Page 59 of Every Spiral of Fate (This Woven Kingdom #4)

Fifty-Six

“CYRUS?”

Alizeh let the dagger fall to the ground as she dropped to her knees, bending desperately over his body.

The tether of the blood oath had finally died out.

She’d felt their connection sever during the last moments of her confrontation with Iblees and she’d been forced to carry on regardless.

She’d not known whether Cyrus would survive the brutal attacks she’d dealt his body, and she had to be strong enough now to bear the consequences of her decision—no matter the outcome. Still, Alizeh was in denial.

She refused to believe she’d lost him.

She wasted no time pressing her hands to his chest to heal him, yet she watched with increasing despair as the last of his wounds were mended—for his pulse was absent.

He did not draw breath.

She shook him, grief threatening to break her. “Cyrus,” she cried. “Please— please —”

She looked up at the falling skies in agony, silent tears streaming down her cheeks.

She wished for more than this.

She wished for more time, more chances. She wished for the strength to revive him.

She wished for her friends to unthaw from their paralysis, she wished the surreal scene would restore itself, that she might be given another opportunity to find her greater magic—for she wished to know whether she might use it to save someone.

She pressed her cheek to Cyrus’s bloody chest and she wept for him, for all that he’d been, for all that they’d never be. She summoned from the earth every ounce of magic her body could bear, and pushed it over and over into his still body, hoping against hope—knowing it might be useless.

“I know you’ve already fought so hard,” she said, choking through tears. “You’ve already given me everything, and I hate to ask you for more. But if you have any strength left, please use it to come back to me. Please—Cyrus, I beg you—”

“Alizeh.”

She looked up as if from the grip of death itself. She felt the sticky print of Cyrus’s blood upon her cheek and she did not care.

“Hazan?” she gasped.

He towered over her, tall and extraordinary, as the clouds unspun from their tufts behind him, the blue sky slouching beyond that, then unraveling into shimmering threads.

Omid and Huda and Kamran and Deen soon closed ranks behind him, and Alizeh’s eyes widened in wonder. They were all of them whole. Everyone hale.

“How?” she whispered. “How did you—”

Huda shook her head. She was looking at Cyrus, at the blood staining his dark clothes. “Oh, my dear,” she said thickly, her eyes wet with tears. “We thought you did it.”

Alizeh blinked, tried to wipe her cheeks.

“What you did today was extraordinary,” said Hazan, who looked as close to vulnerable as she’d ever seen him. “What you achieved—”

“The people of Tulan will never know what you’ve done,” Deen whispered.

“We were all sorry to have been rendered useless,” said Huda, her hand trembling as she wiped away a tear. “But we’ve never been so proud to call you our queen.”

Alizeh could say nothing to this. She knew it had been a victory, but she felt nothing but breathtaking loss.

“Is he really dead?” asked Omid, his eyes red-rimmed and raw.

No one answered him.

Alizeh turned away, trying to gather herself, and she watched, as sobs built and broke in her chest, as sections of the landscape were undone in slow, indulgent sweeps, unraveling as if from a vast tapestry.

Layered loops of gossamer thread stacked in strange spirals all around them, and as the world came undone, she saw that the loom behind it all was built of nothing but blinding, brilliant light.

“I’m afraid we must go,” said Kamran somberly.

Alizeh looked back to find that he, too, was studying Cyrus with something like grief, and his shadowed eyes, weighted down with respect, were an unexpected balm for her abraded soul. Still, she shook her head.

“I can’t,” she said brokenly. “I’m not ready to leave him.”

“I have no idea whether we’ll survive this,” said Hazan, looking pained as he stared up at the sky. “We must try, at least, to complete the tasks before it’s too late—perhaps there’s still time to get your magic—”

“ Alizeh. ”

Everyone stiffened.

She turned toward his voice as if through layers of dream, hardly trusting her senses. She might’ve conjured the sound of him from pure desperation. She might’ve been dropped into a mirage of her own making.

When she turned to look upon his face, Cyrus was the same. He’d not shifted an inch. His eyes were still closed, his hair just so, his limbs unmoved. He looked for all the world as still as she’d seen him not moments ago.

“Cyrus?” she whispered.

By degrees, the fingers of his right hand began to curl, and Alizeh felt her heart restart with a volcanic pain. Her breaths came faster and faster, panic and hope colliding in ferocious waves, and when she saw his chest lift—when she heard him draw breath—

She clapped a hand over her mouth and sobbed.

Cyrus prized his eyes open slowly, as if emerging from a deep, disorienting sleep.

And when their gazes met, he managed a brief smile.

“You’re alive,” she said, weeping openly now. “You c-came back—”

She reached for his face, drawing a trembling hand down his cheek, and he sighed with the full force of his chest.

“Please,” he whispered. “Don’t cry.”

“I’m so sorry for hurting you,” she said, unable to compose herself, to quiet her tears. “I’m so desperately sorry—for what I had to do to you—for what I put you through—”

“ Angel ,” he breathed. “You saved me.”

“I killed you—”

“Thank you,” he said softly, his eyes closing. “Thank you.”