Finally, she’d be free.
She decided then that she could not—would not—allow herself to be rude to this young man, not even if he deserved it, not when she might soon owe him her life.
She cleared her throat.
“Do you know,” she said, trying to smile, “in all the excitement I’ve forgotten to say something rather important.”
He cut her a dark look.
“Thank you,” she said. “I know the burden is cumbersome, but you render me a great kindness tonight, and I won’t soon forget it.”
The stranger flinched at that, stared at her a beat too long. “I don’t do it to be kind.”
“I know.”
“Then don’t,” he said, sounding, for the first time, like he owned a real emotion: anger. “Don’t thank me.”
Alizeh stiffened. “Very well, then. I retract my formal thanks. Still, I am grateful.”
“Don’t be.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Do you intend to command me not to feel my own emotions?”
“Yes.”
“That’s absurd.”
“And yet, if you are truly grateful for my assistance, you might do me a favor and resist speaking to me altogether.”
Alizeh went slack. “Why are you trying to be cruel?”
“Oh, please don’t fight,” Miss Huda said. “This is bound to be awful enough already—”
“I am inclined to agree,” the young man said coldly. “Impossible as my dreams might be, I would much prefer that we persevere in silence, and part as strangers.”
“Fine,” Alizeh said quietly, her jaw clenching.
“Good.” He glanced at Miss Huda. “Now we must be off.”
“Wait,” said Miss Huda desperately. “Will you not reconsider? Please let me stay here. I promise I won’t say a word to anyone about what I’ve seen— I’ll be silent as death, you’ll see—”
For the second time, the nosta went cold against Alizeh’s skin. She flinched.
“I told you we should kill her,” said the stranger.
Miss Huda whimpered.
“Ignore him,” Alizeh said. “Listen, it’s only for a short while. You can come back home as soon as we’re able to get somewhere safe—”
“You give the girl false hope,” said Nothing, cutting her off. “The only way she could reliably return home is if we manage to distort her memory, which requires walking her backward through time, which is exceedingly complicated, not to mention painful—”
Miss Huda began to cry.
“Will you not hush?” Alizeh snapped at the stranger, forgetting her promise to be nice. “How can you not see that your bullying only makes things worse? We will never manage to be inconspicuous if she won’t stop weeping.”
The stranger looked at her, then looked at Miss Huda. He touched his fingers together, and Miss Huda went suddenly silent.
The girl was still crying but made no sound.
When the young woman realized what happened she clutched at her throat, eyes widening in fear as she struggled to speak, no doubt to scream—all in vain.
Alizeh rounded on Nothing. “What have you done?” she demanded. “I insist you change her back this instant.”
“I will not.”
“Are you some kind of Diviner?”
“No.”
“A monster, then?”
He almost smiled. “Don’t say you’ve been speaking with my mother?”
“How do you have access to so much magic, then? The dress, the shoes—now this—”
“And this,” he said, placing his hat atop his head.
Without warning, Alizeh was pitched forward into endless night.
Thirty-Five
MUSIC SWELLED IN KAMRAN’S EARS, the screaming darkness of his mind punctured occasionally by the sound of laughter, the clink of glass and silver. His dark eyes were lined with kohl; his neck bound heavily in ropes of sapphire; a single, hammered gold circlet nestled in the midnight of his hair. He stood tall in weighty layers of dark green silk, an emerald-encrusted harness crisscrossing his chest and cinched at his waist, and from which hung, as always, his swords. He was both immaculate and uncomfortable as he nodded his head, greeting, unseeing, the nobles who bowed before him, the young women who curtsied low at his feet.
Occasionally Kamran glanced at the glittering throne beside him, which was occupied by his grandfather, and the one beyond that, in which sat his mother, drinking deeply from a goblet of wine. Both royals were smiling, but the king’s jolly countenance was a necessary facade, doing a great deal to belie what was no doubt an interior tempest straining at the capacity of his self-control.