This Woven Kingdom(This Woven Kingdom #1)(19)

“But if something should happen to you on the battlefield, we will be in chaos. Worthless relations will claim the throne, and then lay waste to it. There are five hundred thousand soldiers under our command. Tens of millions who rely on us to manage their well-being, to ensure their safety, to procure the necessary water for their crops, to guarantee food for their children.” Zaal leaned forward. “You must secure the line, my child. Not just for me, but for your father. For your legacy. This, Kamran, is what you must do for your empire.”

The prince understood then that there was no choice to be made. King Zaal was not asking a question.

He was issuing a command.

Kamran rose on one knee, bowed his head before his king. “Upon my honor,” he said quietly. “You have my word.”





Eight





THIS DAY HAD BEEN MORE difficult than most.

Alizeh had boiled water until the steam seared her skin. She’d plunged her hands into soapy, scalding-hot liquid so many times that the grooves in her knuckles had split. Her fingers were blistered, warm to the touch. The sharp edges of her floor brush had dug into her palms, rubbing the skin raw until it bled. She’d bunched her apron in her fists as often as she dared, but every desperate search for her handkerchief turned up only disappointment.

Alizeh had little time to dwell on the many thoughts haunting her mind that day, though neither did she desire to think upon such disheartening matters. Between the devil’s visit, the terrifying appearance of the hooded stranger, the cruelty of Miss Huda, and the boy she’d left broken in the snow, Alizeh did not lack for fuel to feed her fears.

She considered, as she scrubbed clean yet another latrine, that it was probably for the best that she ignore the lot. Better not to think on any of it, better to simply push every day through the pain and the fear until she, too, was finally consumed by eternal darkness. It was a bleak thought for a young woman of eighteen, but she thought it nonetheless: that perhaps only in death might she find the freedom she so desperately sought, for she had long ago given up hope of finding solace in this world.

Indeed most hours of the day Alizeh could hardly believe who she’d become, how far she’d strayed from the plans once held for her future. Long ago there’d been a blueprint for her life, a quiet infrastructure designed to support who she might one day be. She’d been left little choice but to abandon that imagined future, not unlike a child shedding an imagined friend. All that remained of her old existence was the familiar whisper of the devil, his voice growing under her skin at intervals, snuffing her life of light.

Would that he, too, might vanish.

The clock had just struck two when, for the twelfth time that day, Alizeh placed her empty buckets on the kitchen floor.

She looked around for any sign of Cook or Mrs. Amina before stealing to the back of the room, and only when she was certain of her solitude did she do what she’d already done eleven times before, and wrench open the heavy wooden door.

Alizeh was struck straightaway by the intoxicating smell of rosewater.

The Wintrose Festival was one of the few things familiar to her in this foreign, royal city, for the Wintrose season was celebrated all throughout the empire of Ardunia. Alizeh had fond memories of harvesting the delicate pink blooms with her parents, straw baskets colliding as they walked, heads dense with perfume.

She smiled.

Nostalgia nudged her feet across the threshold, sense memory encouraging her legs, articulating her limbs. A zephyr moved through the alley, tumbling rose petals toward her, and she drew the heady, floral fragrance deep into her lungs, experiencing a rare moment of unqualified joy as the breeze ruffled her hair, the hems of her skirts. The sun was but a nebulous glow through an exhalation of clouds, painting the moment in diffuse, golden light that made Alizeh feel as if she’d stepped into a dream. She could hardly help her need to draw nearer to such beauty.

One at a time, she began picking the wind-scattered roses out of the snow, gently tucking the wilting blossoms into the pockets of her apron. These Gol Mohammadi roses were so heavily scented, their perfume would last for months. Her mother had always used theirs to make a rose-petal jam, saving a few corollas to press between the pages of a book, which Alizeh liked t—

Without warning, her heart began to race.

It was that familiar pinch in her chest, her pulse pounding in her bleeding palms. Her hands shook without warning, petals falling loose from her fists. Alizeh was struck with a frightening need to run from this place, to strip the apron from her body and tear across the city, lungs blazing. She wanted desperately to return home, to fall at her parents’ feet and grow roots there, at the base of their bodies. She felt all this in the span of a second, the feeling flooding her with a riotous force and leaving her, in its wake, strangely numb. It was a humbling experience, for Alizeh was again reminded that she had no home, no parents to whom she might return.

It had been years since their deaths, and still it seemed to Alizeh an outrageous injustice that she could not see their faces.

She swallowed.

Once, Alizeh’s life had meant to be a source of strength for the people she loved; instead, she often felt her birth had exposed her parents to bloodshed, to the brutal murders that would take them both—first her father, then her mother—in the same year.

Jinn had been viciously slaughtered for ages, it was true; their numbers had been decimated, their footprint reduced near to nothing—and with it, much of their legacy. The deaths of her parents, too, had seemed to the unsuspecting eye much like the deaths of countless other Jinn: random acts of hatred, or even unfortunate accidents.