This Woven Kingdom(This Woven Kingdom #1)(105)

A beat too late, he realized his aunt was not alone.

“Your Highness,” said Duchess Jamilah, flushing slightly under his attentions. “It is my great thrill this evening to introduce to you the daughter of a dear friend of mine.”

Kamran felt—and heard—the king straighten in his seat. The prince steeled himself as he turned, studying now the young woman standing beside his aunt.

“Please allow me the pleasure of formally presenting Lady Golnaz, daughter of Marquess Saatchi.”

Kamran nodded, and the girl fell into a graceful curtsy, rising before him to reveal clear brown eyes and an uncomplicated smile. She possessed ordinary, familiar features neither remarkable nor plain. Her brown waves were pulled back from her face in a loose chignon; she wore a nondescript gown with little to recommend its color or shape. Intellectually, Kamran understood that the girl was an approximation of pretty, but he felt nothing when he looked at her, and would never have noticed her in a crowd.

Still, she seemed self-possessed in a way he appreciated. Of all things, Kamran thought he could never be married to someone he didn’t consider his emotional equal, and he struggled always to respect young ladies who only simpered, never holding up their heads with conviction. Dignity was, in his opinion, an essential quality in a queen, and he was at least relieved to discover that Lady Golnaz appeared the owner of a spine.

“The pleasure is mine,” he forced himself to say to the young woman. “I trust you are enjoying yourself this evening, Lady Golnaz.”

“I am, thank you,” she said in a bright voice, a smile touching her eyes. “Though I think the same cannot be said for you, Your Highness.”

The prince stilled at that, studying the young woman now with a renewed appreciation. “My pride would insist that I disagree, though I—” Kamran paused, blinking up at a blur of a girl in the distance, there and gone again.

“I . . .” he said, returning his eyes to Lady Golnaz, struggling now to remember the original purpose of his statement. “I cannot . . .”

Another flash of color and Kamran looked up again, wondering, even then, why he should be so distracted by a single movement when the entire room around him was a madness of motion and—

Alizeh.

The prince was transfixed. Blood rushed from his head without warning, leaving him light-headed.

She was here.

She was here—just there—incandescent in shimmering waves of lavender, obsidian curls pinned away from her unmasked face, a few loose tendrils glancing off her cheeks, which had gone pink with exertion. If he’d thought her breathtaking in the drab garb of a servant’s dress, he could not think how to describe her now. He only knew that she seemed apart from this mundane world; above it.

The mere sight of her had paralyzed him.

There was no linen at her throat, no bandages wrapped around her hands. She seemed to glow as she moved, float as she searched the room. Kamran lost his breath as he watched her, felt his heart hammer in his chest with a violence that scared him.

How? How was she here? Had she come for him? Had she come to find him, to be with him—?

“Your Highness,” someone was saying.

“Sire, are you quite all right?” Another.

The prince watched, as if from outside himself, as a young man grabbed Alizeh’s hand. She spun around to face him, her eyes widening in surprise, then recognition.

He said something, and she laughed.

Kamran felt the sound spear him like a blade, his chest seizing with an unfamiliar pain. It was an ache unlike any he’d known; one he wished to tear out of his chest.

“That’s him,” Hazan whispered suddenly in his ear.

Kamran took a breath and drew back, the scene around him coming sharply into focus. Alizeh had gone; disappeared into the crowd. He saw instead the worried eyes of his aunt, the curious gaze of Lady Golnaz. The frenzy of the bloated crowd before him.

“It’s the gentleman with the copper hair, Your Highness. The one carrying the unusual hat. The Tulanian ambassador has confirmed it.”

It was a moment before the prince was able to say: “Is he quite certain?”

“Yes, sire.”

“Bring him to me,” Kamran said softly.





Thirty-Six





ALIZEH HAD SPIRALED AS SHE fell, plummeting through layers of night, nearing a death that grazed her skin without claiming her soul. She thought she’d heard herself scream as she tumbled, but she’d wondered, too, in a flickering moment, whether she might actually be dreaming, whether her whole life was not some strange, shimmering tapestry, infinite threads of nonsense.

She’d felt her feet hit the ground first, the impact shuddering up her legs, her hips, rattling her teeth. When she opened her eyes she’d crashed against him, braced herself against his chest. Music roared in her ears as she reared back, her head spinning, the din of chatter and laughter piercing the fog of her mind, the smell of sugar in her nose, the crush of bodies against her skin.

There was heat and sweat, sound and sensation—too much of everything. Still, she realized at once where she was, and worried right away for Miss Huda. She pushed away from the stranger and began to search for her new friend, wondering whether the girl had made it through, wondering whether she’d lost forever the ability to speak.

Alizeh trusted the stranger no longer.