Every Spiral of Fate (This Woven Kingdom, #4)

by Tahereh Mafi

Only now was Alizeh learning that fears did not disappear as stations changed in life.

It is precisely because I can imagine how it must destroy you to be touched by her when you are to die by the very hand that might wipe your fevered brow!”

“By that logic,” Alizeh pointed out, “all scoundrels are also murderers.” “And what scoundrel hasn’t killed a woman’s soul?” Alizeh stilled. A genuine smile curved her mouth as she nodded, ceding the argument. “A fair point well made.”

“Ready for tomorrow, when I’ve yet to experience today?” Huda set down her teacup with some force, and the porcelain rattled. “You intend to gloss over your wedding day, then? Skipping the party and diving straight into the pain, are we?”

as she drew nearer the light canting in through the windows. Cyrus felt as if he’d sighted the stars for the first time, irrevocably changed in the aftermath of perceiving the infinite universe.

Alizeh said, turning suddenly to incinerate him with her joy.

Breathing hard, Cyrus braced himself. The heavy crystal vessel had hit the rug, sustaining most of the blow even as long-stemmed roses scattered like arrows. He watched with feverish eyes as orphaned water searched his room for a home, rivulets grasping in vain for a body that might hold them. By horrible inches Cyrus slumped to the ground. There was no rug beneath him to dull the blow, no beauty in his surrender. His knees knocked painfully against the cold marble floors and, there, he stayed.

As if he could possibly hold an appetite while being forced to watch, on his own wedding day, as another man touched his wife, danced with his wife, made plans to wed and bed his wife. How much more would he be expected to survive? He loved her. He would kill for her, would soon die for her, and yet he knew he had no right to want her.

was dense with fatigue. His ribs felt crushed. His lungs would require excavation. He’d never known such lassitude.

“Do you need to take from me my dignity, my privacy, the very thoughts still forming in my head? Take my eyes. Take my hands. Take the breath from my body. Strip the skin from my bones. Were I able to offer you my soul I would; I’d tear it from my flesh this moment and give it to you—” “Will you not look at me,” she screamed.

“Hells, I don’t know,” said Hazan, who seemed suddenly agitated. He rubbed at his temples as if life had given him a permanent headache. “I can’t explain the bloody apricots.” “I think you’re cracked,” said the prince, not unkindly. “When was the last time you slept through the night?”

She was moved by the tenderness of the experience, spellbound even by the soft sounds of his clothing, the articles touching him with an intimacy she feared she’d never know.

Cyrus returned his gaze to Alizeh, looking at her then with an almost shattering reverence. “One,” he said, “stands before us all.”

Despite every darkness, a spark of hope caught inside her. She couldn’t believe it was finally happening. After all these years, she would finally return home. Alizeh’s heart ached at the idea that she might be returned to the mountains of her childhood—to the land that had once saved her people from annihilation. She thought of her parents. She thought of her ancestors. She thought of every soul who’d died fighting their oppressors for the right to be free. And in their honor she lifted two fingers to her head, and then to the air.

Now, a recognized queen sitting astride a royal dragon, Alizeh looked about the silky heavens expanding infinitely about her head and felt, for so many reasons, delirious.

She didn’t want him to put her down. She felt a safety in his arms she’d never known in her life. She wished she might fall asleep a thousand times in his presence if only it might inspire him to hold her like this.

“Heavens, but you are grotesquely handsome for so depraved a soul.”

She gazed out upon the thousand soldiers standing before her, and she understood then, with a certainty she’d never felt before, exactly why she’d been born. Alizeh was meant to be a conduit for all this pain. She was built to bear it. She would draw it into her veins and transform it, and unleash it as rage back upon the world. All these years of uncertainty; all her hours of doubt; all the grief she’d carried like rotting bodies on her back. Now, finally— Clarity.

her eyes glinting in the bloom of morning sun. She

“I believe in the unfailing pursuit of justice,” she said, her voice rising. “The acquisition of which demands, without exception, the blood of tyrants. I am not afraid to kill my enemies. But I am neither indifferent to death nor am I eager to slaughter, for true justice requires the retention of compassion.” She paused. “Without it, carnage might be limitless; without it, wars would not find their finish; without it, we would not know how to revive ourselves in the wake of so much bloodshed.”

“Should you pledge your allegiance to me today, know this: My heart is not my own. My hands are not my own. My life belongs to those oppressed on this earth, and I will not stop until I’ve done everything I can to secure our freedom from tyranny.”

