“I thought she broke through the fire to punish me,” Cyrus was saying. “I see only now that she did so to protect you.” There was a flicker in those blue irises, and for a second Cyrus betrayed himself. Beneath his placid surface was something desperate and unrestrained, if not broken. Kamran cataloged the moment as a kind of mercy, for he realized then that the young man was a king weaker than he appeared.
