Page 17 of Every Spiral of Fate (This Woven Kingdom #4)

Sixteen

ALIZEH WENT COLD WITH PANIC .

By degrees Cyrus returned the room to its previous illumination, and as the shadows cleared from the corners, she thought she saw a flash of fear in his eyes.

“It’s not a warning,” said Cyrus. “It’s a threat.”

Hazan exhaled slowly. “I see that now.”

“They don’t want us to reach the mountains,” said Alizeh, almost to herself.

“How did you decode it?” Kamran asked Cyrus.

“The message was activated by blood,” said the king. “It took little encouragement to reveal its contents.”

“Deen’s blood?” cried Omid.

“ Heavens ,” said Huda.

Hazan frowned. “So it wasn’t poison?”

“Not exactly,” said Cyrus.

“Black magic, then?” asked Kamran.

Cyrus shook his head. “We don’t have time for this. We must prepare to leave—”

“We cannot prepare to leave if we don’t know what we’re running from!” said Huda. “I should like to know what’s happening!”

“As would I,” said Alizeh quietly.

Cyrus looked at her, then looked away.

“Very well,” he said at last. His next words he directed to Omid, who was still leaning against Alizeh, looking shaken. “You asked why it might be worse than poison. It’s worse because it’s not simple.”

Cyrus lifted his eyes to the group.

“Real black magic can only be created with the intercession of the devil. This is, instead, a crude strain. An abomination.”

“What does that mean?” asked Hazan. “What defines a crude strain of magic?”

Cyrus hesitated as he considered them, as if weighing how much to say. “Do any of you know why Diviners exist?” he asked.

“To make magic?” offered Huda.

“Diviners do not make magic,” said Cyrus patiently. “They manipulate magic.”

When the room lapsed into silence and no one else chanced a response, Cyrus seemed genuinely surprised. Perhaps disappointed. “No one knows the answer?”

“How the devil are we supposed to know why they exist?” said Kamran irritably. “They’re literally shrouded in mystery. I always thought their purpose was to serve the crown. Making trinkets and magical objects to help protect the empire and so on.”

Cyrus stiffened, as if the answer had personally offended him. “You thought their purpose was to make trinkets for the crown ?”

“It’s not as if they offer tours of the temple,” Kamran shot back. “They don’t even have names! You can’t see their faces. They rarely ever speak—”

“You expect to be king of the largest empire on earth,” said Cyrus, struggling to moderate his voice, “and it never once occurred to you to seek out the answer to this question in the pursuit of your own self-interest? Not even when your Diviners hold all the magic of your empire in their exclusive possession?”

“I’ve never—” Kamran frowned. “Wait, what do you mean?” He appeared to be trading his anger for confusion. “I thought they answered to the king.”

Cyrus almost laughed, though the sound was dark. “Diviners answer to no one.”

“They don’t even bow before the king,” added Omid, finding his voice. “I would know. I lived with them for a little while.”

Cyrus stilled, appraising Omid as if for the first time. “The Diviners allowed you to live with them?”

“In Ardunia,” said the boy, nodding. “I was the one who found them after— Well, when you— After you—you—”

“After I killed them,” Cyrus said quietly.

“Yes,” Omid said, exhaling the word in terror.

“ You found them after I killed them.” Cyrus had gone uncomfortably stiff. “You, of all people.”

Omid nodded.

The room was gripped then by a suffocating tension. Alizeh looked away, the golden gleam of her wedding band catching her eye.

Every time she felt she was close to unspooling Cyrus’s character—when she felt convinced she’d finally cracked something essential about him—he’d manage to remind her why they’d entered into this hellish bargain to begin with. She’d nearly forgotten his list of crimes.

Worse, she wanted to forgive them all.

“They knew it was going to happen,” Omid said into the silence.

Alizeh looked up at him.

“Not this again,” muttered Kamran.

“It’s true,” said the boy. He drew away from Alizeh, gaining steam. “No one believes me, but I swear they knew they were going to die—”

Inscrutable emotion flared across Cyrus’s face.