Cyrus was listening to this conversation with no small amount of interest. It was slowly occurring to the southern king that he and the prince might have more in common than they liked or realized. At minimum, they both appeared to have been raised by chaotic mothers.

Alizeh laughed at this, and Cyrus looked up like a wrenched marionette, magnetized to the sound. He waited to see if she would laugh again.

He felt there were too many queens in this world; none of them her equal. She deserved a title entirely her own.

Pain, he had learned to endure. It was losing his peace that was perhaps the greatest punishment of all.

It was an almost disorienting déjà vu. This brief exchange recalled the early moments of their wedding ceremony. They kept circling the same points, he was realizing, hoping each time for different outcomes. Was this not the very definition of madness?

“I never tire of this view,” she said softly. “Thousands of times I’ve seen it, in my life and in my dreams, yet each time it takes my breath away. I’ve never seen anything so majestic in all my life.” Her voice fell to a hush. “Is it not a small miracle to bear witness to such beauty?” “Yes,” he said, still staring at her.

She wanted to cross the room to him. She wished she might unlock his chest, push apart the curtains of his ribs, take a closer look at his heart. She feared, with ever-increasing terror, that she might find it forged from something finer than gold.

“I will say this once, angel, for I feel you should be warned. No man alive has ever loved a woman the way that I love you, and I would rather die, damned as I am, than disgrace us both with the pitiful, unrequited performance of my heart.”

She was stunned to discover that Cyrus was more striking than ever, his beauty somehow refining each time she looked upon his face. She loved the dark copper of his hair; the sharp slashes of his brows; the sun-kissed glow of his skin; the devastating depths of his blue eyes. The more she came to know him, the harder it was to behold him, for he was like the sea, unfathomable. And he’d told her he loved her.

Cyrus met her gaze for the first time in five days, and the relief she felt being reunited with his eyes nearly brought her to tears.

If all went according to plan, Cyrus might finally be set free from the devil. His father would be restored to the world; his parents might be reunited; his brother might come out of hiding; an ancient debt would be cleared from the record books of history; and, more importantly, Iblees would not massacre the entire population of Tulan. This was the bargain he had struck. This was the bad deal he had taken. This was the generational debt Cyrus had inherited: kings and kings before him enjoying the spoils of a dark wager and all the while deferring the cost.

The sun was bruising the sky as it unfurled, light fighting darkness, fighting the fate of the hour.

If the purpose of his life could be distilled to this: that he was to die so that she might live, he might depart this world contented.

Her fears were too great, her mind too weak, her grief too strong. How much pain could a body hold before fissuring at the seams? How much hope could a soul conjure before surrendering to sorrow? Her heart was a grave.

Melt the ice in salt,’” she intoned. “‘Braid the thrones at sea. In this woven kingdom, clay and fire shall—’” “But I already know that part,” Omid complained. She shot him a stern look, then continued: “‘Beyond this barren cave, infinite threads are found. All this twisted glory, in braids and binds abound. Innocents torn asunder, kingdoms born of hate. High time to knit together, with every spiral of fate.’”

Like so many other Diviners, Cyrus had been drawn to the temple because his young heart had felt lawless and restless, his soul unfinished. As a boy he’d wanted little more than to understand the wind; he’d wanted to know the rain. He’d longed to experience the currents of the earth within him, to feel threads of magic snap wildly in his veins.

It was, in fact, the very tenderness that powered him that fed the tempests that destroyed him. At times Cyrus felt so overwhelmed and abraded by the force of the world that he could hardly tolerate even the touch of morning dew, and this left him wretched even as it made him furious. It had occurred to him, at various moments in time, that were his feelings less fathomless he might’ve lived a simpler life.

oh

“Alizeh,” he said, his eyes closing on the word. He couldn’t decide then what he loved most about her. He couldn’t choose, and he needn’t bother. She was unyielding tenderness; graceful strength. He wanted a life with her he was afraid even to fashion into thought. He wanted time with her he would never have. He wanted moments he did not deserve. Where she was everything, he was nothing, and never was this more apparent than now.

Her tears were alchemizing into rage.

Surprise widened the devil’s borrowed eyes.

She was possessed then of a hatred so acute the edges of her vision went white. She felt flooded with heat, consumed by feelings so violent they stoked within her a choking inferno.

It was true that Alizeh’s heart was perhaps more tender than most. It was true that she cried too easily and felt too deeply. But too often her kindness was misunderstood.

“I don’t need peace,” she said softly. “I want war.”