Page 48 of Every Spiral of Fate (This Woven Kingdom #4)

Forty-Seven

ALIZEH WAS FUNDAMENTALLY ALTERED .

She couldn’t move, nor could she name the tempest of feelings knocking about within her; and worse, she knew this wasn’t the time.

She felt she should say something—do something—but she struggled even to breathe around the painful compression of her heart.

When she finally looked up at Cyrus, she felt both wretched and desperate.

He never talked to her anymore.

He’d shut her out utterly, never allowing her to so much as approach him before moving out of reach.

Five days he’d sealed himself off from her, and she could bear it no longer.

She was fueled by this—by the anguished need to speak to him—when she reached deep within herself for a skill she’d never known she might possess, imbuing the effort with everything she had.

Thank you , she said silently.

Cyrus, who’d been walking away from the newly opened entrance, stiffened as if he’d been shot.

He turned to look at her with something like fear, his eyes bright with tortured, enigmatic feeling.

For a terrifying second, Alizeh thought he might not respond at all. She could feel—miraculously—that she’d established a pulsing thread of connection between them, but he only looked at her, and the longer they stood staring at each other in silence, the harder her heart beat.

Finally, gently, he said, Angel—

And the connection between them died.

“Your Majesty?” Hazan was staring uncertainly between Alizeh and Cyrus. “Your Majesty,” he said again. “Are you ready?”

“Yes,” she said, tearing her eyes away from her husband. “Yes, I’m—”

The book heated suddenly in her hands, its telltale glow catching the interest of everyone around her.

Her friends crowded together to see what the book would deliver them now; and there, upon its front cover, a new word had appeared.

POWER

Alizeh stiffened.

She looked up at Hazan with a mix of hope and fear and said, softly, “I think this might be it.”

He gave her a bracing look. “May you return to your people victorious.”

Alizeh acknowledged this with a solemn nod.

She cleared her head to make room for the moment, calling upon treasured memories of her parents, of their many sacrifices. She summoned strength above fear, hope above despair, heart above all, and stepped across the opened threshold, her pulse pounding within her.

When she’d crossed to the other side, her breath caught in awe.

She’d entered some kind of wonderland.

Softly textured, undulating hills seemed to go on forever, the rolling green expanse dusted in snow.

Flakes fell gently and gloriously from a clear sky, a blue so faded it was nearly white.

Set against this starkly beautiful backdrop were creations she couldn’t fathom.

Roses bloomed magnificently before her, each one as large as a dragon, petals and parts woven from endless individual threads, lightly pulsing in the ethereal light.

Everything had been embroidered.

It was not traditional thread, of course—these creations had been forged with magical strands of light—but they gave the impression of an impossible, hand-hewn landscape, almost as if a silk rug had come to life.

She felt she’d walked into a tapestry.

Alizeh drew forward, taking it all in, her socked feet sinking into velvety threads of grass.

She realized then that even the sun, the sky, and the snow were woven creations. Groves of elaborate trees pierced the sky like spires, shuddering leaves embroidered in luminescent veins of green, trunks shimmering like gossamer. Each thread vibrated softly, like the strings of an instrument.

On and on, the scene unfurled like a dream.

Everything around her was humming with palpable life, the collective resonance speaking to something essential in her marrow.

She felt called forward on instinct, quietly understanding that the abstract castle rising in the distance was awaiting her arrival.

The mammoth building looked as if it were made of spun sugar, webbing like spider silk twisted and spiraled to fashion itself into something real and essential.

Somehow she felt that she bore witness then to the very threads of life.

“Wait,” said Kamran, catching her arm as she pushed ahead. “Please, wait—”

Alizeh slowed, turning to face him. She looked at his hand on her arm, and he quickly removed it.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Forgive me,” he said, sounding almost breathless. “I know I have no right to speak to you or ask you for anything—”

“Then perhaps you should not,” she said quietly.

“Alizeh,” he said, looking stricken. “Please.”

She exhaled slowly. “What is it?”

“We stand here now, at the precipice of something truly astonishing”—he glanced at the imposing structure in the near distance—“and I fear that if I do not speak now I will forever condemn myself for my cowardice. I must appeal to you about a matter which is pressing painfully upon my conscience—”

“Kamran?” Hazan drew forward. “What’s going on?”

“Forgive me.” The prince shook his head. “But I don’t think he should be allowed to proceed any further.”

“Who?” said Hazan, even as they all turned together to look at Cyrus.

As usual, the southern king stood just apart from their group.

His expression was carefully vacant, even as rays of light illuminated his blue eyes and broke against his legs.

Set before the backdrop of the embroidered, surreal snowy landscape, Cyrus looked as if he were ready to be stitched into the chronicles of history.

Alizeh seemed to perceive him so differently from the others that she’d begun to wonder whether everyone else was blind.

Or, perhaps, stupid.

She shook her head at Kamran. “How could you even suggest such a thing? After what just happened?”

