by Lucy Tempest
“Somehow I doubt that.” She sat across from me, held her hand out for the onion and gave me a potato. I handed it over gratefully, sniffling with its tear-inducing pungency, and with frustration and helplessness. “I think she chose you in specific for a reason. I told you before you don’t fit anything she needed in an infiltrator.”
The tail end of her sentence sounded like traitor. While it wasn’t on purpose, it still felt like a smack in the face. I was a traitor. I was the main reason this had all happened. I’d done the job Nariman had sent me to do too well.
But I couldn’t answer Cora. To do that, I’d have to tell her what I’d learned about Nariman’s relationship to my mother, and that I believed she’d come looking for her to help with her banishment, and had settled for me instead. It made me feel even more complicit in what had happened. Though Cora, miraculously, never blamed me, I blamed me.
It didn’t matter that I’d done what I had for what I’d believed the best of reasons. To save the Fairborns, then to save Cyrus and Cahraman. It didn’t matter that I’d thought I could stand up to Nariman and put everything right. It mattered even less that I’d thought I was sacrificing my happiness with the man I loved for the sake of his future as a king and his kingdom’s peace.
I’d ended up giving her what she’d wanted. Now all the people I loved were further from my reach than ever and there was nothing any of us could do about it.
I sniffled loudly as I haphazardly cut the potato.
Cora reached over, took the knife and potato from me. “Give me that. You’re taking out half the potato in the peel.”
I rubbed hard at my eyes. “I’m just tired.”
“As you should be, after that near miss with the guards. But it’s not only that.”
“What, are you my mother now?” I snapped a bit more aggressively than I meant to.
Sadness flickered in her leafy-green eyes. My mother was long gone, but hers was still in the Granary and must be going out of her mind with worry.
Cerelia must also be feeling so guilty she’d sent Cora to the Bride Search in the first place. Cora had come, not in hope of winning Cyrus’s hand, but as a gesture of goodwill to bolster trade relations with Cahraman. She’d gone through the motions, hoping to be eliminated at every test, so she could return home and continue being groomed to become the next Mistress of the Granary. Then all this had happened.
The one thing that consoled Cora was that her mother must believe she’d return to her one day. After all, she’d raised a daughter as tough as granite.
It still hurt whenever she talked of her mother, always making me think of mine, and the strange circumstances of her death. So sudden and inexplicable and far away from me.
For almost six years now, the same unbearable thoughts had stormed inside my mind until they pulped it. I’d gone mad wondering what had happened to her, and what her last moments had been like. I’d wept until I could no longer breathe thinking how terrified she must have felt. I wondered if her last moments were made even worse by fear for my life without her, or if she’d tried to tell herself she’d raised me well enough that I would survive.
But I almost hadn’t. Those first few months without her, I’d almost given up, going to sleep every night hoping I’d never wake up and join her in death.
Now I could only hope that we would one day reunite in another existence.
But if given a choice, I bet mother would be glad she’d left the world before all this had happened. Unlike Cerelia, she wouldn’t have to go mad with worry wondering where I’d gone and if I would ever be returned to her.
I finally raised my eyes to Cora and choked, “Sorry.”
She shrugged calmly. “No problem. And you haven’t answered my question.”
I dropped my elbows on the table and my face in my palms. There was no escaping her uncanny insight, was there?
But why was I even trying to? Cora and I were in this miserable existence together. We might live here for the rest of our lives, dirty and hungry, and our loved ones would never know what happened to us, and we’d die without ever knowing what happened to them.
Circling the drain of my misery, I opened my mouth to begin filling in the spaces she didn’t already know, and a deafening boom burst, snapping my teeth shut over my tongue.
It shook the whole building like an earthquake, bringing silt and pebbles raining down from the already damaged ceiling drenching us.
Cora, unfazed, only cared about protecting the food, burst up to her feet to cover the pot and wash the onion and potato. I ran to the glass-less window.
