Page 8 of Every Spiral of Fate (This Woven Kingdom #4)

Eight

HUDA TORE HER EYES AWAY ; she’d gone deathly pale. “ Good God ,” she breathed. “It suddenly seems a shame to kill him.”

“I beg your pardon,” he said, directing his words to the wall. “I didn’t know we had company. Too late I realized I have no clothes here, and I’ve no notion of where to find them.” Cyrus’s voice was rough, his eyes tired but clear.

He’d appeared unsteady as he strode in from the hall, but his movements had gained strength as he approached their table.

The medicinal bath had done him a great deal of good, but Alizeh knew it was her proximity to him that was responsible for his swift journey back to health.

Magic was ineffective against the torture of a blood oath, but she’d requested Deen brew him a restorative elixir nonetheless, and she’d stood watch over Cyrus to ensure he drained the cup.

Yet even as he’d obeyed her command to drink the tonic he’d refused to look at her, and she noticed he did not lift his eyes to hers now, either.

Alizeh felt her frustration sharpen.

Cyrus had been treating her with a polite, cold distance from the moment she broke down his door.

He seemed determined to treat her like a stranger.

He would not converse, choosing to answer her questions only in short sentences, respectfully, with indifference; he did not animate or otherwise offer evidence of emotion.

It was driving her into a fury.

She knew he was only protecting himself. She knew she had no right to demand anything of him, not when he’d already given her everything—his home, his heart, his kingdom—

By the angels, his very blood ran through her veins.

That she wanted yet more from him was indefensible.

He’d bled for her, would soon die for her.

Their union was meant to end only after she killed him.

It was cruel of her to want to see him smile despite his suffering; she knew she was callous and selfish for wanting him to bare his heart when she’d already severed it from his body.

She knew this and still it stoked a wild fever within her. They were to be married today.

Married.

He’d promised he wouldn’t treat her like this on their wedding day—with a cold remove, with borderline contempt—

“Huda,” she said softly. “Would you leave us, please?”

Only then did Cyrus lift his head, an inscrutable reaction flashing in and out of his eyes.

Huda, who’d been patting down her bodice with a napkin, looked up as if pinched. “Leave you? With him?”

“Yes.”

“Now?”

“Yes.”

“Alone?”

“ Yes ,” Alizeh said irritably. She frowned at Huda. “I need to speak with him regarding a private matter.”

“A private matter?” she repeated, aghast. “But dear, he’s indecent. We’re all very lucky I happened to be here to act as chaperone when he came upon you in such a state—”

“Huda, please—”

“Have you seen the man’s thighs?” she said, pointing. “That towel is hardly strong enough to do the job required—in fact, I daresay it’s liable to tear in half—”

“You seem somehow incapable of delicacy,” said Cyrus, cutting her off, “so I ask this question sincerely: Do you happen to think I’m deaf?”

Both ladies promptly lapsed into silence.

Cyrus had crossed his arms against his chest as he spoke, which only emphasized the problem: he cut a majestic figure.

In fact, he was breathtaking.

The broad expanse of him; the sinewy cord of muscle that carved his arms and shoulders; the masterful lines of his torso. Everywhere, every inch of him, had been honed.

His gleaming, golden body seemed to have been built with the simple purpose of containing tightly coiled power. Even after all he’d suffered he remained vividly rendered, and the effects of his beauty were not lost on Alizeh, who was only better at hiding her reactions than her friend.

Privately, she felt she might need to lie down.

Alizeh was trying to draw her eyes away from him, scolding herself for gaping at him like a shameless idiot, when her eyes caught a flash of movement—

The bright green locust, from earlier, had sprung upon his shoulder. Cyrus released his arms in surprise, then turned to look at the insect as if he’d been tapped by a stranger.

His eyes widened a touch.

She watched, hardly breathing, as Cyrus tilted his head toward the visitor, then slowly, elegantly, turned out his hand. The locust promptly hopped into his palm.

Huda gasped aloud; Alizeh gasped in her heart.

It looked for all the world as if the insect had arrived with the express intention of paying Cyrus a visit; and Cyrus, for his part, did not seem surprised enough by the focused attentions of a locust.

His eyes pulled together with indecipherable emotion as he studied the creature, and then, so briefly she nearly missed it, a smile touched his lips.

That was it.

The locust tossed itself dizzily into the air and flew away, propelling itself past her shimmering gown and out the open window. Within seconds, the swarm in the distance dispersed, the din fading entirely into the white noise of the waterfalls.

That could not have been coincidence.

Alarmed, Alizeh looked from the window to Cyrus, then back again, but Cyrus was gazing steadily outside, at the spiders unfurling themselves from their threads, launching themselves off the ledge.

Something had just happened. Alizeh felt certain of it.

In fact, she felt strange: almost emotional.

Her head was heating unevenly. She couldn’t explain why the ephemeral scenes had moved her so.

There was nothing to it. Just earlier she’d experienced a similar encounter with the locust; and yet she felt, inexplicably, that Cyrus had experienced something more.

Huda, meanwhile, had been affected not at all.

“Are you quite finished?” she said sharply. “Standing there scandalizing your audience in a towel that scarcely fits—”

“As I said.” Cyrus cut her off, lowering his eyes to the ground. The dark tension had returned to his face. “I’d not realized we had company. I have no dressing gown here. My old clothes were taken away. I was only in search of something to wear—”

“ We? ” Huda’s eyes went round. She still held the sopping napkin she’d used to mop up her dress, and she lifted it now to her mouth in shock.