“What?” said Hazan, turning to focus on Omid. “Why do you say that?”

Omid shook his head, shooting a defiant look at Kamran. “All due respect, sire, I was there when they’d sent messages to other Diviners across the empire. Their replacements had begun their journeys into Setar days before they died—”

“What can you mean?” asked Huda. “Why would they need replacements?”

“The royal city requires a quorum to keep the protective enchantments in place,” Hazan tried to explain. “After death, they’d need to be succeeded—”

“And they’d given me the Sif,” Omid added, his voice rising. “They’d given it to me just hours before they were murdered, it was no coincidence!”

“They gave you a Sif?” said Cyrus, astonished. “You?”

“He used it to save my life,” said Kamran, glaring at Cyrus. “After you’d left me paralyzed and nearly dead.”

“ What? ” said Alizeh.

“They knew,” Omid said with greater insistence now. “They knew they were going to die and they knew I would need to save the prince—”

“Not that this isn’t fascinating,” said Hazan, “but what does any of it have to do with our current predicament?”

“I don’t—” Omid retreated a step, faltering. “I don’t know, I just— I always wondered why they let him kill them.”

Omid looked up at Cyrus then. They all did.

“ Let him? ” said Huda, turning to the boy. “My dear, surely you’re mistaken? Surely Diviners wouldn’t have let him murder anyone?”

When Cyrus said nothing, choosing instead to study the middle distance, Omid grew visibly angry.

“They did let you kill them, didn’t they?” said the child, clenching his fists. “Why won’t you admit it?”

“Omid,” said Alizeh, staring between them. “Perhaps we shouldn’t—”

“Admit it,” Omid cried, turning on the king.

“I will admit,” said Cyrus quietly, “that I killed them.”

“But they let you do it! They let you do it and I want to know why—”

Kamran made a furious sound. “This is absurd. He’s confessed with his own breath that he slaughtered a halo of Diviners, and we’re arguing about it?”

“We’re not arguing about it,” said Hazan.

“And you,” said the prince, turning on Hazan. “You know of his dark deeds and you would still put forth the argument that wild creatures might be worried for him? As if he were some sage character from a children’s fable?”

“I never said—”

“ Wild creatures? ” Cyrus interjected. “What creatures?”

“The ones all over the palace,” Omid said, still angry.

“There are no creatures all over the palace.”

“Well, apparently they’re gone now,” said Huda, who was looking uncomfortable. “But for the duration of your seclusion the castle was plagued by locusts and snakes and owls and so forth. We even had a visit from a snow leopard. It was terribly disruptive. The groundskeeper fainted.”

Cyrus blanked, his face wiped of emotion. “Oh.”

“They kept bringing us apricots,” added Omid, crossing his arms.

“Apricots,” Cyrus echoed, blinking softly.

“Yes.” Hazan regarded the king then with an unflinching look. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”

Cyrus didn’t quite shake his head as he searched the room, his blue eyes distracted. He pulled up his sleeves absently, as if to give himself something to do, and his corded forearms flexed as he ran a hand down the back of his neck, releasing the tension.

He didn’t answer the question.

“Why do you even bother to ask him?” said Kamran. “He only speaks when it’s convenient. He offers half-truths and nonsense, and always at a cost—”

“I was taught that Diviners were the gatekeepers of magic,” said Alizeh, hoping to distract from the building tempers. “They’re meant to exist as bulwarks against the corruption of so much unstable power.”

Their group fell silent.

Cyrus turned slowly in her direction, his eyes unreadable as they lingered on her face.

“Yes,” he said softly, looking away. “That’s right.

Magic itself has an honorable core; it will not release from the mountains into the hands of any it deems unworthy.

Beyond the Diviners—who dedicate their lives to the distillation of self, the destruction of ego, and a life in service to others—there are precious few unrefined souls on earth who are inherently worthy of receiving magic. ”

Cyrus returned his gaze to Alizeh, looking at her then with an almost shattering reverence.

“One,” he said, “stands before us all.”