Page 54 of Every Spiral of Fate (This Woven Kingdom #4)

Fifty-Two

ALIZEH SCREAMED .

Cyrus hung in the air like a dagger, his limp body having been dragged sharply into the clouds.

His eyes were closed; his skin was bloodless; his limbs lifeless.

Snowflakes spiraled about him, catching in his hair, glinting in strange celebration.

The surreal moment evoked a sense of dark déjà vu—for Cyrus had hung horribly in the air not long ago, just before the blood of his body had been transferred into her own veins.

That night had been one of the bleakest of her life.

This was infinitely worse.

Now she watched, with increasing despair, as he was similarly bound in shadow, a ribbon of pitch winding about his body as if it were a shroud. Soon there was nothing left of him but his mummified figure, dark as death against the clear sky.

All the while, the ground beneath them shattered.

“How long do you think it’s going to take?” said Omid, who was openly crying now. “What do you think it’ll be like?”

“I don’t know,” said Alizeh, her voice in shreds.

She wiped at her tears with shaking hands, reminding herself over and over that the creature that would soon emerge from its dark cocoon was no one she knew.

She would not be fooled.

“Is it really over?” asked Huda, who was also fighting tears. “Is it all over? Has the book gone dark forever? Is the entire journey a wash?”

“I don’t know,” said Hazan, who was staring, unflinching, at the dark wound in the sky.

Alizeh’s priorities had swiftly reordered.

She didn’t know how she could worry about her magic when the horrors of her life had only just begun.

How could she think of anything beyond this moment, when the world as she knew it had extinguished?

How could she wring her hands over a ticking clock, when her husband would soon be displaced by the devil?

The ground she stood upon appeared to be fraying at the edges, separating into threads of color and light, yet she couldn’t bring herself to care. She’d be inhaled by this strange illusion before she moved an inch from where she stood.

Her tears were alchemizing into rage.

Suddenly, Deen gasped. “Look,” he said. “It’s happening—”

By horrifying degrees, the black bandage around Cyrus’s dead body was unwound, and they all stood in amazement as an imitation of the southern king was slowly revealed.

“Nothing in life can prepare you for such a moment,” said Kamran softly, his eyes focused on the spectacle.

“No,” said Hazan.

“Perhaps I shouldn’t admit it,” whispered Huda. “But I’m terrified.”

“I’m often terrified, miss,” said Omid.

“Me too,” said the prince.

Huda looked up at him, surprised, though he didn’t turn to see it.

Kamran had been deeply altered by Cyrus’s confession, and he’d seemed different in the aftermath. Heavier.

In a moment that surprised everyone, Cyrus had thanked Kamran directly.

“Were it not for your keen instincts and unrelenting insistence,” he’d said, “I might never have realized my error, and I might never have been able to issue these warnings. I should never have overlooked your judgment or dismissed your intelligence. I’m grateful, sincerely, for the gift of your sight when I was blind. ”

Kamran had been stunned.

Now, he appeared both subdued and formidable, tense with a quiet fury. “I can’t believe we’re unarmed,” he murmured. “I’m nearly never without a weapon, except for now, when it matters most.”

“It’s almost as if he planned it this way,” said Hazan bitterly.

Like a falling star, Cyrus’s body lowered to the ground, and though the black ribbon had been unwound from his body and reduced to dust, he appeared, alarmingly, much the same.

His eyes were still closed, his face still expressionless; he looked for all the world like the Cyrus they knew.

Only when his feet hit the strange grass did he animate, his eyes flying open to reveal a pair of unnerving blue irises, similar and yet—somehow—entirely different.

Alizeh drew breath and drew back.

Iblees blinked a few times. At first his gaze was unfocused, then too high, too low, too far afield.

It took him a moment to discern them, his neck hinging unnaturally as he searched, and when he did lock upon a face he seemed frustrated, discarding every discovery with a deepening frown until, finally, his eyes alighted upon the queen.

The devil went still.

Alizeh’s heart pounded painfully against her ribs.

The devil stared at her awhile, canting his head as he studied her, and then he leaned forward, tilting badly, as if he didn’t understand how to draw the image of her closer. In fact, he didn’t seem to know how to articulate his body. The very weight of his head appeared to surprise him.

He looked away sharply, as if to dislodge the issue, and then, realizing the obstruction was rooted to his neck, drew his hands up his jaw, feeling blindly for the problem.