On top of the mountain, a crack big enough to be seen from this far had spread across one of the palace domes. A column of congealing smoke was billowing out of its adjacent tower, the one from where I’d seen Cherine falling over the wall.
Another crack thundered, with the source of the smoke, a raging fire, beginning to engulf the tower as a gleaming line undulated down the mountain. It took me long moments before I realized what I was looking at. What I’d never expected to see again.
The train!
It hadn’t run once during the past two months. I’d thought it was no longer functional, like most things in Sunstone now. But it was, looking like a massive, metallic worm hurtling toward the center of the city.
This meant one thing.
Someone had escaped.
Chapter Three
Hope flared in my chest, even more painful than the anguish and desperation that had been constantly clawing at it.
I burst out of the apartment, took every flight in a single jump until I spilled out onto the street. I ran and ran, stopped only when I felt my lungs would burst, gulped searing breaths then ran again. It took me at least an hour to reach the marketplace again. I slowed down there because I couldn’t run anymore, and because too many people had gathered, moving sluggishly as they stared at the still smoking tower and the approaching train.
With a killer stitch in my side, I finally reached the train platform. I was doubled-over and panting my burnt lungs out when the hurtling train started braking so violently in an ear-splitting mass of metallic screeches, I feared it might fly off the rails. It ended up slamming into the station stopper with the first car partially derailing, smoke belching out of its chimney as it did from the palace dome.
The conductor’s door flew open and out jumped Cyrus’s aunt, Princess Loujaïne. Of all the people I’d hoped had escaped, she wasn’t even on the list.
Her unkempt appearance was a contradiction to her previous pristine glamor, with her dark hair for once down her back and a tasseled shawl drawn tight around a crumpled dress.
After her came Cherine. My heart tumbled in my chest at her sight as she climbed down the steps, ashen-faced and hollow-cheeked, dark circles under her eyes. I ran towards her, pushing against the curious crowd, arms itching to crush her in a tight hug and squeeze every detail of the past few weeks out of her. Then a third person started emerging behind her, stopping me in my tracks.
The first thing I saw was a hand holding the doorway, manly and elegant, adorned with three rings. A gold signet ring on the middle finger, centered by a beveled sun, and two on the ring finger, one a large, sapphire ring, the other a delicate one set with a silver pearl.
Cyrus!
My heartbeats scattered at my feet as he stepped out of the train, looking disoriented, narrowing his eyes at the afternoon sun, as if he hadn’t seen it in ages.
I stood transfixed, staring at him, too afraid to believe my eyes.
But he wasn’t a wishful hallucination, or even a vivid replay of the last time I’d seen him.
Back in servant clothes with a scimitar at his hip, looking disheveled and exhausted, this Cyrus was vastly different from any memory I had of him. His golden skin was paler and his brown hair darker. His lower lip was split, a slash of purple and green bruised his bearded cheek and a fresh cut ran through the middle of his right eyebrow. Though it broke my heart all over again to see him in this co
ndition, it proved he was real. And her was here. Alive.
The moment he landed on the platform, my paralysis snapped, and I shot towards him with a piercing scream of his name.
He turned around, shock incarnate as he automatically caught my hurtling mass.
I climbed him, hooked my arms around his neck, burying my streaming eyes in his shoulder as I blubbered, “You’re alive!”
“Ada…” he breathed, disbelief heavy in his ragged voice. “You’re—you’re—”
He suddenly crushed me in his hold until I couldn’t breathe. But I didn’t need to breathe. I only needed his arms squeezing me until I didn’t know where I stopped and he began.
He dropped his head against mine, saying my name like an invocation, over and over.
Time slowed down around us, everything receding into nothingness. Only he remained and the world within his arms. This was the man I loved, who’d chosen me to be his bride. The man I’d had to abandon to save him and his kingdom from the consequences of loving me.
He was here, he was safe and nothing else mattered.
Nothing else mattered until a fact sank into my mind.
The world around us snapped back into focus as whispers and shuffling surrounded us. Curious onlookers stormed the platform, checking inside the train as its passengers piled out, both sides yelling questions and pushing against each other in masses of limbs.
