ALIZEH HAD BROKEN NO FEWER than seven different laws since fleeing the scene with the prince. She was breaking one right then, daring to remain invisible as she entered Baz House. The consequences for such offenses were severe; if she were caught materializing she’d be hung at dawn.

Still, she felt she was left with little recourse.

Alizeh hurried to the hearth, stripping her coat, unlacing her boots. Public undressing of any kind was considered an act of stateliness, one deemed beneath those of her station. She might be forgiven for removing her snoda late at night, but a servant was forbidden from removing any essential article of clothing in common gathering areas.

Not a coat, not a scarf. Certainly not her shoes.

Alizeh took a deep breath, reminding herself that she was invisible to Clay eyes. She suspected there were a handful of Jinn employed at Baz House, but as she’d not been allowed to speak with any of the others—and none had dared compromise their positions by reaching out—she’d no way of knowing for certain. She hoped that any who might come upon her now might be willing to look the other way.

Alizeh drew nearer the fire, trying as best she could to roast her sopping jacket and boots. Alizeh had a spare dress, but only one jacket and one pair of boots, and there was little chance the articles would dry out overnight in the musty closet that was her bedroom. Though perhaps if she remained indoors all day tomorrow she’d not have need of her jacket—at least not until her appointment with Miss Huda. The idea gave her some comfort.

When the jacket lost the worst of its wet, Alizeh slipped her arms back into the still-damp piece, her body tensing at the sensation. She wished she could lay the article out by the fire overnight, but she’d not risk leaving it

here, where it might be noticed by anyone. She picked up her boots then, holding them as close to the flames as she dared.

Alizeh shivered without warning, nearly dropping the shoes in the fire. She calmed her shaking hands and chattering teeth by taking steady, even breaths, clenching her jaw against the chill. When she felt she could bear it, she put her mostly wet boots back on.

Only then did Alizeh finally sink down onto the stone hearth, her trembling legs giving out beneath her.

She removed her illusion of invisibility—fully dressed, she’d not be reprimanded for taking a moment by the fire—and sighed. She closed her eyes, leaned her head against the outer brick. Would she allow herself to think about what transpired tonight? She wasn’t sure she could bear it, and yet—

So much had gone wrong.

Alizeh still worried over her treasonous comments to the apothecarist, and a bit about the man who’d tried to attack her—no doubt to steal her parcels—but most of all she worried about the prince, whose attentions toward her were so baffling as to be absurd. Where had he come from? Why had he cared to help her? He’d touched her just as the devil had foretold, as she’d seen in her nightmares the very night before—

But why?

What had possessed him to touch her so? Worse: Was he not a murderer of children? Why, then, had he acted with such compassion toward a servant girl?

Alizeh dropped her head in her hands.

Her throbbing, bandaged hands. The medicine had been all but washed out of her wounds, and the ache had returned in full force. If she allowed herself to consider for even a moment the devastating loss of her packages, she thought she might faint from heartache.

Six coppers.

The medicine had cost her nearly all the coin she had, which meant she’d not be able to afford replacements without further work. And yet, without her medicine, Alizeh didn’t know whether her hands would recover quickly enough; Miss Huda would no doubt require the five dresses in short order, as the royal festivities would be arranged without delay.

Hers was a simple tragedy: without work Alizeh would not be able to afford medicine; without medicine she might not be able to work. It tore her

heart to pieces to think of it. No longer was she able to conquer her despair. She felt the familiar prick of tears, swallowed against the burn in her throat.

The cruelty of her life seemed suddenly unbearable.

She knew her thoughts to be infantile even as they arrived, but she lacked the strength to stop herself from wondering then, as she’d done on so many other nights, why it was that others had parents, a family, a safe home, and she did not. Why had she been born with this curse in her eyes? Why was she tortured and hated merely for the way her body had been forged? Why had her people been so tragically condemned alongside the devil?

For centuries before the bloodshed between Jinn and Clay had begun, Jinn had built their kingdoms in the most uninhabitable lands, in the most brutal climates—if only to be far from the reach of Clay civilization. They’d wanted to exist quietly, peacefully, in a state of near invisibility. But Clay, who had long considered it their divine right—no, duty—to slaughter the beings they saw only as scions of the devil, had mercilessly hunted Jinn for millennia, determined to expunge the earth of their existence.

Her people had paid a high price for this delusion.

In her weaker moments Alizeh longed to lash out, to allow her anger to shatter the cage of her self-control. She was stronger than any housekeeper who struck her; she was capable of greater force, greater strength and speed and resilience than any Clay body that oppressed her.

And yet.

Violence alone, she knew, would accomplish nothing. Anger without direction was only hot air, there and gone. She’d seen this happen over and over to her own people. Jinn had tried to flout the rules, to exercise their natural abilities despite the restrictions of Clay law, and they’d all suffered. Daily, dozens of Jinn bodies had been strung up in the square like bunting, more charred at the stake, still others beheaded, disemboweled.

Their divided efforts were no good.

