Page 55 of Every Spiral of Fate (This Woven Kingdom #4)

Fifty-Three

ALIZEH TOOK A STEADYING brEATH.

She and Iblees faced off in a sinister silence, her heart beating a dangerous rhythm inside her as the frozen figures of her friends stood in her periphery like strange statues.

She glanced at them, then glanced back at the devil.

“Don’t worry,” said Iblees. “They’re paralyzed, not dead. They’re not deaf, either. This experience should teach them when to shut up and listen.”

Alizeh swallowed.

It was unnerving, of course, to look up at Cyrus without seeing Cyrus. It was his voice, his body, his skin, his strong hands, his broad shoulders, and yet there was a stranger staring back at her. A stranger speaking to her. A stranger studying her with discomfiting intensity.

She struggled not to flinch.

Alizeh was slowly forming a plan, but before she could see it through, she needed to be certain of a few things. Iblees had said he could access Cyrus’s mind—but he didn’t appear to own it. That meant Cyrus’s mind had to be independently active, at least on some level.

Didn’t it?

For the second time in her life, Alizeh reached for a power she didn’t know she had, calling upon every ounce of strength to establish a connection she hardly knew how to forge.

Cyrus? she said. Can you hear me?

Iblees tilted his head at her in his odd way.

It was a dangerous move to try to speak to Cyrus; not only because she didn’t know whether he was still alive but also because if he was, she didn’t know whether Iblees could intercept such communications.

It was a risk, but she felt she had to try.

The tether of the blood oath was a faint impression within her now, but she held fast to this glimmer with fierce hope.

She focused on the prickle of sensation that had lately circled her throat and diffused across her chest. She leaned into this feeling, attempting to summon more of it throughout her body—

Cyrus? she tried again, this time more desperately.

When, yet again, she received no answer, she didn’t know whether to trust that he was gone or to worry that she’d done it wrong. It was one thing to try to connect with someone alone in their head; it was entirely another, she imagined, to try to reach someone who’d been displaced by the devil.

Meanwhile, Iblees was still staring at her.

“What do you want from me?” she asked, breaking the silence between them.

“I wanted to meet you,” he said.

This simple answer surprised her.

“But you made the initial terms of this bargain a hundred years ago—long before I was born,” she said to him. She felt the scattered tingle of magic in her veins focus into a steady pulse. “You couldn’t have known you would meet me.”

Iblees shook his head. “No, I never dreamed of this then. I thought of nothing but revenge. I thought perhaps I’d play at being a king,” he said, “for in my normal state I can only try to convince people to destroy themselves. As a man I thought I might do as the Clay kings do, slaughtering their own people en masse, leading them into senseless wars, delivering them decades of famine and disease—exterminating them more efficiently.”

He paused to smile.

“I had to wait, of course, for Tulan to be slowly rebuilt. I had no interest in ruling a broken, impoverished empire. I wanted to be a proper king. But as the years passed and I made my plans, I heard whispers across the earth. The greatest seers of the time were issuing unearthly prophecies. The Arya mountains were trembling. A Jinn queen was said to rise within the century, and I …” Here, he trailed off, his expression clouding.

He suddenly rolled his shoulders and jerked, as if trying to manage a shudder.

“You what?” she prompted, hardly breathing.

He gave himself a shake, then lifted his head. “I decided to wait for you.”

She inhaled sharply. “Why?”

“I thought we might find a way to rule together.”

“Together,” she repeated, stunned.

“Yes.” He twitched his neck again, then took an experimental step closer.

Despite her rising revulsion, Alizeh managed to hold her ground.

“Are you not pleased to meet me?” he asked with a smile. “I thought you might be pleased.”

They were only paces apart now.

Alizeh kept her face impassive, breathing steadily even as she wanted desperately to run, for the longer she stood before the devil, the more repulsed she felt. “Do you think I should be pleased?” she asked.

“Of course,” he said, frowning slightly.

“Why?”

“Because I did all of this for you.” He held out his arms, as if to indicate the expanse of everything.

Alizeh’s senses sharpened; adrenaline flooded through her. It was clear now that she was not dealing with mere evil, but delusion, too. She’d have to tread cautiously.

She fought again to draw upon her magic, heat building upon heat, and as the burn in her veins sharpened, she reached out one more time—

Cyrus , she nearly screamed. Please—please hear me—

Now she felt the force of a responding heat in her chest, like a small sun unfurling upon her sternum, and a swell of hope rocketed through her.

