Page 25 of Every Spiral of Fate (This Woven Kingdom #4)

Twenty-Four

ALIZEH REMINDED HERSELF TO brEATHE .

One of the soldiers suddenly broke away from the group, and as she separated from the assembly, Hazan crossed the distance to greet her. He clasped hands with the older woman like a comrade, even as she looked up at him with visible admiration. Deferential respect.

Alizeh watched this exchange in fascination.

Always she was reflecting on her own transformations, but she felt she was every day discovering new facets of Hazan, too. She wondered then what other depths he held; which pains and sufferings motivated his own choices. She wondered what his interior life was truly like.

Hazan ushered the soldier forward for an introduction.

“Your Majesty,” he said to Alizeh. “This is Soraya of Rijal, who hails from Fesht province. She’s the group commander of these four assembled militias. Soraya has a great many talents, but she’s a preeminent archer, most notorious for her skill on horseback.”

Soraya bowed her head in deference, and Alizeh noted then the many streaks of silver woven through the dark lengths of her hair. The sight of so much gray—this proof of her patience—opened another ache in Alizeh’s chest.

“Your Majesty,” Soraya said on a breath.

When she looked up, her brown eyes were vivid with feeling.

“I hardly have the words. It’s the greatest privilege of my life to even stand before you.

I joined the underground militia when I was eight, when my twelve family members were executed trying to escape a prison camp in Sheffat.

I was the smallest, and the only one who managed to run free.

I’ve lived every day with the dream that I might one day be so blessed as to serve under you, and to honor my family by giving my life to the liberation of our people. ”

Alizeh took this like a blow to the chest. It was a moment before she could speak, for her throat had grown thick with emotion.

Feel , her parents had once said to her.

The shackles worn by your people are often unseen by the eye. Feel , they’d said, for even blind, you will know how to break them.

Alizeh let go.

She released the tension she held clenched in her body, and allowed the pain free rein to run through her, to change her. For so long she’d wanted to know her own people—had wanted to be the vessel that might carry their suffering and alchemize it into power.

Now, finally, she might have her chance.

She reached out and pressed the woman’s hands between her own. “We share the same dreams,” she said, her voice catching. “I, too, have only ever wanted to be in service of my people. You’ve not suffered in vain, Soraya. We shall realize our dreams together.”

Soraya’s eyes went glassy with feeling, and she soon bowed her head. “Your Majesty,” she whispered, a single tear hitting the ground between them.

Alizeh drew back, bracing against the sting in her nose, the heat threatening her eyes.

She lifted her chin.

She gazed out upon the thousand soldiers standing before her, and she understood then, with a certainty she’d never felt before, exactly why she’d been born.

Alizeh was meant to be a conduit for all this pain.

She was built to bear it. She would draw it into her veins and transform it, and unleash it as rage back upon the world. All these years of uncertainty; all her hours of doubt; all the grief she’d carried like rotting bodies on her back. Now, finally—

Clarity.

Just shy of her thirteenth birthday, Alizeh had held her mother’s disintegrating hand as the woman had been burned alive in her childhood home, the sound of her mother’s screams seared indelibly into her memory.

Her parent had not survived the inferno that was meant to finish off her family, but Alizeh had proven miraculously fireproof.

She’d emerged from the ashes physically unscathed yet charred inwardly beyond recognition.

It was then that she’d seen the wink of a single, worn object—the Book of Arya—still intact among the remains of her life.

It was then that she’d gone into deepest hiding.

Alizeh’s father had been killed the year earlier. Prior to her parents’ murders, her tutors, mentors, and family friends had been slaughtered in quick succession. Nearly every person she’d known had met a bloody end.

The last six years of her life had been marred by endless strings of attempted murders or else sickness, poverty, cruelty, debasement, and abuse.

Alizeh’s life was so colored by suffering that she was often surprised by her ability to carry on.

Injustice raged at her from every corner of the earth.

It was indeed astonishing to her that the pain of life itself had not already killed her.

And yet—

She’d begun to realize that it was pain that had built her; pain that had both softened and scarred her; pain that had prepared her most for this moment.

Alizeh straightened as she faced the crowd. She was without a plan. She’d not even known she might speak until suddenly it seemed urgent that she did. She’d not known how she might feel until suddenly it crashed over her in waves.

“My dear brothers and sisters,” she called, her voice carrying across the valley.

They stiffened; a silence fell; a bird sang out a song.

Alizeh could feel her friends assembled around her as palpably as she felt the breeze, yet she couldn’t have known then how they perceived her, her eyes glinting in the bloom of morning sun. She only knew it was time to step forward.

Alizeh moved deeper into the clearing, closer to the soldiers, standing as tall as she could make herself as she looked upon their stunned faces. A swell of feeling expanded in her chest, stole her breath.

She exhaled slowly.

“My dear brothers and sisters,” she said again.

“I should like you to know me. I should like us to know each other.

I feel I should confess to you now that I am not immune to grief.

I am not hardened against the casual cruelty of this world.

Were you hoping for a toughened leader, I will be sorry to disappoint you.

“I believe in the unfailing pursuit of justice,” she said, her voice rising.

“The acquisition of which demands, without exception, the blood of tyrants. I am not afraid to kill my enemies. But I am neither indifferent to death nor am I eager to slaughter, for true justice requires the retention of compassion.” She paused.

“Without it, carnage might be limitless; without it, wars would not find their finish; without it, we would not know how to revive ourselves in the wake of so much bloodshed.”

Here, the soldiers began to stand taller.

“I have willingly traded my shields for this tender flesh of humanity,” she cried, bringing her hand to her chest. “And for this sacrifice, I am pierced through the heart every day. Every day the blades of this world strike me unguarded, rend me to pieces. I wonder, always, how a body might sustain such brutalities. It is no less than a miracle that we bear witness to the unceasing savagery of injustice and still find the courage to smile. Some days I can’t breathe around the magnitude of this agony, and yet I do not pray for my pain to end, for I never wish to be deadened to the suffering of my people. ”

Now they began to stomp their feet, a slow rumble awakening the ground beneath them.

“Should you pledge your allegiance to me today, know this: My heart is not my own. My hands are not my own. My life belongs to those oppressed on this earth, and I will not stop until I’ve done everything I can to secure our freedom from tyranny.”

The soldiers broke into a chaos of cries, their shouts and cheers building to a deafening crescendo that soon resolved into lines of a familiar chant—

For the land that once was ours

For the millions who were slain

For the rivers red with blood

For the centuries of pain

For our parents in the ground

For the coffins that we built

For the tiny hands and quiet hearts

of the children who were killed

Our armor is our hope

Our weapon is the truth

We sleep each night inside our graves

We pledge our faith to you