He paused in his inspection of Cyrus’s face to marvel at the soft, malleable shape of his ears, then grabbed a fistful of his copper hair in apparent confusion—and grimaced at what was, no doubt, a spike of pain.

He then relinquished the hair to test out his foreign limbs, tensing his arms and then his fingers, examining himself in stages of slowly building delight.

He made a sound, something like a laugh—and then recoiled, startled by the noise.

Surprise widened the devil’s borrowed eyes.

He touched his rented mouth with wonder, tracing the shape of his lips, then swept a finger along Cyrus’s straight teeth like one might the keys of a piano.

Iblees smiled with disarming joy.

Alizeh, whose heart was now racing at a dizzying pace within her, reminded herself that any trace of humanity evinced by the devil had been stolen from her husband.

It was Cyrus’s skin, Cyrus’s smile, Cyrus’s impressions of happiness.

She would not be tricked into believing for even a moment that there was anything but evil trapped in the figure of the man she’d married.

Yet there was something horribly, morbidly fascinating about watching the devil discover he had not only a body, but limbs; not only limbs, but a face; not only a face, but a mouth; not only a mouth, but—

A voice.

“Hello?” he said, testing out the word with a surprising, childlike innocence.

The six of them tensed.

The devil looked up at the fraying sky, then the slowly rumbling, fracturing ground. The scene appeared to be disassembling like the pulled threads of a tapestry, curls of life spiraling away like so much yarn.

Iblees frowned at the sight of it.

“This seems like a bad sign,” he said, then stiffened, then burst into unrestrained laughter, the gasping sounds leaving his body in a stunning, uncontrollable tide. The action was so unlike the real Cyrus that it was suddenly quite easy to believe that they were facing off with an imposter.

“I haven’t”—Iblees touched his mouth in wonder—“I haven’t spoken in regular sentences in so long! Can you imagine how infuriating it’s been to have to piece together rhyme after endless rhyme just to politely entice an idiot to ruin his own life?”

He burst into raucous laughter again, and the six of them exchanged uncertain looks. It was impossible to form expectations of the devil, but certainly no one had expected him to laugh like a buffoon.

It was Hazan who first stepped forward, drawing apart from the others. This small action attracted the devil’s notice at once, and he stopped laughing to inspect Hazan, canting his head in that same strange, inhuman way.

“Whatever it is you seek,” said Hazan, “you will not find it here.”

“Ah,” said the devil. “And you must be Hazan.”

Hazan’s only outward reaction to this was the slight widening of his eyes. He did not respond.

Iblees tilted his head at the others. “And you’re Kamran, then Huda. Deen,” he said with a nod. “Even young Omid.”

Omid made a choked sound.

“Surprised I know who you are?” The devil smiled. “I have to admit, it’s quite interesting being inside his head like this.” Iblees tapped his temple, then wagged a finger at the group. “There are thoughts and opinions about all of you in here.”

“You can access his mind?” said Alizeh, stunned.

Iblees’s attention was at once diverted. He turned to her like a magnet seeking its match, his expression at once reverent and astonished. “You spoke to me.”

The devil moved toward her automatically, and Huda screamed. The five friends rushed to form a barricade between Alizeh and Iblees, Hazan fairly vibrating with rage.

“You will not draw closer to the queen,” he said.

“I don’t like that he knows my name,” said Omid desperately.

“It means nothing,” Deen was saying. “You mustn’t allow him to influence your thoughts—”

Iblees howled with laughter. “I see my reputation precedes me. How delightful.”

“Don’t take another step,” said Kamran angrily. “Remain where you are—”

“Enough, I’m bored.” The devil touched two fingers together, and her friends were at once silenced, paralyzed in place, their mouths and limbs caught forever in the shape of their final movements.

Alizeh cried out in horror.

She shook her head, moving away from the devil on impulse, stumbling back as he approached, until suddenly she remembered herself.

She refused to be afraid of a clown, a court jester, a sentient whisper. She was not beholden to the devil’s darkness; he could not control her. She owed him nothing.

She came to a sudden, staggering halt.

Iblees paused simultaneously, just a few feet away.

He appeared unnaturally transfixed by her, staring at her face the way one might a tidal wave. “Yes,” he said softly. “I can access his mind. I can also access his magic.”