by Lucy Tempest
Cyrus seemed to forget how to breathe. It was exactly how I’d felt when I’d worked out that Ayman was my half-brother.
Nariman didn’t wait for him to regain his senses, plowed on. “Loujaïne always swore I made you bring Ayman here to spite her. Because, of course, everything is about her. She’s loathed me for my role in your upbringing and Ayman’s presence ever since—among other things. Then she finally got her wish to be rid of me when your father banished me. Do you want to know the truth about that?”
“I do,” I cut in, my previous anger rising again. “Since the one you fed me was a complete lie.”
She gave me an impatient glance. “The only lie I told you was that your friends were in danger. I needed to motivate you. Of course, they face new dangers now, especially your Bonnie, but none of my doing. Anyway, none of you will go back to your realm without my say-so.”
Bonnie and her father had never been in danger? She’d just thrown them in Arbore? I’d done all that, for nothing?
But, what if she was telling the truth now?
I shuddered as every kind of threat Bonnie could be facing now assailed me. “Why? Why keep us here now you got what you wanted?”
“Maybe I want to find out what it’s like to have that much power over someone,” she said, mock-pondering. “To get them to do whatever I want for as long as I want? To keep their hopes high only to bring them smashing down, to discard them like trash, when I have no use for them anymore?”
I blinked, not following. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about what his father did to me!” She swept her staff at Cyrus, and a crackle of fire arced in the dimness. He stared at her, looking as if he was back in her trance. “Did you know I was supposed to become your mother?”
He made no answer, didn’t even blink.
“Darius promised to marry me.”
When Cyrus still said nothing, I asked for him, “When?”
She still directed her answer at him. “After Jumana died. I remained here with you and he soon asked me to fill her place, as your mother and his wife. He said he’d marry me once the two-year mourning period was over. But that period passed as I took on more duties with you and around the palace until I was doing far more than a prince’s wife does, without actually being one. He kept saying he’s tyring to get his father’s and the council’s approval, but that everything I did for you, everything I was, made them reject me even more.
“I told myself to be patient, as I knew King Xerxes wouldn’t live forever, not with his terrible temper and vices. And he didn’t. He died and your father ascended to the throne and I thought he’d be free to make his own choices—and fulfill his promises.
“But the years passed, and every time I asked him when he’d marry me, he’d have an excuse. The last one was that he was waiting for you to come of age, and marry your promised bride. Then I championed your refusal of Fairuza and helped you set up the Bride Search. He was very displeased with me, and dared to say I was the one postponing our marriage this time.”
She looked to her right where King Darius’s bed used to be. There were terrible emotions in her eyes, the image of a woman scorned. I doubted any hell had fury like hers.
“I went to visit Zhadugar before the Search began, and while I was there, I got news that he’d fallen ill. I rushed back, only to find the barrier warding Sunstone against me. I later discovered it encompassed the whole of Cahraman. Your aunt must have finally convinced him of what she’s always accused me of, using black magic on him—and you. That must have been a good excuse for him. Why face me and admit that he’s been lying to me all these years? That he’s never intended to marry me? When he could save himself the confrontation, and my wrath and just discard me? But since only two witches in Zhadugar have magic surpassing mine, and they would never use it against me for him, he used the genie to banish me.”
I wouldn’t put it past Kind Darius to be this ruthless, but something didn’t add up. “You never said how he got the lamp in the first place. Wasn’t it with you?”
“Clever girl.” She turned to me, her staff’s eyes pulsing. “After I used my first wish, I hid the lamp at the bottom of one of Jumana’s chests, thinking it would be safer than with me, since Xerxes regularly searched Dorreya and myself and confiscated our things. But when Jumana got pregnant, Xerxes put us all on house arrest until Jumana gave birth and took all our things, suspecting everything we owned. When Jumana died Darius inherited all her possessions and with them the lamp. I did ask him for it, but he pretended he’s never seen it.
“But he had it all the time and knew what it could do. And the day he decided to use it, he used it against me. That’s what I got for over two decades of loyalty and service and love! Becoming an outcast no other land would harbor, not even my homeland!”
Chapter Twelve
Nariman let her statement sink in, along with the enormity of the betrayal she felt.
After a long moment, she went on, “But at least I stopped you from marrying Fairuza. The last thing I’d wish on you is a repeat of your parents’ tragedy, and that girl is cursed.”
“Cursed?”
I blinked in surprise at Cyrus’s shock. I’d already told him of the curse.
But that was before I’d compelled him to give up on me and walk away. Seemed the compulsion had also messed with his memory of those moments.
“Yes,” Nariman said offhandedly. “With only the true love the noblest man to stop the curse from running its course by her eighteenth birthday. As she’s as unlovable as her aunt, if you’d married her after your Coming of Age ceremony as planned, she would have dropped dead after handing you your firstborn.”
I could understand her knowing about Ayman, but Fairuza? But then she seemed to know everything about everyone.
She waved her hand. “Anyway, that’s why I decided to take what I’ve been promised, what I’m owed, using the same power that has unjustly taken everything away from me. But none of it would have been possible without Ada.”