“ We? As if you might be entertaining guests together? As if my presence is the only issue of impropriety? As if it might’ve been acceptable for you to appear before the queen unclothed! ”

“Huda,” said Alizeh. “Please—”

“No—no, I will not leave you with this—this rogue,” she said to Alizeh. “I’m afraid it is my duty as your best friend to remain firmly by your side until he is decent.”

“ Best friend? ” Cyrus raised his eyebrows. “Is this a recent promotion?”

“I am ignoring you, degenerate that you are!” Huda declared, rising quickly to her feet and nearly knocking over the table.

She smoothed the tablecloth, righted the clattering teapot, then readjusted the silverware.

“Come, Alizeh. I see now why he was deemed unfit to be a Diviner. Not an ounce of virtue—liable to pounce upon a lady at any moment. We’ll get him his dratted clothes—”

“There’s no need,” Alizeh said, standing with a composure she did not feel. “I have his wedding garments here.”

Cyrus went solid with alarm. “Wedding garments?” he said, and almost— almost— looked at her. “I have no wedding garments.”

“I know,” said Alizeh, hesitating. “Your mother said you’d never had anything commissioned for the occasion. So I made them for you myself.”

He looked up sharply at that, finally meeting her gaze for the length of a breathless moment, his eyes heating with an emotion so intense it was impossible to decipher. Just as sharply, he looked away. He fell silent, then said flatly—

“No, thank you.”

Alizeh absorbed this rejection like a shock to the heart. It was a second before she could gather herself.

“ No, thank you? ” she echoed. “You mean you will not wear the garments I made for you by hand?”

Cyrus returned his eyes to the ground. “No.”

Alizeh recoiled at this supplemental rejection, her gaze pinging around the room as she calibrated.

She’d never imagined he might refuse the clothing, and she was, as a result, ill-prepared to manage this emotional blow.

She did not see him flinch at the sight of her stricken face.

She could not have known he’d taken a tentative, tortured step toward her in the quiet.

Her pain was in fact so obvious that the room suddenly wore this tension like a skin.

“You’re not serious, surely?” said Huda, her surprise so pure it was delivered with a laugh. “She’s been working tirelessly for days.”

To this, Cyrus said nothing.

“You promised me you wouldn’t make this day tedious,” Alizeh said quietly. “You promised me you would discard your black uniform—that you would not spend the day in a foul mood and funereal clothes—”

“I promised you no such thing.”

“Yes, you did—”

“I assure you I did not,” he said curtly.

“But you—” Alizeh blinked, trying to remember. “That is— I thought—”

“I made you no promises,” he said, his eyes fixed on a point in the distance, his jaw tight. Anyone could see how he struggled. “I beg you do not ask this of me now.”

“But it’s our wedding day,” she managed to whisper, conjuring no other defense. “Will you really wear all black and no adornment, like a common mourner?”

“I should like to wear black,” he said, swallowing, “to my own funeral. Yes.”

At this Alizeh turned abruptly away, pressing her hands against her stomach.

She felt punctured. Cyrus had said it might be a few months before the devil released him from his arrangement, which meant the grisly, murderous deed need not occur for some time.

In her mind she’d put it off as a bleak task for her future self to manage.

Only now did she realize how cruel it was to have been so cavalier.

For Cyrus, there was no pushing off the darkness for the future. For Cyrus, their wedding was the beginning of his end.

They would marry, and he would lose everything.

She was mortified by the sudden sting in her nose, the knot in her throat. She fought valiantly for self-possession and was uncertain of her success. All these days of managing heartache and fear had worn away at her composure; she had nearly nothing left in the way of defenses. She felt shaken.

Summoning the last vestiges of her pride, she straightened her back, then retrieved the poorly wrapped parcel from its position upon a side table.

She’d labored over this ensemble for countless hours, distracting her disordered mind with every tedious stitch.

She’d poured her heart into its design, had imagined him vividly in its making.

She’d silently wept while cutting the patterns, agonized over every decision with more care than she had for anything she’d made in her life.

She would not keep it.

She carried the bundle across the room with as much detachment as she could summon, which was paltry indeed.

Cyrus took several steps back as she approached.

“You don’t have to wear it,” she said to his throat, his cheek, the elegant curve of his eyebrow. It fairly killed her that he wouldn’t meet her gaze. Her voice was weak, and weakening more with every word. “But I will not keep it. This was meant to be my gift”—she faltered—“my gift t-to you—”

Cyrus quit the room.

He walked away before she’d even finished the sentence, disappearing into the hall without a word, without a sound, without a backward glance.

Alizeh stood there, struck dumb, the parcel still held out in offering. She knew then, as she felt a single tear roll down her cheek, that her wedding day would be emblazoned in her memory as one of the worst days of her life. And she had known dark days, indeed.

“Are you all right, dear?” came Huda’s tender voice.

She wanted to fall to her knees.

Killing Cyrus was no longer an option but an inevitability. The blood oath had entered them into an inescapable contract that bound them both in a brutal finish. When she finally ended his life, she knew she’d sever something essential in her soul.

When he died, he’d take a part of her with him.

She wished he might take all of her.