, softening him into something more mischievous than vengeful. The sight was distracting enough that she failed to notice her hands had fallen from his chest, that his hands had wasted no time landing at her waist. He gripped her firmly, stepping so close their bodies nearly aligned in all the wrong places; he was crowding her with his heat, with his height, with his unrelenting stare. She could hardly fuse together the wires in her brain; she was too tired, too unaccustomed to such closeness, too overwhelmed by the scent of him, the stubble along his jaw, the strength she felt in his hands, on her hips, his fingers sinking into her flesh. It was but a moment that she froze, confusion costing her the opportunity to regroup, and she knew two things then with absolute certainty: First, that she had failed.
Second, that he had lied.
How had the nosta failed to sense this? He was going to kill her. He was laughing when he lifted her off her feet, laughing when, without warning, he tossed her off the cliff.
Alizeh screamed.
“I choose dragons,” he called after her.
Her arms and legs pinwheeled as she fell backward into the sky, hands fumbling in vain for purchase as she cried out in fear, in rage, plummeting all the while from a terrible height for the third time in less than a day.
She didn’t understand why this kept happening to her.
Alizeh, who had enough experience now for comparison, could say with confidence that this was the most terrifying fall of the three, made worse by the fact that she was falling in the wrong direction, growing only more disoriented as she tumbled, her limbs tangling as she struggled to right herself. The drop was so immeasurable she could hardly make out the river below, and she braced herself for the force of impact, praying she’d at least die instantaneously upon hitting the water. It’d be far worse to survive the fall, she knew, and sustain injuries that would kill her slowly. Either way, she could look forward to excruciating pain.
Oh, Alizeh was tired.
Tired of feeling she had no control over her life, tired of being manipulated by the devil, tired of living in fear, tired of fear itself. The dark truth she seldom revealed even to herself was that sometimes she wanted nothing more than to break, to be weak, to tear off her armor and give in.
How long would she be forced to fight for her life? More important: Was her life really worth so much effort?
It troubled her that she had no answer.
Her emotional and physical exhaustion were in fact so acute she almost welcomed the idea of closing her eyes forever, and with a terrible shudder, she squeezed them shut.
Alizeh had no idea whether she would die, but she knew she could expend no more energy fighting gravity. She let her limbs be flung akimbo, let her hair snake around her face, listened to the tatters of her dress rap relentlessly in the wind. She was finally surrendering her life to fate when she heard an unmistakable, deafening roar.
Alizeh’s eyes flew open.
She stared, thunderstruck, as a flight of dragons broke from the waters below, a starburst of behemoths rising up to meet her. Another earsplitting roar, then a fifth and sixth joined the chorus, and Alizeh set aside all thought of relenting to the skies. Death by water was one thing, but she was determined she would not be eaten alive by dragons.
It was fresh terror that inspired her to summon the lingering strength she possessed; and through nothing short of a miracle she managed to flip herself into a position reminiscent of an exclamation, her head pointing to the water. She hoped to descend more rapidly this way, to escape the dragons and, with any luck, break the surface with less brutality—but she’d
hardly a moment to celebrate her success before one of the shimmering creatures swooped toward her with a terrifying screech, its enormous mouth yawning open upon approach.
It was no use.
Alizeh screamed, pulling her knees up and cradling herself like a child, as if the cold comfort of her own arms would make any difference. The dragon snapped her up into its jaws with a violent jerk, and in the second Alizeh expected to be devoured, the animal only soared upward with astonishing speed, the sudden motion throwing her back against its teeth, which pierced her skin with a violence that tore the breath from her body. Alizeh felt the excruciating burn of the injuries, the telltale moisture of her clear blood oozing, and grew suddenly light-headed. The whiplash of descension and ascension had wrought havoc upon her mind.
Through layers of distorted awareness, Alizeh grew cognizant of her own confusion; she didn’t understand why she was not yet dead. She felt the graze of a fresh breeze against her skin, so different from the humid mouth of an animal, and was abruptly released; her body rolled to a gentle stop onto damp ground, her fingers catching blades of grass.
Alizeh groaned.
With a whopping flap of its enormous wings, the dragon took off into the sky, releasing a screech as pain lanced viciously through her body. For a worrying moment, Alizeh thought she might throw up.
