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Life, he feared, would never be the same.
It was that fateful day Cyrus had decided who he wanted to be, and every year the conviction had rooted more deeply inside him.
“Are you implying that I’m vain?” “I’m not implying it, Kamran. I’m delivering the statement to you directly.”
God, he’d wanted her. He’d wanted her with an all-consuming thirst, with the desperation of a man waiting to die.
He either did or did not. He would not live by half measure.
Fate, he thought bitterly, was only romantic when one was destined to be the hero.
Heavens, but he was devastatingly handsome.
He’d been afraid to go near her; he hadn’t been ready to hear her voice, to look into her eyes. He was terrified she’d go and do something brutal, like smile at him.
He only closed his eyes against her hair and fought the desperate crush of his chest, the violence of his affection for her. How she managed to disarm him even now, on the brink of death, he could not understand. She’d wept for his pain, wiped the blood from his eyes, taken an arrow in the back for him. She’d shown him more loyalty and tenderness in two days than he’d ever felt in his life, and he knew then, with a force that drove the air from his lungs, that he would never survive her.
“Alizeh,” he whispered. “Please. Wake up.”
He felt delirious. He was staring at her with the awe of an idiot perceiving the sun for the first time. He nearly drew his hand down her cheek. Nearly kissed the side of her neck. Nearly slumped against her and fell asleep. “Yes, angel?”
Besides, I didn’t come all this way to manage the tantrums of an overgrown child, I came here to help Alizeh—who, despite her apparent crown, never once spoke to me in such an insulting manner.” She turned to her companions. “Did Alizeh ever speak to either of you in such an insulting manner?”
“You would really fight me?” Kamran said, regaining a shade of his earlier temper. “If I challenged you now—you’d be willing to die for him?” “For her,” Hazan corrected. “Without hesitation. Though you flatter yourself if you think you could best me in a fight. You’ve never truly known me, Kamran, and I’d hate for you to make my acquaintance only as you draw your final breath.”
Perhaps, he thought with a pang, this was the very definition of arrogance.
“Angel,” he breathed. “My angel.”
“When you’re here,” he said, “nothing is wrong.”
But Cyrus was shaken, watching her with a hunger he couldn’t fathom into words. “You could probably kill me and I’d thank you for it.”
“I want it all, angel. Not just your joy but your sorrow. Not just your hope but your fear. I want your anger and disdain, your frustration and contempt—”
“So gorgeous,” she said softly.
He wanted to live here, with his face pressed against her, to breathe only in her atmosphere. He ran his unsteady hands up her back, terrified by the storm of emotion gathering inside him. He felt wild.
He loved all of her: the shape of her lips, her hips, her slender hands and the freckle at the base of her throat.
She had so much power over him it was terrifying even to examine the way she owned his soul.
He could never quite believe this was happening. That she would look at him like this, want him like this. She was the rare combination of heart and beauty only ever encountered in dreams.
Gasping for breath now, remembering— This was a dream. Yes, a dream, but he knew that, didn’t he? He knew he’d been dreaming, knew she was a figment of his imagination, a manipulation of his mind, a corruption installed in his head— “No,” he breathed. “No—” He was going to be sick. His leg screamed with pain, his hand burned, his head pounded, he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t breathe and he’d known—of course he’d known she wasn’t real, he’d known she didn’t actually love him, that she would never—never— “Cyrus?” “NO,” he cried, jolting away from her. “No—no—” “Cyrus—” She reached for him,
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“Whatever you’re thinking,” said Cyrus quietly, “you’re wrong. Now leave my home before I rip you apart with my bare hands.”
“You must not resist life when it becomes inconvenient to live. You cannot outrun fear. You should not ignore pain. You will not outlive death.”
But life cannot be experienced one emotion at a time. It is a tapestry of sensation, a braided rope of feeling. We must allow for reflection even when we suffer. We must reach for compassion even when we triumph. If you spend your days waiting for your sorrows to end so that you might finally live”—he shook his head—“you will die an impatient man.”
“Master yourself so that you will never be mastered. Know yourself so that you might live with conviction. Live with conviction so that your steps never falter.” He paused. “The mastery of self means never fearing the consequences of doing what is right.”
“When you suffer,” Rostam went on, “you can choose to endure, or you can choose to overcome.” He gestured around them, to the vast expanse of the meadow. “Here, even in the midst of your discomfort, there existed elements of relief, if only you had bothered to search.”