Only the unification of Jinn might hope to affect real change, but such a feat was hard to hope for in an age where Jinn had fled their ancestral homes, scattering across the globe in search of work and shelter and anonymity. Their numbers had always been small, and their physical advantages had offered them much protection, but they’d lost hundreds of thousands of people over the last centuries. What was left of them could hardly be cobbled together overnight.

The fire snapped in its brick cove, flames flickering urgently. Alizeh wiped her eyes.

It was rare that she allowed herself to think on these cruelties. It did not comfort her to speak aloud her agonies the way it did for some; she did not enjoy reanimating the string of corpses she dragged with her everywhere. No, Alizeh was the kind of person who could not dwell on her own sorrows for fear of drowning in their bottomless depths; it was her physical pain and exhaustion tonight that’d weakened her defenses against these darker meditations—which, once torn free from their graves, were not easily returned to the earth.

Her tears fell now with abandon.

Alizeh knew she could survive long hours of hard labor, knew she could persevere through any physical hardship. It was not the burden of her work or the pain in her hands that broke her—it was the loneliness. It was the friendlessness of her existence; the days on end she spent without the comfort that might be derived from a single sympathetic heart.

It was grief.

The price she still paid with her soul for the loss of her parents’ lives. It was the fear she was forced to live with every day, the torment that was born from an inability to trust even a friendly merchant to spare her the noose.

Alizeh had never felt more alone.

She scrubbed at her eyes again and then, for the umpteenth time that day, searched her pockets for her handkerchief. Its disappearance had not bothered her so much the first few times she searched for it, but the loss was beginning to worry her now that she considered it might not be misplaced—but well and truly lost.

The handkerchief had been her mother’s.

It was the only personal possession Alizeh had salvaged intact from the ashes of her family home. Her memories of the dreadful night she lost her mother were strange and horrible. Strange that she remembered feeling warm—truly warm—for the first time in her life. Horrible that the roaring flames that engulfed her mother had only made Alizeh want to sleep. She still remembered her mother’s screams that night, the wet handkerchief she’d used to cover her daughter’s face.

There’d been so little time to flee.

They’d come in the night, when Alizeh and her sole surviving parent had been abed. The two tried, of course, to escape, but a wooden rafter had fallen from the ceiling, pinning them both to the ground. Had it not been for the blow she’d taken to the head, her mother might’ve been strong enough to lift the beam from their bodies that night.

For hours, Alizeh screamed.

For what felt like an eternity, she screamed. And yet, their home had been so expertly hidden away that there was no one to hear the sound. Alizeh clung to her mother’s body as it burned, taking the embroidered handkerchief from her parent’s limp hand and gathering it up in her own fist.

Alizeh had remained with her dead mother until daylight. If not for the eventual disintegration of the beam that trapped her body, Alizeh would’ve stayed there forever, would’ve died of dehydration alongside her mother’s charred flesh. Instead, she emerged from the inferno without a scratch, her skin pristine, her clothes in tatters, the handkerchief all she’d possessed intact.

It was the second time in her life she’d survived a fire unscathed, and Alizeh had wondered then, as she often did, whether the ice that ran through her veins would ever truly matter.

She startled, suddenly, at the rattle of the back door.

Alizeh dared not breathe as she got to her feet. She pressed herself against the wall, tried to calm her racing heart. Her mind knew she had little reason to be afraid here, within the protection of this grand home, but her frayed nerves could not comprehend such logic. Upon entering Baz House she’d been single-minded in her haste to reach the fire; in the process she’d forgotten to lock the kitchen door.

She wondered whether to risk doing so now.

In a split second, Alizeh made the decision. She flew to the door and threw the bolt just as the handle began to turn, and when the mechanical movement came to a sudden halt, she sagged with relief. She fell back against the door, clasping both hands to her chest.

She could hardly catch her breath.

The knock that came next was so unexpected she jumped a foot in the air. She looked around for signs of servants lurking, but none appeared. One glance at the clock and she was reminded: anyone with sense was now abed. She alone was left to manage the destitute stragglers no doubt seeking

shelter from the rain. It broke Alizeh’s heart to deny them relief from the desperation she understood only too well, but she also knew she had no choice—not unless she wanted to be tossed into the street alongside them.

The knock came again, and this time she felt it, felt the door shake with it. She pressed her back harder against the wood, keeping it from moving in its frame. There was a brief reprieve.

Then: “I beg your pardon, but is someone there? I have a rather urgent delivery.”

Alizeh went deathly still.

She recognized his voice right away; indeed, she doubted she’d ever forget it. He’d discomposed her with a few gentle words, had stripped her of all composure with mere syllables. Even then she’d recognized the strangeness of her reaction—she did not think it common to be so moved by the sound of a voice—but his was rich and melodic, and when he spoke she seemed to feel it inside her.

Another knock. “Hello?”

She steadied herself and said, “Sir, you may leave any deliveries at the door.”

There was a beat of silence.

