The rest, she would not torture herself over.
What’s more, Alizeh doubted the prince spared her a single thought; in fact, she would be astonished if he’d not altogether forgotten their fleeting interaction. These days, Alizeh had precious few faces to look upon and recall, but there was no reason the prince of Ardunia should remember that, for a single hour, a poor servant girl had existed in his life.
No, it did not matter who was coming to visit. It shouldn’t matter. What held Alizeh’s attention was this: the rustling of Duchess Jamilah’s skirts as she positioned herself in the crook of yet another armchair.
The woman crossed, then uncrossed her ankles. She shook out her hem, draping the material to be shown to its best advantage, and then pointed her toes so that the rounded tips of her satin slippers would peek out from under her skirts, calling attention to her narrow, dainty feet.
Alizeh almost smiled.
If Duchess Jamilah was indeed expecting a visit from the prince, the current situation was only more perplexing. The woman was the prince’s aunt. She was nearly thrice his age. Watching this grand lady reduce herself to these pedestrian displays of nervousness and pretension was both entertaining and surprising; and proved the perfect diversion for Alizeh’s boiling, chaotic mind.
She’d had quite enough of her own troubles.
Alizeh placed her floor brush on the polished stone and fought back a sudden wave of emotion. By the time she’d arrived home the evening prior, she’d been left but three hours to sleep before the work bell, and she spent two out of three tossing restlessly on her cot. A low-level anxiety hummed even now within her, not merely a consequence of being almost murdered—nor even the murdering she’d done herself—but of the young man who’d kneeled before her in the night.
Your Majesty.
Her parents had always told her this moment would come, but so many years had passed without word that Alizeh had long ago ceased waiting. The first year after her mother’s death she’d survived the long, bleak days only by holding with both hands to hope; she felt certain she would be shortly found, would be rescued. Surely, if she was so important, someone would be along to protect her?
Day after day, no one had come.
Alizeh was thirteen years old the day her house was reduced to ash; she’d no friends who might offer her shelter. She scavenged the wreckage of her home for its surviving, mutilated bits of gold and silver, and these she sold, at a great loss, for the necessary sewing and weaving supplies she still owned today.
As a precaution against revealing her identity, Alizeh moved from town to town with some frequency; for in that hopeful first year, it would not occur to her to take a position as a snoda. Instead, she pursued work as a seamstress, making her way south—over the course of years—from one hamlet to a village, from a village to a town, from a town to a small city. She took any job, no matter how small, sleeping wherever she found a reliable place to collapse. She comforted herself with the assurance that the unbearable days would soon come to an end, that imminently she would be found.
Five years, and no one had come.
No one had been there to spare her the gallows. No one had arrived to offer her a path to safety upon arrival in each new town; no one had been around to guide her to a gentle river or stream in the unnavigable crush of the city. No one came for her when she’d nearly died of thirst; or later, when she’d taken a desperate drink of sewer water and was poisoned so badly she’d been briefly paralyzed.
For two weeks Alizeh had lain in a frozen gutter, her body wracked by violent seizures. She had only enough energy to make herself invisible—to spare herself the worst harassment. She was certain back then, as she stared up at the silver moon, her lips chapped with frost and dehydration, that she would die there in the street, and die alone.
Long ago she’d ceased living with the hope of being rescued. Even when she was hunted and besieged by the worst of men and women, she no longer cried out for help—not when her many calls had gone unanswered.
Alizeh had learned, instead, to rely on herself.
Hers had been a lonely, agonizing journey of survival. That someone had finally found her seemed impossible, and she was gripped now by both hope and fear, alternating between the two with such frequency she thought she might go mad.
Was it foolish, she wondered, to allow herself to feel happiness for even a moment?
She shifted, then, felt the nosta move against her chest. She’d hidden the orb in the only safe place she could think of: just inside her corset, the polished glass pressed close to her skin. She felt the nosta glow hot and cold as conversations ebbed and flowed around her, every change in temperature a reminder of what had happened the evening prior. The nosta had turned out to be a gift in many ways, for without it she might’ve begun to wonder whether her memories of the night before were, in fact, a dream.