Page 32 of Every Spiral of Fate (This Woven Kingdom #4)

Thirty-One

AKBAR HAD GREATLY EXAGGERATED .

Small was hardly the word to describe their cottage. No, it was not small. It was about the size of a thumb. Cyrus stood frozen at the threshold for so long that a moth flew in, fluttering around their heads in a panic. Alizeh had to reach around him to pull the door closed.

He held his breath.

Where the others had been assigned accommodations located firmly on the ground, theirs was elevated into the sky.

It was the odd, circular stone watchtower he’d noted earlier, rising up like a strange flower among a stand of trees.

He supposed it had its charms, for the exterior had been choked in spirals of flowering vines that imbued the air with a honeyed fragrance.

The humble interiors, too, were revitalized with painstaking care.

A vast window had been hewn into the stone so as to expose the mountain face beyond, though little but a gleam of moon and a glimmer of a craggy outline was currently visible.

The privacy, as Akbar had mentioned, was unmatched.

Only three transom windows adorned the room otherwise, which were meant to let in light and nothing else.

The stone had been warmed by hanging tapestries and the blaze of a hearty wood stove.

The floors were all but invisible under layers of lush red rugs, which had been pinned down by the largest piece of furniture in the room:

A single bed.

This innovative torture device was hardly large enough to accommodate him , much less the two of them.

Compounding the issue was that one curve of the already-small room had been sliced off for the creation of a bathroom.

Alizeh—who’d removed her shoes, set them neatly by the front door, and drawn away from the entrance—was inspecting this bathroom now, her voice echoing from inside as she said, “Would you mind if I took a bath?”

Silently, Cyrus said a prayer.

Save the two nightstands situated on either side of the bed, there was no other furniture to be named. To be fair, there was no latitude. The only other available space had been granted to the little stove, which glowed merrily upon the tragic scene.

Cyrus could feel himself spiraling.

“Where do you think they put our trunks?” asked Alizeh, stepping out of the bathroom.

She regarded him blithely, as if pretending nothing was amiss would somehow make it true.

She’d lost half a sleeve from her dress—aspects of the bodice singed and ruined beyond repair—and she didn’t even seem to mind.

She’d sliced open her own hand in front of his eyes, forcing him to watch her bleed, and she didn’t seem to mind that, either.

She’d been so unbothered, in fact, that he’d then had to argue for the right to heal her.

Cyrus, meanwhile, was bothered by everything.

He could hardly tolerate the weight of his own flesh or the engine of his imagination.

He could hardly breathe around the obscene bulk of his heart or the weight of his fears.

Staring at her now he couldn’t help but be reminded of the evening’s earlier revelations—her blossoming magic; the effects of his blood in her veins—yet he was scarcely able to summon the will to dwell on the hell he would have to endure at present, much less the fresh dramas of the night.

He felt unhinged.

He was losing patience by the second, and the commodity was already in short supply. He couldn’t know how her magic might continue to evolve. He didn’t know what it meant that her blood had changed.

This all seemed important, of course.

In fact, Hazan had seemed to think her red blood was of great importance; and though Cyrus did not discount the significance of such an event, he refused to believe it had anything meaningful to do with him .

His blood, after all, was hers to do with until she killed him.

As far as he was concerned, nothing between them had changed.

“I see you intend to say nothing,” Alizeh murmured as she began to search the room for her clothes. “I suspect you will eventually tire of standing so firmly by the door.”

She suddenly clapped her hands together in a muted sound of delight, for she’d found their things unpacked and neatly arranged in bins beneath the bed. He watched, as if paralyzed by fever, as she sorted through it all.

“Cyrus,” she said quietly, and lifted her head to look at him.

He looked back.

“Would you mind terribly if I changed here, in our room?” she said. “There’s precious little space to move about in the bathroom and I—”

He turned, without a word, to face away from her.

With a controlled sigh he lifted his hands to the wall coverings, and then, in surrender, rested his forehead against the soft give of the tapestry. He closed his eyes, bracing himself as she said, quietly, “Thank you.”

Cyrus listened in anguish to the sounds of her undressing, trying and failing to kill the images that surfaced in his mind, the curves and heat and silk he’d already worshipped in his dreams. The problem was, the heady, unraveling scenes banked in his head felt nothing like fantasy; instead, they registered as real memories.

He was reminding himself, always, that they’d yet to share so much as a kiss outside of his mind, even as he felt he knew the taste of her the way he knew the soft give of honey.

Would that the devil might come along and quarter him, for he felt he might heal from those tortures more quickly than he would ever recover from this—

This —

He heard the quiet rustle of fabric, a breathless laugh, the soft sigh of the mattress. “Sorry, sorry,” she said in a rush. “It took me a minute to unlace my corset. Almost done, I promise. Just taking off my stockings now.”

He nearly made a desperate sound.

He fought the rise of his chest, the pounding of his heart.

He truly believed she didn’t know what she was doing to him.

She was too decent and generous to think of him as he really was: hungry and depraved, rigid with need.

No doubt she imagined him experiencing nothing now but impatience, when in truth he could hardly speak for wanting her, for the desire that nearly broke his willpower.

He wanted to cross the room and fall to his knees before her.

He wanted to lose himself in the heat of her, deliver her blinding pleasure that might kill them both.

She was too inexperienced to imagine how it might wreck him now simply to be near her as she undressed.

How it might ruin him to know that she was wearing nothing but silk stockings in their bed—

“Okay,” she said. “All done. I’ve piled my things in what I believe is meant to be the laundry basket, so you need not worry about coming upon my undergarments without warning.” She laughed, a little. “Anyway, I won’t be long, I promise. I’d just like to rinse the day from my skin—”

“Please,” he forced out. “You need not narrate everything.”

“Oh,” she said after a moment. “Of course. It’s just that I— Forgive me, Cyrus, am I being terribly selfish? Do you need anything? Will you require the bathroom in the next several minutes?”

He could hardly get the words out when he said, “Are you— Alizeh, are you attempting to engage me in conversation while you are undressed?”

“I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “I’m very sorry—” And the bathroom door closed, suddenly, with a snick .

Cyrus sank to the ground.