The prince’s voice seemed changed when he next spoke. Softer. “I pray you will forgive me that I cannot, miss. These packages are very important, and I fear they’ll be destroyed in the rain.”

For a moment, Alizeh wondered whether this wasn’t a cruel trick; no doubt he’d come to arrest her for vanishing illegally into the night. There seemed no other plausible explanation.

Certainly the prince of Ardunia had not braved a torrential downpour to personally deliver a stock of trivial goods to the lowly servant residing at Baz House? And at this late hour?

No, she could not believe it.

“Please, miss.” His voice again. “I should only like to return the parcels to their owner.”

Alizeh felt suddenly awake with fear. She supposed a different person might be flattered by such attentions, but Alizeh could not help but be wary, for not only did she doubt his motives, but she couldn’t imagine how he’d known to find her when she’d said but a few words in his presence.

She swallowed, squeezing her eyes shut.

Then again, what did any of it matter if there was a chance she might be returned her parcels? To Alizeh, those packages were everything; without them, her immediate future appeared nothing short of disastrous. If the prince had come all this way only to torture her, she couldn’t see what he might gain by it, for she was perfectly capable of defending herself.

No, what confounded her above all else was why the devil had shown her this young man’s face.

Perhaps tonight she would finally know. Alizeh took a deep breath and turned the lock.

The door groaned as it opened, bringing with it a shower of windswept rain. She quickly stepped aside, allowing the prince entrée, for he was, as she suspected, soaked to the bone. His arms were crossed tightly against his chest, his face obscured almost entirely by the hood of his cloak.

He closed the kitchen door behind him.

Alizeh took several steps back. She felt horribly exposed meeting him like this, without her snoda. She knew there was little to hide, not now that he’d already seen her face in full, had borne witness to her strange eyes.

Still. Habit was hard to overcome.

Wordlessly, the prince unhooked the satchel from his body and held it out to her. “The packages are within. I trust they’re all accounted for.”

Alizeh’s hands were shaking.

Had he really come all this way only to deliver her a kindness?

She tried to affect calm as she opened the bag and was uncertain of her success. One at a time, she withdrew the packages, balancing them carefully in the crook of her arm. They were all there, only slightly worse for wear.

Alizeh couldn’t quell the sigh of relief that escaped her then. Fresh tears pricked her eyes and she blinked them away, composing herself as she returned the bag to its owner.

The prince froze as he accepted the satchel.

He appeared to be staring at her, but with much of his face so hidden from view, Alizeh couldn’t be sure.

“Your eyes,” he said quietly. “They just”—he shook his head an inch, as if to clear it—“I could’ve sworn they just changed color.”

Alizeh retreated farther, putting several pieces of furniture between them. Her thudding heart would not slow. “Please accept my sincerest gratitude,” she said. “You’ve rendered me an unaccountable service by

returning my packages. Truly, I do not know how to thank you. I am in your debt, sir.”

She winced.

She should have said sire, should she not?

Thankfully, the prince in question did not seem to take offense. Instead, he pulled back his hood, revealing his face in full for the first time. Alizeh took a sharp breath and a step back, catching herself against a chair.

It was mortifying, truly, that she could not bear to look at him.

She’d seen his face in her nightmare, but rendered in real life the effect was entirely different; he was startling to behold in the flesh, the sharp planes of his face illuminated by firelight. He had piercing eyes the color of coal, his olive skin so golden it seemed to glow. Indeed there was something almost unnaturally illuminated about him—as if he was limned with light around the edges—and she could not pinpoint its origin.

He took a step toward her.

“First they were blue,” he said softly. “Then brown. Silver. Ah. Now they’re brown again.”

She stiffened. “Blue.”

“Stop, I beg you.”

He smiled. “I see now why you never remove your snoda.”

Alizeh lowered her eyes and said, “You cannot know that I never remove my snoda.”

“No,” he said, and she heard the humor in his voice. “I daresay you’re right.”

“I must bid you good night,” she said, and turned to go. “Wait. Please.”

Alizeh froze, her body turned toward the exit. She wanted desperately to take her parcels up to her room, where she might reapply the miraculous salves to her injuries. Pain was lancing across her palms, her throat.

She held the back of her hand to her forehead.

That she was warm at all meant she was warmer than usual, though she consoled herself with the knowledge that there might, at the moment, be several reasons for her elevated temperature.

Slowly she turned around, locking eyes with the prince.

“You must forgive my inability to grant you an audience at this hour,” she said quietly. “I’ve no doubt you are generous enough to comprehend the

difficulty of my position. I’ve precious few hours to sleep before the work bell tolls, and I must return to my quarters with all possible haste.”

The prince seemed taken aback by this, and indeed took a step back. “Of course,” he said softly. “Forgive me.”

“There is nothing to forgive.” She bobbed a neat curtsy. “Yes.” He blinked. “Good night.”

Alizeh turned the corner and waited in the dark, her heart racing, for the sound of the back door opening, then closing. When she was certain the prince was gone, she returned quietly to the kitchen to lock up and bank the fire.

Only then did she realize she was not alone.