“You must forgive my inability to grant you an audience at this hour,” she said quietly. “I’ve no doubt you are generous enough to comprehend the difficulty of my position. I’ve precious few hours to sleep before the work bell tolls, and I must return to my quarters with all possible haste.”
The prince seemed taken aback by this, and indeed took a step back. “Of course,” he said softly. “Forgive me.”
“There is nothing to forgive.” She bobbed a neat curtsy.
“Yes.” He blinked. “Good night.”
Alizeh turned the corner and waited in the dark, her heart racing, for the sound of the back door opening, then closing. When she was certain the prince was gone, she returned quietly to the kitchen to lock up and bank the fire.
Only then did she realize she was not alone.
Fourteen
SLEEP, THAT ELUSIVE FIEND, CAME so unwillingly to the prince that it refused to remain long. Kamran awoke before dawn with a sharpness that surprised him, for he was both abed and then out of it before the sun had even met the horizon. His body was fatigued, yes, but his mind was clear. It had been running all night; his dreams fevered, his imaginings frenzied.
He’d begun to wonder whether the girl had cursed him.
She clearly knew not what she’d done to him, nor could she be blamed for her success in so thoroughly disordering his faculties, but Kamran could not conceive a more elegant explanation for what had overcome him. He was moved neither by a base need to physically possess the girl, nor was he deluded enough to think he might be in love with her. Still, he could not understand himself. Never before had he been so consumed by thoughts of anyone.
The girl was going to be murdered.
She was going to be murdered by his own grandfather, and it seemed to Kamran the worst kind of tragedy.
The prince was one of the few people who knew, of course. He and Hazan both knew of the prophecy, the foretelling of a creature with ice in its veins. Every king in the history of the Ardunian empire had received a prophecy, and King Zaal had felt it his duty to manage the prince’s expectations of such an event. Long ago his grandfather had explained to him that, on the day of his coronation, Kamran would receive two visits.
The first, from a Diviner.
The other, from the devil.
The devil would offer him a bargain, the terms of which Kamran should under no circumstances accept. The Diviner, his grandfather had said, would make a prediction.
When Kamran asked what prediction the Diviners had made for him, King Zaal had grown unnaturally reticent, saying only that he’d been warned of the rise of a fearsome adversary, a demon-like creature with ice in its veins. It was said to be an enemy with allies so formidable its mere existence would lead to the king’s eventual demise.
Enraged, the young prince had promised his grandfather right then that he would search all of Ardunia for this monster, that he would slay the beast and deliver its head to the king on a pike.
You need not worry, his grandfather had said, smiling. I will slay the beast myself.
Kamran closed his eyes and sighed.
He splashed water on his face, performing his morning ablutions with care. It seemed impossible that the terrifying monster of his childhood imaginings was in fact the stunning young woman he’d encountered last night.
Kamran towel dried his face and applied orange blossom oil to his neck, to the pulse points at his wrists. He took a deep breath and drew the intoxicating scent into his body, relaxing as it warmed his chest, lowered his heart rate.
Slowly, he exhaled.
He was so unfamiliar with the feelings that possessed him now that he wondered for a moment whether he might well and truly be ill. How he’d even delivered himself to his chambers the evening prior he knew not, for he rode home through the blustery night as if in a trance. The girl’s beauty had first rendered him speechless under the most unflattering conditions—in the half-light of a vicious storm—but seeing her face by firelight had dealt him a physical blow from which he had no hope of recovering.
Worse, far worse: he thought her fascinating.
He found himself captivated by her contradictions, the choices she made, even the way she moved.
Who was she, precisely? Where had she come from?
His ambitions upon arriving at her door last night had been scattered by a battering of his senses. He’d hoped to accomplish a great deal by going to her; he’d wanted to return her packages, yes, but there was something more that had compelled his senseless visit, a motivation of which he was entirely ashamed. Had his visit been successful Kamran might’ve betrayed his king, his empire. He would’ve been reduced to the most repellant variety of idiot, instead of the next king of Ardunia.