Page 35 of Every Spiral of Fate (This Woven Kingdom #4)

Thirty-Four

“HOW LONG HAS YOUR MOTHER been mad, exactly?” said Huda, who was forming a snowball between her mittened palms. “Is this a recent development? Or was she always like this?”

“My mother is not mad,” said Kamran irritably.

Hazan, who was sitting with Alizeh at a nearby table, raised an eyebrow. “And you say this with a straight face?”

“Piss off,” Kamran said to him.

“I don’t mean it as a bad thing,” said Huda, adding more snow to her snowball. “Sometimes she can be quite charming.”

Huda, as it turned out, had been assigned to board every night with Princess Firuzeh—and she’d been hounding Kamran with stories and questions about his mother nearly every day.

It had been five days.

Five days since Cyrus told Alizeh that he loved her. Five days that he’d been sleeping, fully dressed, by the front door. Five days that she’d hardly seen him or spoken to him. Five days that he’d become a ghost who refused even to haunt her.

Alizeh was not doing well.

Presently she was bound in exquisite layers of wool and fur, miraculously unbothered by the cold even as she sat by the base of the mountain at a table frosted in snow.

She was physically warm enough these days; it was just that everything else about her had begun to wilt.

The Book of Arya was with her, as always, and though she and Hazan pored over it every day as if it might offer fresh answers, Alizeh had grown tired of revisiting the same two pages.

The first was a repetition of the prophecy—

MELT THE ICE IN SALT

brAID THE THRONES AT SEA

IN THIS WOVEN KINGDOM

CLAY AND FIRE SHALL BE

And the second was a simple diagram of the Arya cascades, with a single X marking an entrance several dozen feet up the base of what might’ve been the central mountain.

There was nothing else to indicate what might happen next.

On their third day Cyrus had declared it might finally be safe enough to launch an exploratory mission to the mountains, but the effort had proven more complicated than expected, for they’d been forced to scale the mountain on foot.

This was both treacherous and exhausting, and the range was so vast that the search had felt futile and circuitous.

They might’ve traveled by magic, but Cyrus, who was rationing his supply of crystals, felt it would be unwise to exhaust the limited resource by transporting their entire group back and forth on endless excursions—at least not until there was more certainty.

As for the dragons, Hazan worried that they were still too conspicuous, and he’d wanted to wait awhile before taking perceivable flights up and down the mountains—especially after what had happened the last time they’d flown on dragonback.

“What do you mean, after what happened the last time ?” Alizeh had repeated, alarmed. “What happened the last time?”

Hazan had stiffened.

“I bid you speak,” she’d said, her temper rising. “Why do you hide things from me? All this time I assumed we were on alert because of the poison dagger that precipitated our early exit from Tulan. Is there something more you’re not telling me?”

Only then had Hazan finally, fitfully, one excruciating answer at a time, confessed the full scope of their perilous arrival in Ardunia.

Only then did Alizeh learn that the threat they faced was not hypothetical, and that their journey to the mountains had been fraught with literal danger.

That, in fact, Cyrus had broken his back heading off an attack by enemy riders, and that he’d done it alone. All while she’d been soundly asleep.

Hearing this, she’d gone blind with anger.

Alizeh had never before experienced fury such that she thought she might faint from the force of it.

It surprised her to discover the feeling had eluded her for so long—and that the one person capable of inspiring within her this dangerous inferno appeared so unbothered by her reaction that he’d hardly even looked her way.

She’d tried to speak with Cyrus about it, of course—heavens, she’d tried to speak with him about any number of things—but he’d withdrawn so far into a grave of his own making that he’d become virtually impenetrable.

Cyrus regarded her now as if she were the weather, a subject of occasional interest that inspired polite, distracted conversation. Only when she, the weather, rose to the level of a typhoon did she see a spark of him animate.

Alizeh was fatigued these days in a way that had little to do with sleep, though she was hardly sleeping, either.

Gone was the luxurious slumber she’d lately known.

How could she possibly relax when Cyrus sat planted like a tombstone in the entry of their cottage, silent as death in the dark of night?

She knew not whether he actually slept; he was always gone just before the sun came up.

She doubted rest was even possible for him in so uncomfortable a position, and though she mourned the loss of his comforts far more than her own, he would not listen to reason.

He seemed to have detached dangerously from the world; she could no longer reach him.

She didn’t know whether to cry for him or shout at him—she might’ve shaken him, had she thought it would make a difference.

She knew it would not.

“Did I ever tell you,” said Huda, laughing as she brushed a bit of leaf from her snowball, “that after your mother read my tea leaves, she said the earth had declared that I’m never going to die?”

Kamran, who was carefully forming his own snowball, shot her an arch look. “She’s told me that before, too.”

All the time now, Alizeh thought of the devil.

It had been nearly a week since Iblees had visited her on her wedding day.

His riddles, though often indecipherable, were always followed by calamity, and she was wondering when the next ax might fall.

Lately, Cyrus disappeared for hours and hours without word.

The bond of the blood oath had made it so that she could feel it as he traveled—as he put greater and greater distance between them—but he appeared to journey so far out of reach that she occasionally struggled to understand the orientation.

It felt, oddly, as if he’d gone up into the sky.

As to the torture he suffered in her absence, he made no mention of it. He’d reappear several hours later without explanation or indication that he’d suffered a moment’s pain. Alizeh had begun to worry that Cyrus was being summoned regularly by Iblees, but there was no way to be certain.

He did not talk to her about it, in any case.