It was with great bitterness that she realized she’d just experienced Cyrus’s idea of a joke.
She wondered why she didn’t hear him then, why the degenerate did not show himself, applaud himself for a job well done. She wondered, as she forced herself up, nearly biting through her tongue to keep from crying out, what Sarra would think of this performance of her son’s affection.
Alizeh prepared herself to ask, swinging around tipsily for a glimpse of her captors—when she realized she was alone.
The dragon had deposited her somewhere new.
Alizeh stood at the open mouth of a monumental structure, a series of stone archways closing around her like a set of ribs, the gaps between them lashed by golden rays. The soft grass underfoot was dense and springy; tiny orange flowers bloomed against her toes. Birds tittered, fluttering between arches as they sang, their colorful plumage glittering in the morning glow. A gentle wind pillowed her weary face, the gust at once strong and soft
enough that she let herself rest against it, just until it pulled away, coaxing her to look right, where she was presented with a sight so breathtaking she went slack, almost forgetting about her injuries.
The stupendous waterfalls appeared both smaller and calmer from this vantage point, the stone columns providing a frame through which the magnificence of the scene was presented in all its glory. Alizeh had collected enough visual information by then to deduce she’d been deposited somewhere high up in the castle, and she couldn’t help but wonder whether this secluded, heavenly garden was meant to be hers.
Surely Cyrus had meant to toss her in a dungeon instead?
As she followed the path, she came upon a small table and chairs, the three of which were positioned just so under a specific trio of arches, where flowering vines had snaked up the stone, braiding natural shade across the tops. The decadent fragrance of the blooms scented the air so completely Alizeh felt compelled to stop; for a long moment she closed her eyes, inhaling the perfume as a flurry of air caressed her cheeks, stung her wounds, curled her hair.
When she opened her eyes she spotted a set of doors in the distance. Alizeh approached these cautiously, the grass underfoot disappearing under a series of silky, patterned rugs, their vivid colors standing out in stark contrast to the green path.
Inside, Alizeh discovered an oasis.
A soaring, domed ceiling crowned the central room, marble tiles arranged in geometric patterns along the floors, over which ran yards of lush red rugs that spanned the room. Massive windows had been thrown open to let in the light, the welcome breeze ruffling the sheets of an enormous bed that sat, silky and decadent, in the center of everything, quilts folded down in invitation. Alizeh walked through it all as if in a daze.
Was this meant to be hers?
If this was meant to be hers, she thought she could understand why someone might make a deal with the devil. For the space of a single moment, something like this might seem worthwhile.
But then, there was more.
There were more rooms beyond this one: an opulent sitting room; separate rooms for the bath and toilet; a small courtyard with a dining table
—
It was only as Alizeh wound her way through these spaces that she realized she’d been delivered here in reverse. The entrance to this wing was not through the bedroom; it was in fact just ahead of her. An imposing wooden door seemed to wink at her from where it stood, daring her to open it.
She would not.
Not yet.
She stole into the bathroom instead, locating a stock of bed linens in a cabinet and quickly tearing a sheet into strips. Half of these she used to mop and stanch the blood of her wounds, the remainder she repurposed as bandages, wrapping them neatly around her injuries. With a heavy sigh, she slumped against the wall. All she desired in the world at the moment was to take a warm bath, swaddle herself in clean clothes, and sleep for an eternity. The first two seemed impossible in her current state; she didn’t think she’d survive the time it would take to draw a bath, and neither did she know where to find a change of clothes. But if she could only make her way
back to the bed, she might yet accomplish the third.
She peered through the wrong doorway in her search, discovering inside a luxurious dressing room, which, as curiosity coaxed her forward, she found to be fully stocked with garments so fine she was afraid to touch them. She only dared graze the articles with the tips of her fingers, the sight of such superb textiles sparking to life a slumbering part of her brain; Alizeh suddenly itched for her sewing supplies. Without thinking she patted herself down, reaching for pockets that did not exist, looking about herself for a luggage she no longer owned.
With a terrible fright, Alizeh froze.
Comprehension dawned by aching degrees, dread flooding her body as memories filled her head, the chaos of the last twelve hours trying desperately to sort itself into chronological order.
Alizeh clapped a hand over her mouth.
Only then did she realize where she’d left her carpet bag.