Cyrus was alive.

Cyrus was alive.

She thought she might cry for the joy that claimed her then, but she could not reveal this feeling or else expose herself, and it was with painstaking effort that she kept her eyes dispassionate, even as her heart thudded desperately within her.

“I didn’t realize,” she said to the devil. “That you’d done anything for me.”

Iblees laughed, but he looked insulted. “You didn’t realize?

” he said. “I killed Zaal for you, for all he’d done to you and your family.

I killed his Diviners for you, for issuing the prophecy that made Zaal hunt you.

I found a kingdom for you, to elevate you out of servitude.

I sourced your magic for you, to help you rise to power— Everything I did—it was all for you—”

“I thought Cyrus did those things,” she said.

Iblees went dark, the fake light in his false eyes eclipsed by the sudden, unnerving dilation of his pupils. He studied her with a palpable anger then, shadows thickening around him like winter cloaks.

She felt a tremor of terror.

“You are my queen,” Iblees said, as if this was obvious.

“You are the savior of our people. I did my part to protect you and keep you safe from the Clay monsters who sought to kill you. I was the one who did those things for you.” His eyes flashed in fury.

“Cyrus is nothing but a sentient clod of dirt. His only useful purpose in life is to submit to my will.”

Is , he’d said. Not was .

Alizeh would not succumb to the panic rocketing within her.

Instead, she focused on marshaling the sensations pulsing in her chest, trying to build these dregs of magic into something powerful. She tried to conjure what she needed, calling upon intuition as she manifested, with great intention, a weapon that might materialize hidden on her person—

But the effort was like drawing water from a faulty siphon: possible, but difficult.

An entire swath of the sky collapsed then, hitting the ground with a heavy groan, then shattering apart into individual strands of light. They both looked up as it happened.

“Perhaps we should leave,” said Alizeh with feigned calm. She studied the devastation around her. “It’s no longer safe here— The entire landscape is about to disintegrate—”

This only made Iblees angrier. “We are not leaving without your magic.”

A spike of fear impaled her.

She returned her eyes to the devil. “So it’s true, then? You intend to take my magic?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“You freely admit to your dark intentions?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“Why?”

“Why not?”

Alizeh found this answer unsettling.

Iblees was far too clever to simply give away his secrets. She felt certain that he would not speak so freely of his plans to exploit her if he did not have a plan to shackle her.

She needed a weapon.

Desperation building upon desperation, Alizeh searched her own soul with something akin to fury, pushing deep for a connection she could not name—one she’d never known.

She nearly closed her eyes, steeling herself as she fought to visualize, then conjure the object—

Alizeh gave a silent scream.

And when she finally felt the heft of a dagger weigh down her skirt pocket, she almost gasped in shock. Oh, she thought she might cry in relief, but there was no time to celebrate.

Alizeh knew that she should draw the blade now.

Here was her chance: she should kill Iblees now, drive her knife through his heart—but emancipating Iblees would come at the cost of killing Cyrus, and she was still tormented by denial.

She wasn’t ready to give up on him.

Not yet.

“Cyrus was not my only tool,” the devil said suddenly.

“What?” Alizeh blinked up at him, struck.

“I leveraged other bargains with other broken souls, too,” Iblees explained, sounding both angry and arrogant. “I had many others slaughtered in your honor.”

Now she drew back. “What do you mean?”

“The woman who outed you as a Jinn and forced you to flee the countryside? She’s dead. Zaal’s thugs? They’re dead. Every housekeeper who evicted you from their household? Long dead.”

“You— What?” Her eyes widened. “Mrs. Amina—”

“Dead.”

Alizeh’s heart intensified its pounding. “How did she die?”

“Run over by a carriage,” said the devil with casual derision. “Incurable case of a broken neck.”

Alizeh gasped.

“And will you not thank me?” said Iblees, his eyes sparking. “Will you not praise me for all I’ve done for you?” Again, he spread his arms wide. “Can you still doubt that I, and I alone, did all this for you?”

Alizeh went mute with astonishment.

This was no kindness. The devil did not perform good deeds. He’d not murdered in her name to avenge her, but to keep her alive long enough to use her. Manipulate her.

Hurt her.

And her silence infuriated him.