If the train hadn’t brought Nariman’s guards investigating, this commotion would.
“We have to go! Now!” I grabbed his wrist and Cherine’s and dragged them after me.
Without a word, they ran behind me as I circumvented the crowd and ducked behind the storage building facing the station. Once I saw all the white headscarves of the guards infiltrating the crowds, I bolted out of hiding with them in tow.
In the midst of our run, Cyrus turned his hand to clasp mine. Not a practical hold, but a comfort, a connection, what we both needed to make the desperate run, this whole world gone mad bearable.
I slowed down once we were far enough from the roiling marketplace, so we wouldn’t draw attention to ourselves, especially the closer we got to where we lived.
Once there, I let them catch their breath again after we climbed the stairs past our neighbors, then led the way up the remaining floors. I ushered them in and bolted the door shut, sticking a chair under the handle for good measure. A flimsy gesture, but it made me feel better.
I turned to face them and Cyrus grabbed my face in his hands and kissed me.
It wasn’t like our kiss in the hanging gardens, after he’d proposed to me, which had been reverent and soft. This kiss was like our situation, hurried and messy.
Clumsy and uncoordinated, his bearded face mashed into mine with an urgent force, his teeth scraped against mine with an almost painful clash. His split lip reopened and I could taste his blood, but he didn’t seem to care.
I held onto him, my fingers convulsing in his hair. After his jewel green eyes, I had the greatest fixation with his thick, silky hair. How I’d longed to run my fingers through it. Now I did, and it felt as amazing as it looked, the smoothest thing I’d felt, almost with a life of its own.
It was terrifying how ecstatic his mere presence made me. That my hope and peace were all tied to one person. That his face, voice, touch, and smile were all I needed to feel like I was capable of anything. But if our one-in-a-billion chance of connecting, and now reuniting was possible, then anything else was.
The kiss ended as fast as it began, but we remained where we were, foreheads pressed together, breathing heavily.
“How are you still here?” he finally spoke, voice cracking with emotion. “I thought you were gone from Cahraman before the takeover—I hoped you were. At my worst times, I feared you might not have made it out, were hurt or-or worse.”
A sob caught in my throat as I pressed harder into him. “I-I’ve been here the whole time, trying to find a way back to you.”
He pulled away slightly, hands moving down to cup my elbows, thumbs brushing their inner skin, a touch uniquely his, the sort of spontaneous intimacy I’d always longer for.
He finally checked his surroundings, the dilapidated place with its cheap ornaments, gnarly carpets, cracked floors and missing walls, shook his head in bewilderment. “How did you end up here? How did you survive this long?”
Guilt twitched my lips in a mockery of a smile. “I have pretty good survival skills.”
He stared at me, no doubt trying to figure out how and why I had those. The Lady Ada of Rose Isle he knew had displayed a measure of tenacity and resourcefulness, but not enough to help her navigate and survive the streets of Nariman’s Sunstone.
Before he could probe further, Cora’s loud voice thankfully burst our self-centered bubble. “Where did you go? Did you get anything else? I hope you got another onion because that explosion half-ruined my soup…” She walked into the room, holding her ladle and came to a jarring halt. “…Cherine?”
It was only then I noticed Cherine again. And Loujaïne who’d clearly followed us here. They both seemed to still be struggling to catch their breaths.
At the sight of Cora, Cherine let out a whimpering wail, hurtled by us and threw herself at her. She latched onto her, body shaking, face buried in her chest like a child clinging to her mother.
Cora set her free hand on Cherine’s head, petting her dazedly, staring at me like a deer in the lamplights. “Er…we don’t have enough food for them.”
And for the first time in what felt like years to my rusty throat, I laughed.
It took them all a while to recognize Ayman.
Each of their reactions told its own story.
Cyrus backed up against the wall, his hand over his mouth, a glazed look in his eyes, like he couldn’t process the sight before him.
Cherine flinched away from Ayman with a horrified squeak, eyes filling, her uncharacteristic muteness persisting.
