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

by Tahereh Mafi

In fact, what intelligence he’d gathered of Kamran had been generally favorable; by all accounts he was a decent royal and a formidable soldier, and when Cyrus had first encountered the young man at the ball he’d felt no ill will toward him. It wasn’t until he realized Kamran had won Alizeh’s affections—that they’d known each other with some intimacy, that she’d cared for him enough to protect him— Only then had he grown to hate the prince. Somehow it didn’t matter that Alizeh had been but a conjuring of his imagination. It didn’t matter that they’d never known each other outside of the delusions of his mind. It didn’t matter that she owed him nothing. He’d loved her. It was a hallucination, a fantasy. He knew that, and yet he could not reason with his emotions. Fiction or not, she’d embedded inside him, replaced the air in his lungs. That she’d proven to be real—more exquisite than he’d dreamed—and entirely ignorant of him, had been more than he could bear. To then discover that she’d given her heart to another—that he’d known her in ways Cyrus never would—had been nearly unsurvivable. And yet, it was the only reason he hadn’t killed Kamran that night. Because he suspected she cared for him.