“Why me?” Worn-out and defeated, I asked Cora’s question. I had only theories. But none of them provided answers to all questions. “Why did you choose me?
Nariman eyes flared yellow, before a shadow dimmed them again. “I didn’t choose you, you were chosen for me.”
“What? How?”
She gestured with her staff and air transformed into a floating crystal ball filled with swirling smoke. Where it parted, I could see glimpses of people and places.
Then I saw myself. As I was that day among the trees of the Hornswoods.
Before the shock of seeing myself as if from someone else’s eyes fully registered, the scene changed.
I again saw myself, as I was that day I’d run away from Cyrus, outside the city gates, holding the lamp.
When the scene shifted again, I was no longer there. But a regal and radiant Nariman was being crowned. The man placing the crown on her head had his back to us, but could have been a slightly older King Darius.
“I saw all this before you were even born.” Her solemn declaration brought my stunned gaze back to her. “I knew immediately this was a prophecy, and that you’ll play the most major role in my future. I didn’t know how this would play out, but from your age in the visions, I had an idea when.”
So she hadn’t been looking for my mother that day she’d appeared in Ericura, hadn’t settled for me instead. As I’d felt without any evidence, she had been looking for me, had been watching me for months, maybe all my life.
There had been nothing I could have done to avoid all this.
This situation had been foretold.
“How were you so sure it was me, if I hadn’t even been born yet?” I whispered.
Nariman smirked. “Because that face of yours could have only come from a specific union.” She flicked her hand and faces flashed in the orb. A woman with my mother’s blue-grey eyes and my nose and eyebrows, a tanned, weathered face and hair dyed the color of hibiscus tea
, and another with my own wide mouth, square jaw and heavy-lidded almost black eyes.
“You look an exact cross between your grandmothers,” she mused. “It’s a shame you never got to meet them because your mother was so determined to hide you from me.”
I sagged, going numb all over with the realization.
It hadn’t been Loujaïne my mother had fled to Ericura to escape. It had been Nariman, a stronger witch with a lifelong agenda that had scared her off the edge of the known world…
“Ideally, you would have been born in Almaskham, and I would have had access to you since your birth. But your mother ran away to this backward island so I wouldn’t. I tried to keep an eye on you, but your mother foiled me, then you kept moving. I didn’t mind since there was still time for the prophecy to come true. Then you finally settled in that spot near Man’s Reach, where the veil between worlds thinned and I found you, watched you for a while. Then I was banished. It became clear then what the glimpses meant, and how you were my only resort to get the lamp in my time of need, and through it, what I deserve.”
Cyrus suddenly spoke, his voice a base, lifeless rasp, “Even if you believe you deserve to be queen, you only offered personal grievances for usurping my father. You have no other defensible cause for doing so. My father was a good king, and Cahraman prospered under his reign.”
Chagrin and wrath glowed in her unnatural eyes again. “His ‘reign’ was guided by my counsel. I’m the one to thank for most of this prosperity. I wanted to continue being his advisor as his queen, his partner, but now he’s forced my hand, I’ll be queen without him, and I’ll be a far better monarch than he’s ever been.”
Cyrus pulled himself from his slump to his full, daunting height, grimness coating his expression. “A better monarch whose first action was to turn her domain into a living nightmare and her subjects into cowering hostages?”
“I will be when everything goes back to the way it was.” She looked away, and I could swear I saw a cornered look in her eyes. It was gone when she swung back to him, the snake’s hiss back in her voice. “But I had to show everyone the extent of my power first, to nip any rebellions in the bud and secure the masses loyalty.”
“That’s the strategy of pirates and warlords and it’s unsustainable in modern kingdoms.” Cyrus looked both confused and disgusted. “Terrorizing people secures their hatred, not their loyalty. You taught me that.”
“It’s only until everyone accepts me.” She reached a coaxing hand to his cheek, missing when he flinched out of her reach. Her lips trembled for a second before they thinned. “The people of Cahraman will cower now, but will hail me as queen eventually. As for you…”
Suddenly, the space behind Cyrus began to spin in a red, crackling vortex. A portal!
Before I could cling to Cyrus, dreading she’d take him away from me, a jarring white flash encompassed both of us.
In a blink, I landed on my side with a painful thump somewhere pristine and spacious.
I rose to my elbows frantically, exhaled my fright when I found Cyrus a couple of feet away, starting to sit up. I looked around the massive chamber in the pervasive light. It was almost empty, with miles of marble floors and massive semi-circle balcony doors. At its very end, a dais rose in subtle illumination, holding a glowing, gilded throne.
Lying prone on the lush crimson carpet before it, with his ankle bound to its leg with a thick, iron chain was King Darius.
“Father!” Cyrus cried out as he heaved up to his feet. His rush towards him ended with a slam into thin air. He was sent flying back, barely stumbling to a halt by my side.
Tutting, Nariman strolled past Darius’s unconscious body and towards the widest balcony door. It flew open by itself, framing the purpling of early dawn.