Kamran only sighed, as if he were expecting her refusal. “I realize I’m in no position to beseech you,” he said, “and yet I care for you too much to keep silent. Does it not strike you as dangerous to permit him to accompany you beyond this point? The more he speaks, the less I trust him, and now—”

“What has he said to persuade you of this feeling?” asked Huda, drawing closer. “His many recent remarks have been quite helpful, actually. Meanwhile you’ve proven entirely useless.”

“I suppose I deserve that,” said Kamran, tensing. “But his insight has been perhaps too helpful, I think.”

“What do you mean?” asked Deen.

“I mean I’m beginning to wonder at his convenient infusions of wisdom and assistance,” said the prince.

“He freely admits to being under the direction of the devil, yet we have no idea to what extent. We have no way of knowing, as a result, whether he hasn’t plotted and planned every moment of this journey.

He might soon slit our throats and tell us all that the devil had ordered him to do it. ”

Omid gasped.

“Are we to simply accept his every casual assurance that the devil has bade him do a disagreeable thing?” Kamran asked, looking upon their group. “How are we to know the boundaries of truth and falsehood? What reason has he given us to trust him?”

“Well,” said Huda cautiously. “He was the one who found the entrance to the mountains.”

“And he was the one who fought off the enemy dragon riders,” added Hazan.

“He was also the one who leached the poison from my body,” added Deen.

“And he was the one who was able to break down the door, when you couldn’t,” said Omid, crossing his arms.

“ Precisely ,” said Kamran, his voice heavy with triumph. “All impossible, improbable occurrences, all perfectly choreographed, all entirely within his power to orchestrate.”

“That’s ridiculous,” said Hazan.

“You’re suggesting he set these traps himself?” said Deen, raising his eyebrows. “That he provided both the problem and its solution, in an effort to lull us into a false sense of security?”

“No,” said Alizeh with conviction. “He wouldn’t—”

“Why wouldn’t he?” Kamran returned. “Did you not see how ready he was to cut me down with his private knowledge of events long ago transpired? And then, how easily he was able to break down the door? Can you really believe a soul as disfigured as his might be more willing to die for you than the rest of us?”

“That is a good point,” said Huda.

Alizeh glanced in panic at Cyrus, who was looking grimly away from them all. “That’s not—”

“Think what you like about him,” said Hazan. “But an ancient magical site such as this cannot be so easily manipulated.”

“Yet he is capable of powerful incantations!” Kamran shot back.

“Always we are learning that his skills are more formidable than most. Every day, while others are enchanted by his perceived talents, I grow only more wary. Will no one ask why he is so powerful?” Kamran shook his head.

“Does no one wonder why he can perform healing magic? Healing magic—at his age, and unfinished in his studies—it’s nearly unheard of—”

“That, too, is a good point,” said Deen uncomfortably.

“He’s able to communicate with animals,” Kamran went on.

“He performed his own blood oath. He has an entire fleet of dragons under his quiet command and no one has thought to wonder whether he’s simply compelled them to remain under his control?

Hazan, you said yourself that he was one of the youngest students in the temple to ever qualify for priesthood!

Yet now he is so corrupted the Diviners will not allow his feet even to touch their hallowed grounds. ”

This pushed them all into silence.

Alizeh shook her head mutely.

Desperately, she wished she might exonerate Cyrus. Desperately, she wished she had something to say to refute these worryingly cogent arguments. Yet Cyrus had never given her the verifications she needed to establish a defense in his honor.

Even now, he merely studied the ground.

Even now, he said nothing to defend himself.

“Alizeh, please,” said the prince, turning to face her.

“It’s one thing to enter into a blood oath with the man, but I fear it’s entirely another to allow him access to the site that contains your rumored power.

If nothing else, it feels dangerous. Are we truly expected to believe that it’s mere coincidence that he managed to quickly cure Deen; that he fought off a team of enemy riders all by himself; and that in just a short week he located the highly protected, nearly invisible entrance to an ancient, magical site located on a colossal, brutal mountain range? ”

Finally, some opaque emotion animated Cyrus’s eyes. “I already explained to you that I’d been searching these mountains for nearly a year—”

“And I think it bears further inquiry,” said Kamran, “that the devil should choose to visit Alizeh not moments after activating the Book of Arya. Only hours ago Cyrus admitted to sending teams of spies into Ardunia. He admitted that he was personally responsible for the rock slides wreaking havoc upon our land—”

“Am I to be pilloried for telling the truth?” said Cyrus.

“You ought to be pilloried even for opening your eyes,” Kamran shot back, “when you are so beholden to Iblees!”

Cyrus glowered. “Always, this conversation. Always, the same accusations—”

“Then let me ask you something different,” said Hazan, turning to face Cyrus. “For I’m suddenly curious: Were you really spoiling for war?”

Cyrus lifted his head slowly to meet Hazan’s gaze. “I beg your pardon?”

Hazan crossed his arms. “Kamran once theorized that you were intentionally allowing Tulanian spies to be intercepted and identified, and meanwhile flagrantly violating the Nix accords—all in order to give Ardunia pretext for launching an invasion into Tulan. He set forth that such a move would have our armies abandon their posts, leaving the land unguarded for your plunder. I ask you now: Is it true?”