This Woven Kingdom(This Woven Kingdom #1)(75)

Improbably, the prince laughed. “I must say, you are a surprise. I’d not imagined you’d be so quick to anger.”

“I find it difficult to believe you imagined me at all.”

“Why?”

Alizeh hesitated, blinking up at him. “I beg your pardon? What reason would you have to wonder about my temperament?”

“You need only one? I have many.”

Alizeh’s lips parted in surprise. “Are you making fun of me?”

He smiled at that, smiled so wide she saw the white flash of his teeth. It changed him, somehow. Softened him.

He said nothing.

“You are right, in any case,” Alizeh said. “I am not usually so quick to anger.” She bit her lip. “I fear there is something about you that makes me angrier than most.”

He laughed again. “I suppose I should not mind then, so long as I am memorable.”

Alizeh sighed. She shoved her small pillow into her bag, snapped the overstuffed bag closed. “All right, I w—”

There was a sound.

A distant creak of stairs, the sound of wood expanding and contracting. No one ever came up this far, not unless it was absolutely necessary—and if someone was here now, it was without a doubt to make certain she was gone.

Alizeh did not think before she reacted, instinct alone activating her movements. Indeed it all happened so quickly she’d not even realized what she’d done until her mind was returned to her body, sensation returned to her skin.

She felt him everywhere, all at once.

She’d knocked them both back into a far corner of the room, where they now crouched, and where Alizeh had cloaked their bodies and her bag with invisibility.

She also all but sat in his lap.

Ferocious heat spread through her body, something like mortification. She could not move now for fear of exposing them, but neither did she know how she would survive this: his body pressed against hers, his warm breath at her neck. She inhaled the scent of him without meaning to—orange blossoms and leather—and the heady combination filled her head, startled her nerves.

“Is it possible you’re trying to kill me?” he whispered. “Your methods are highly unusual.”

She didn’t dare answer.

If she and the prince were caught alone in her room together, she could only imagine the fallout for both of them. A plausible explanation seemed impossible.

When the doorknob turned a second later, she felt the prince stiffen with awareness. His hand tightened around her waist, and Alizeh’s heart pounded only harder.

She’d forgotten to blow out the candle.

Alizeh tensed as the door creaked open. She had no way of knowing who would be sent to check on her; if it was one of the rarer Jinn servants, her illusion of invisibility would not hold, as it was effective only on Clay. She also knew not whether her attempt to extend this protection to the prince would be successful, as she’d never before attempted such a feat.

A figure entered the room—not Mrs. Amina, Alizeh noted with relief—but a footman. His eyes roved the room, and Alizeh tried to see the space as he did: stripped of all personal effects, save the small basket of dried flowers.

And the candle, the blasted candle.

The footman scooped up the flowers and headed straight for the flame, shaking his head with obvious irritation before blowing it out. Doubtless he wondered whether the girl had planned to set fire to the house upon her exit.

He was gone a moment later, slamming the door shut behind him.

That was it.

The ordeal was done.

Alizeh should have rejoiced in her success, but the small, windowless attic room had gone suddenly, suffocatingly dark, and a familiar panic began to claw its way up her throat, constricting her chest. She felt as if she’d been left at the bottom of the sea, consumed whole by infinite night.

Worse, she found that she could not move.

Alizeh blinked desperately against the jet black, willing her eyes to adjust to the impenetrable darkness, to widen their aperture enough to find a single spark of light, all to no avail. The more desperate she grew, the harder it became to remain calm; she felt her heart beat faster in her chest, her pulse fluttering in her throat.

The prince moved, suddenly, touching her as he shifted, his hands circling her waist. He lifted her, just slightly, to adjust himself, but he made no effort to put space between their bodies.

In fact, he drew her closer.

“I beg your pardon,” he whispered in her ear. “But do you intend to sit on me in perpetuity?”

Alizeh felt a bit faint, and she did not know then whether to blame the dark or the nearness of the prince, whose ever-increasing proximity had begun to brew a counterintuitive cure for her panic. His closeness somehow dulled the sharpest edge of her fear, imbuing in her now an unexpected calm.

She unclenched by degrees, sinking slowly against him with unconscious effort; every inch she conceded he easily claimed, drawing her deeper into his warmth, more fully into his embrace. His body heat soon enveloped her so completely that she imagined, for the length of the most sublime moment, that the ice in her veins had begun to thaw, that she might presently puddle at his feet. Without a sound she sighed, sighed as relief coursed through her frozen blood. Even her racing pulse began to steady.

She could not name this remedy.

She only knew he was strong—she could feel it even now—his limbs heavy and solid, his broad chest the ideal place to rest her head. Alizeh had been desperately fatigued for years; she was overwhelmed then by an illogical desire to wrap the comforting weight of his arms around her body and sleep. She wanted to close her eyes, wanted to drift off at long last without fear, without worry.