All This Twisted Glory (This Woven Kingdom, #3)

by Tahereh Mafi

Instead, the young prince had done the more reasonable thing in a crisis and promptly retched into a nearby planter.

Life, he feared, would never be the same.

The tunnel was a portal to another world—one in which, once upon a time, he’d intended to live forever.

Cyrus of Nara was the spare, of course; never the heir.

from having his lips sealed with a magic that would bind him forever to— Stop.

Still, his eyes flashed with heat as he stood there, for he knew now, with a categorical certainty, that his dreams had died; his role had changed forever. Never would he become a Diviner. All he’d ever wanted, all he’d ever worked for. His life, his future—

Few can die. Or many.

“Are you implying that I’m vain?” “I’m not implying it, Kamran. I’m delivering the statement to you directly.”

all of whom had been lodged into his life by virtue of knowing the same enigmatic young woman—but the addition of exhaustion, hunger, fear, and unprocessed grief had made the very occupation of his body nearly intolerable.

but had he not been so blinded in his pursuit of a young woman, he might’ve known the bliss of an existence apart from these people.

After eighteen years in hiding, Alizeh had finally stepped out of the shadows.

“Sharpen your mind, girl,” she’d said with menacing softness. “If the mob doesn’t kill you tonight, the gossip might.”

in the end, he’d vanquished her not with a weapon but with a sequence of passionate confessions that had left her all but decimated.

How would she ever keep her thoughts in order with so much sensation to file and sort? So many desires to manage and extinguish?

Gently, she’d said, “My dear people, let me bring you water.” The result was a breathtaking chaos. How they’d been so certain of her identity, she couldn’t know; it wasn’t a question she might ask without injuring her credibility. But at her words, they’d seemed to glean the necessary proof and grew hysterical once more, some sobbing uncontrollably, others fainting into the arms of strangers and loved ones.

“You will not endanger yourself,” he’d said.

No longer shirtless, the king of Tulan wore a plain sweater and overcoat, his only indulgence a thick fur cap pulled low over his brow, the article all but hiding his copper hair.

His eyes held all the inconstancy of an eclipse: his anger nearly overwhelming his need. Alizeh had grown light-headed under this careful gaze, her skin prickling with awareness where his eyes had touched her. She didn’t know how to describe this feeling, this breathless languor. No one had ever looked at her the way he did, as if the sight of her might be fatal. Her lips had parted under the weight of his silent want, her mouth growing heavy with the sound of his name and a desperate, foolish impulse to whisper the word against his skin.

After witnessing Alizeh’s quiet power before the unruly crowd, the woman now appeared terrified even to share oxygen with the girl. It seemed the Queen Mother was worried she’d made a dangerous mistake asking Alizeh to murder her son.

She’d come to know this cologne of him, the floral notes of rose infused with the masculine spice of his skin—though she wasn’t entirely sure how. It was perhaps the hours she’d spent holding Cyrus’s body, breathing him in even as she cried. She could still feel the silk of his hair sliding between her fingers, the down of his cheek under her hand. For her efforts she’d been rewarded this unrelenting burn beneath her breastbone, a ripple of feeling so powerful it spasmed without reprieve, refusing to settle even when her thoughts turned to anything and anyone else. Her body had never felt so alive, so electrified.

When had she allowed Cyrus to take up so many rooms inside her?

Too bad, then, that she’d been a fool.

OF COURSE CYRUS KNEW HE was being followed. She possessed all the subtlety of a dragon in slumber.

It was torture enough to imagine her wearing his clothes, but it was an altogether different torment to envision her determined stride, her furrowed brow, the slight pout to her lips that appeared only when she was thinking too much.

For as long as he lived he feared he’d know the scent of her, the sound of her walking toward him. She was a fool to think otherwise. He was a fool to think of her at all.

God, he’d wanted her. He’d wanted her with an all-consuming thirst, with the desperation of a man waiting to die.

He would always be the villain in her story.

Despite everything, Hazan had managed to plant the seed of a dangerous idea in his head: that Alizeh might yet be destined to marry him.

“Your mother is a strange woman,” Hazan responded, fighting a smile.

Hazan narrowed his eyes. “If you’re in too dark a temper even to have a simple conversation, declare it now and spare me the desire to knock you off your mount so I might watch, at my leisure, as gravity does the noble work of snapping your neck.”

Hazan exhaled, looking grim. “I suppose I should forewarn you,” he said. “It’s not a letter.”

More present was a disembodied voice shrieking indistinguishable nonsense as her mind spun, sparks still flaring beneath her skin, pain expanding relentlessly inside her.

There was no doubt now that the voice belonged to the devil—but the sound was distorted, skipping as if caught in a broken loop, as if the rest of the sentence had been lost on the wind. Eyes Eyes Eyes Eyes

He either did or did not. He would not live by half measure.

It was a fifty-foot drop to his death, and he’d slammed bodily against every jagged lip of stone on the way down, landing with an impact so severe he broke his back.

That day, Cyrus had learned cowardice was a luxury. Only the privileged few could afford to run away, to lock their doors and close their eyes to ugliness. The rest lived in homes without doors to lock, looked through eyes without lids to shut. They confronted the dark even as their hearts trembled, as their souls shook—for even strangled by fear, there was no choice but to endure. No one would be along to slay their demons.

Cyrus had been a sheltered royal the first time he’d stepped foot in this cave, and he’d paid a tall price for the timidity of his heart. He’d been careful never to make that mistake again.

Fate, he thought bitterly, was only romantic when one was destined to be the hero.

Before him loomed a curtain of charred flesh. Iblees had never presented himself to the young king as anything but a whisper—a force transmittable from anywhere—and yet, too often Cyrus was summoned here. Here, the scene of every great missive and every great castigation, this decomposing suite of rooms separated only by patchwork veils of scorched human skin, was the devil’s preferred place of communication. It was, in Cyrus’s approximation, a parallel to purgatory.

Soon they’ll come together And she will choose and you will lose to a clod tied to a feather

“I don’t understand your infuriating riddles. But I have reason to hope Alizeh is going to accept my proposal. She said as much to me earlier—”

Besides—I’ve lost nothing yet.

… well

Time and ice are much the same they slowly disappear You may not see your failure, King, but we can smell your fear

Afraid to close his eyes at night! Afraid to see her face! He hasn’t slept a single wink beyond a drugged embrace

“You dare taunt me for my efforts, when it was you who planted her image in my dreams? You play dishonorably, resorting to manipulations beyond the terms of our agreement. What choice do I have but to protect myself?”

Never shall you have the girl Her fate is twined with ours

Of all the ways the devil had thought to undermine him, this was by far the worst—and Cyrus could see now how easily he’d cleared the path for his own destruction.

But appealing to his parched heart? Delivering him not merely the vision of an angel but the temptation of the real thing?

He, whose desiccated heart turned to dust before her tenderness? Alizeh was the fulfillment of his most desperate, undisclosed desire. The constant, gnawing ache inside him—this pitiful need that grew only more fraught in the wake of every darkness that devoured him— He longed for her warmth, for her radiance. She’d been, from the first moment she’d wandered into his dreams, an enduring flame in the endless night, his only haven in the madness that inhaled him. This was his real weakness, and the devil had marked him easily.

No matter how many times he’d come, this scene had never grown easier to endure.