“Well I don’t know it.”
“This is the work of German composer Johann Pachelbel,” I explain, struggling not to frown. “It’s often called Pachelbel’s Canon in D, because it was meant to be played in the key of D major. Do you know nothing about music?”
“Yeah, I don’t even know what the hell you just said.”
“How can y—”
“All right, shut up, no one cares—the music is changing, do you hear that? When it goes high like that? That means she’s going to come out any second now—”
The audience rises almost at once, a rush of breaths and bodies clambering to their feet, craning their necks, and for a moment, I can’t see her at all.
And then, suddenly, I do.
Relief hits me like a gust, leaving me so suddenly unsteady I worry, for a moment, that I might not make it.
Ella looks spun from gossamer, glowing as she glitters in the soft light. Her gown has a corseted, glimmering bodice that flows into a soft, decadent skirt, her arms bare save delicate, off-the-shoulder scraps of tulle that graze her skin.
She is luminous.
I’ve never seen her wear makeup, and I have no idea what they’ve done to her face, except that she is now so beautiful as to be unreal, her hair in an elegant arrangement atop her head, a long veil gracing her shoulders, flowing with her as she walks.
She does not look like she belongs in this world, or in this dingy backyard, or in this dilapidated neighborhood, or on this crumbling planet. She is above it. Above us all. A spark of light separated from the sun.
A dangerous heat builds behind my eyes and I force myself to fight it back, to remain calm, but when she sees me, she smiles—and I nearly lose the fight.
“I told you it was a nice dress,” Kenji whispers.
“Kenji.”
“Yes?”
“Thank you,” I say, still staring at Ella. “For everything.”
“Anytime,” he says, his voice more subdued than before. “This is the beginning of a new chapter for all of us, man. For the whole world. This wedding is making history right now. You know that, right? Nothing is ever going to be the same.”
Ella glides toward me, nearly within reach. I feel my heart pounding in my chest, happiness threatening to destroy me. I’m smiling now, smiling like the most ordinary of men, staring at the most extraordinary woman I’ve ever known.
“Believe me,” I whisper. “I do.”
Keep reading for a sneak peek at
the first book in Tahereh Mafi’s stunning fantasy series!
ONE
ALIZEH STITCHED IN THE KITCHEN by the light of star and fire, sitting, as she often did, curled up inside the hearth. Soot stained her skin and skirts in haphazard streaks: smudges along the crest of a cheek, a dusting of yet more darkness above one eye. She didn’t seem to notice.
Alizeh was cold. No, she was freezing.
She often wished she were a body with hinges, that she might throw open a door in her chest and fill its cavity with coal, then kerosene. Strike a match.
Alas.
She tugged up her skirts and shifted nearer the fire, careful lest she destroy the garment she still owed the illegitimate daughter of the Lojjan ambassador. The intricate, glittering piece was her only order this month, but Alizeh nursed a secret hope that the gown would conjure clients on its own, for such fashionable commissions were, after all, the direct result of an envy born only in a ballroom, around a dinner table. So long as the kingdom remained at peace, the royal elite—legitimate and illegitimate alike—would continue to host parties and incur debt, which meant Alizeh might yet find ways to extract coin from their embroidered pockets.
She shivered violently then, nearly missing a stitch, nearly toppling into the fire. As a toddling child Alizeh had once been so desperately cold she’d crawled onto the searing hearth on purpose. Of course it had never occurred to her that she might be consumed by the blaze; she’d been but a babe following an instinct to seek warmth. Alizeh couldn’t have known then the singularity of her affliction, for so rare was the frost that grew inside her body that she stood in stark relief even among her own people, who were thought to be strange indeed.
A miracle, then, that the fire had only disintegrated her clothes and clogged the small house with a smoke that singed her eyes. A subsequent scream, however, signaled to the snug tot that her scheme was at an end. Frustrated by a body that would not warm, she’d wept frigid tears as she was collected from the flames, her mother sustaining terrible burns in the process, the scars of which Alizeh would study for years to come.