“Has your mother been reading your fortune since you were a child?” Huda was saying. “Does she do it often?”

Kamran shrugged, testing the weight of his snowball. “She’s been doing it ever since my father’s head was delivered to the palace on a silver platter.”

“ On a silver platter? ” Huda stiffened. “Are you joking?”

“Tell her about what happened afterward,” said Hazan lazily, leafing through notes in his compact logbook. “With the bridge, and you jumping from the bridge.”

“You jumped off a bridge?” said Huda, looking suddenly heartsick. “As a child?”

“He was eleven.”

“Hazan, shut up.”

“Yes, sire,” said Hazan, who saluted mockingly. “Whatever you say, sire.”

“Don’t be an ass.”

“Ah, but you inspire me every day, sire,” he said, turning another page.

“Are you two making fun of me?” said Huda, whose look of heartache had been dislodged by anger. She placed a mittened hand on one hip. “Am I a joke to you? Do you think it’s funny to toy with my emotions?”

“No,” said Hazan.

“A little,” said Kamran.

Huda made an indignant sound.

“The point is,” said Kamran, “that after my mother was delivered her husband’s head, she took up a sudden, intense interest in augury. I think she decided right then that she’d prefer, forevermore, to know what was coming. She’s all the time reading cards, leaves, or the stars.”

At that, Huda seemed slightly mollified. “And has she ever been right?”

“Yes,” said Hazan and Kamran at the same time.

“ Really? ”

Alizeh sighed.

Unease snaked through her as she peered up at the breathtaking mountain range.

Every effort they’d made thus far—two more attempts after the initial exploration—had proven only more difficult.

Certainly, it wasn’t meant to be easy to ascertain this gateway, but Alizeh had privately hoped to intuit the entrance.

Even now, her skin prickled with uncanny feeling.

The odd, unknowable sensation she’d been experiencing since their arrival to the mountains had grown only more acute, and occasionally she felt the tingle in her throat diffuse to a dull heat across her chest. Occasionally, she couldn’t tell the difference between this strange heat and the effervescent ache she felt at the thought of Cyrus.

In both cases she felt nearly choked by sensation—as if a charge were building up inside of her—and she worried she would need to release this crackling energy before it incinerated her.

Alizeh shook out her hands then, feeling suddenly overheated. She ripped off her gloves in a panic. Tore away the scarf from around her neck.

Hazan looked up at once.

She shook her head even as she drew lungfuls of the cold air, relishing the breeze on her singed flesh. “It’s nothing,” she said quietly, forcing a smile as she tried to steady her nerves. “It’s only that sometimes I feel as if an army of ants is rushing across my skin.”

Hazan regarded her with concern.

She tried to hold on to her smile as she turned away, resting her gaze on a frosted bough where a bright blue bird had newly alighted.

It hopped along the branch, wings twitching, plumage glittering in the sunlight.

A scatter of powder released from the tree, softly dusting the frosted petals of a flower pushing up through the snow.

Alizeh struggled to draw a deep enough breath.

The combined effect of these aforementioned forces had left her feeling tremulous all the time: when the magic seemed to swell within her she struggled to sit still; when Cyrus so much as walked in her direction she grew agitated beyond reason, her very skin chafing at her.

Heavens, everything had begun to chafe at her.

Gusts of wind, bursts of laughter, the touch of her own clothes—

“Has anything else happened?” Hazan had lowered his voice, leaning across the table to look at her. “Any more … incidents?”

Again, Alizeh shook her head.

Hazan sat back in his seat slowly, but his expression was inscrutable.

Once— just once —

She’d fully lost her temper.

The day she’d learned of Cyrus’s actions during their night journey, she’d attempted to corner him. She’d been ruthless; she’d drawn dangerously close to him in broad daylight and begged, then demanded he speak to her—and when she’d been cruel enough to try to take his hand, he’d vanished—

Disappeared into thin air.

The memory of her behavior that day still delivered her a wash of shame.

She’d been so upset she felt she’d been set aflame.

She’d stormed off in a fit of pique, her fury propelling her down the river as she grew angrier and angrier, clenching her fists so hard she experienced a sudden, frightening shock of pain.

Alizeh had cried out, coming to a violent halt.

She’d unclenched her shaking fists to find that her hands were bleeding—and there, glittering against her bleeding palms, was a shimmer of diamonds, half-crushed.

Alizeh had been stunned. She’d staggered sideways in fright, then fallen directly into the river.

The cold water had doused her temper.

Indeed the river had done more than soak her skirts and bruise her ego; as she was assisted out of the water by a concerned group of soldiers, she was at least relieved to discover that the scarlet blood and crushed diamonds had been rinsed from her skin.

But perhaps more perplexing than either of these strange phenomena were her hands themselves.

Previously scored all over by diamond cuts, they’d healed instantly.

This , too, was new.

Alizeh had long possessed a curious ability to heal herself, but the effect had always been so subtle it had taken her years even to notice it. Now the power seemed to have accelerated— evolved —

These changes exhilarated her.

Alarmed her.

Her life seemed to be changing so quickly she was struggling to keep up.

As if it weren’t enough that the very world were trying to kill her, or that hundreds of thousands of pilgrims—doubtless more every day—eagerly awaited her return in Tulan, Alizeh felt she was running out of time.

Her enemies were sharpening their knives in ways she hadn’t even expected, threats still circling above their heads.

There were so many people counting on her.

Every day was shades of anticipation and suffering; every day was a list of things to celebrate and mourn.

Every day—

She clenched her shaking hands.

Every day was the countdown to a funeral.