These unsolicited visits from grief were cruel, but somehow comforting, too, for Alizeh had no desire to forget.
Do not fear, my dear, the fall
“It’s just like you, isn’t it, to emerge from a difficulty only to deliver me a kindness?”
“Always,” he said. “She will always be safe with me.”
“Of course I am afraid!” Alizeh said, laughing even as her eyes teared. “But don’t you see? If I let fear keep me from doing what is right, I will always be wrong.”
She’d lately been trying to understand her burgeoning hesitations toward Kamran, and the more she interrogated her feelings, the more she’d begun to wonder whether it was, in the end, less that he’d wounded her vanity and more that he hadn’t respected her mind. Certainly she didn’t expect him to exchange his every thought and opinion for hers—but her fears and concerns should’ve mattered to him. They should’ve mattered at least enough to give him pause. To warrant a discussion. It bothered her that they hadn’t. “I’m not displeased to see you,” she said, and meant it. “In fact, I’m truly happy
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For weeks he’d lived in dreams of her; he’d memorized her laughter, held her naked in his arms, had known her gasps and cries of pleasure. She’d healed him and loved him. Touched him. Tasted him. Fuck. This was going to kill him.
ALIZEH LOST HER STRENGTH AT the sight of his face.
of it that way: that she would vow to marry this man. That she’d promise aloud to honor and love and care for him for the rest of her life. To all the world thereafter he’d be known as her husband. She, his wife. The idea should’ve been offensive to her—but she was drawn, inexorably, to the idea of being with him. He, who was unproven and untrustworthy.
It was dangerous, how her heart beat at the sight of him.
She told herself to withdraw, but just then she couldn’t seem to move. She was in his orbit now, so close she could see the sharp wisps of his copper lashes, her head humid with sense memory. She wanted to touch him, to know the heat of his skin. She knew what his body was like under those clothes, how much power and passion he kept tightly leashed inside him. It was a revelation she’d been slow to unravel about Cyrus: that he possessed such careful control, such extraordinary discipline over his own body. Cyrus’s desire for her had been as scorching as a summer heat; she’d felt desperate
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“You don’t know what you’re doing,” he said, his voice so rough it was unrecognizable. “You don’t know what I want from you, angel. You can’t even imagine.” “What do you mean?” She stared up at him, her heart hammering in her chest. “What is it you want?” His eyes seemed to glaze over at that, the blue of his irises blown out by black, and he dipped his head, nearly touching her lips as he exhaled, his body shaking. “Everything,” he whispered, releasing her suddenly, backing away as if she’d run him through with a blade. “I want everything.”
Cyrus was supposed to be evil. She wanted him to act evil. He wasn’t supposed to be kind and deferential and considerate. He was the character she was meant to kill without a crisis of conscience. She wasn’t supposed to lose her head. She wasn’t supposed to feel like this, like there was an open wound inside her, like she wanted to sit down and cry. The feeling came dangerously close to grief.
This tremble inside him, this madness in his heart—it was all for her. All for her. He could hardly look at Alizeh without losing his mind; nearly four weeks he’d seen her only in his dreams, and he’d all but forgotten how finely wrought she was in real life, how delicate her features, how soft the curves of her cheeks. He came to life when she smiled, drew breath when her eyes brightened, died when she left a room. She’d smelled like roses. His roses.
He lifted his head, meeting her eyes for a moment with unguarded anguish, and she glimpsed inside him then what she’d seen once before: a staggering, breathtaking grief.
“Please,” he said, begging himself now. “Please wake up—”
“Angel,” he breathed. “My angel.”
She only shook her head and said, softly, “You’re so beautiful.”
“Sleepy boy,” she said. “This is not a dream. I’m really here. And I promise I’m not going anywhere.” Cyrus sat with this, trying to absorb her words, but he was unconvinced—for a person in a dream always thought they were real. Besides, he felt intoxicated by her closeness, and by some heaviness he could not explain. She was still touching him, though only slightly, her hand having retreated from his face to rest against his chest, under which his heart beat at a dangerous pace. Every shaking breath he took lifted his upper body, pressing her fingers against him anew, provoking in him a
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“Tell me what’s wrong,” he said. “Tell me what you need.” “I n-need you to know,” she said, her voice catching, “that this is not a dream.”
“You can’t lie to me forever, Cyrus. I’m going to find out the truth about you, and when I do, I promise you this: I’ll ruin him. I’ll make the devil regret the day he was born.”