Loujaïne, after an initial lurch, leveled Ayman’s stone form with a cold stare then finally said, “I can barely see a difference.”
That unfeeling comment brought all my seething resentment towards that woman bubbling to the surface. Especially now I knew she of all people was probably Ayman’s mother.
Nariman had detonated that revelation during our showdown, bringing so many things crashing into place, unfurling the tapestry of tangled relationships of everyone I’d met since I’d set foot in Cahraman.
Nariman had sent Cyrus to Almaskham as a child, and he’d found Ayman there. When he’d insisted on bringing him back to Cahraman with him, she’d butted heads with Loujaïne over it. Threatening he wouldn’t attend his father’s coronation if he didn’t allow Ayman’s presence in the palace had probably been her coaching. Then he’d contrived to make Ayman his personal guard, though that position was reserved for nobility.
But if Nariman had told the truth, and Ayman was Loujaïne’s son from her marriage to Prince Azal, then Ayman was noble. He was a prince.
So did Loujaïne know that Ayman was her son? Or did she only hate him because he reminded her of the albino son she’d borne Azal, the reason he’d divorced her?
Even if she wasn’t his mother, or she was and didn’t know it, Loujaïne was still a petty, awful woman. It was clear whatever ordeals she’d suffered in the past two months had only blown away the façade of refinement, revealing the viciousness beneath.
Anger simmered within me, at the mere sight of her, who’d been the catalyst for all that had happened to us. I wanted to dump Cora’s pitiful, steaming onion soup on her.
Cyrus tore his eyes away from Ayman to glare at his aunt, shock and anger seething in his voice and eyes. “All this time I’ve been waiting for him to return, thinking he was out there in the palace, biding his time, when he’s been here the whole time—turned to a statue! And you can quip about it?”
Expression cold as her silver eyes, Loujaïne wrapped her tasseled maroon shawl tighter around herself. “It was merely a statement of
fact, Cyaxares. He always did remind me of an alabaster statue, now he really is one. It’s like something out of a folktale, isn’t it?”
“This isn’t a folktale!” he rumbled, looking both offended and horrified. “This is black magic!”
“Indeed,” Loujaïne snarled. “Courtesy of that evil witch your father kept around.”
“You can’t blame my father for this!”
“Why not?” Loujaïne lifted her chin, haughty, defiant. “He allowed her into the palace knowing how we all felt about magic, then he let her spread her tentacles even deeper after her reason for being there mercifully ended.”
“Don’t talk about my mother that way.” His voice grew quieter and more deadly for it.
Loujaïne was undeterred. “You mean the one who birthed you only to desert you?”
Her sneer spread in my system like a shot of venom. She could talk!
According to Nariman, Loujaïne had given birth to Ayman only to cast him out in the desert to die. So why was I even surprised she’d stoop so low, throwing his mother’s tragedy in his face like that?
Nariman had told me about Cyrus’s mother, Jumana Morvarid, who’d come to Cahraman with Nariman, my mother Dorreya and a third witch, Hessa, as her ladies-in-waiting. She’d made it sound like it had been a royal marriage of convenience, but I’d overheard King Darius saying he’d actually chosen Jumana. Their marriage had still fallen apart when his father, King Xerxes, had accused Hessa of sabotaging Jumana’s fertility through witchcraft and had had her executed. It had only been then she’d conceived Cyrus, seemingly proving his suspicions.
But after she had given them what they’d wanted from her, a perfect male heir, Jumana had killed herself.
King Darius had believed that Cyrus had been repeating his and Jumana’s tragedy when he’d chosen me. It had been partly why he’d rejected me as Cyrus’s choice, to the point he’d threatened to disown him.
“You will not speak ill of the dead,” Cyrus said in that unnerving quietness. “As for Lady Rostam, she was my minder through my childhood, and my champion beyond it.” He moved carefully closer to Ayman’s form, as if afraid any sudden moves might damage him. “I’m sure her dedication was one of the reasons my father listened to her counsel.”