She looked over her shoulder at us before peering into the horizon. “To train people into discipline and obedience, you first make them suffer. And you have to do it long enough for the danger and deprivation to sink in, so that when the gates open, they are relieved. Then when the river returns, they are amazed and when the trade and tourism resumes, they are elated. That way, they become both thankful for my mercy, but terrified of my wrath. That way they learn to both fear and respect me. And the children raised under my reign will learn to love me.”
I hated to say it—even think it—but her strategy would probably work. This was some high-level indoctrination only someone with long-term calculation and foresight could plan and pull off.
As a powerless person, I was fascinated by her bid for power and how it had paid off so far. As a rational one, I saw her actions for what they were, those of a dictator.
Cyrus moved towards her. I feared she’d knock him back again, but he didn’t seem worried, his body stiff, his gait determined.
He stopped halfway between us, chest rising and falling in restrained agitation. “Lady Rostam, you said the lamp belonged to my mother. That makes it mine now.”
“Is it now?” She patted the lamp stashed in her cloak lovingly. “I don’t think so, my dear boy. Anyway, I still have one wish left, and I’m saving it for an even bigger purpose.”
“What more could you possibly need? You’re the Queen of Cahraman!”
Hesitation flashed across her eyes. I only saw insecurity peeping through the cracks in her resolve because I’d experienced it myself too many times.
She knew she was standing on uncertain ground.
The genie had gotten her command of the kingdom, but to maintain it, she had to use her own power. It couldn’t be enough to hold a kingdom that size for long, before everyone realized her limitations. That was what she needed her final wish for, a permanent way to keep her beloved title.
I needed to stop her. I had to get that lamp now.
Cyrus seemed to have come to the same conclusion as he began to approach her again. It was time for the ultimate contingency. We had to risk charging her. But we shouldn’t do it close together, when she could get us both with one strike like she just did. If we could distract her between us, while she dealt with one, the other could snatch the lamp.
I waited for Cyrus to gain all her attention. He was still counting on her affection for him, that she wouldn’t strike him down and lunged at her. She dodged him, but that only brought her close enough to me. Putting all my pickpocketing experience to use, I reached inside her cloak, grabbed the lamp and dragged it out in less time that it took her to draw her next breath.
Then I ran, like I’d never run before.
I only turned to check if he was behind me.
He wasn’t.
Halfway between us, he hovered in the doorway. The first rays of daylight were spreading through the sky like rosy, outstretched fingers, mirroring Nariman’s stance. Not bothering to chase after me, she only reached out her hand to him.
He turned away from me, fully facing her, a passive slump to his shoulders.
She was saying something to him, I couldn’t hear what it was, but he moved closer to her.
What was he doing?
When he came within touching distance of her, she raised her staff and the red eyes of its snakehead emitted that glow that pulsed with the rhythm of a calm heartbeat.
He was letting her entrance him!
He was doing what he’d said he’d do. He was offering her himself so I’d escape.
Logic yelled at me to run while she had her hands full with him. I yelled it back down.
I’d already left him behind once and I’d regret it to my dying day.
I ran back into the throne room, his name a scream that scraped my throat raw. “Cyrus!”
Whatever hold he’d let himself sink under loosened enough to make him turn his head towards me. Next second, he slumped to the floor.
He hit the side of his head before rolling onto his back. She’d knocked him out!
Mindless rage blinded me as I sprinted towards them, images of crashing the lamp over her head filling mine.
She only straightened, her staff beginning to
pulse that dreaded red.
I held the lamp out and yelled, “Stop or I’ll unleash the genie!”
Her laugh crackled like a flurry of whips. “You don’t even know how.”
I covered my eyes so those eyes didn’t siphon my will as they had Cyrus’s, and mine before. “I saw—and heard—you use it. You know I’m a quick study.”
That made her lower her staff, its glow dimming. “What would you wish for if you unleash it? You have so many wishes, dear Ada. You want so many things back. Bonnie, Cahraman, your mother…Cyrus’s love. You do know you’ve lost it, don’t you?”
She was messing with my mind. Another of her insidious powers. I couldn’t afford to let her get to me now. “I’ll settle for stopping you.”
“Hmm, we seem to be at an impasse, then.” She smiled, looking far more like a snake in that moment that a woman. “In hindsight, leaving you stranded in Sunstone was a bad idea. I should have anticipated a street rat like you would not only thrive, but would come gnawing at my door. So, since you’re such a resilient, resourceful nuisance, there’s only one way to be rid of you.”
A whoosh came from behind me, making all my hairs stand on end.
She’d opened a portal behind me!
There was only one way out of this. I had to unleash the genie.
I feverishly pulled my sleeve over my palm and started rubbing the lamp, remembering the strange words she’d said over and over again, what I’d found myself understanding, even when they themselves remained foreign.
They’d meant Come forth at my command and fulfill my demand.
The moment I started chanting the words, Cyrus lurched before me. My heart fired, and I lost my focus for one second. It was enough.
A red-hot zap struck my hands, making me drop the lamp to the ground with a jarring clang. As I dove after it, another zap, then another struck me, as if I was being bombarded by hot coals. Nariman was approaching leisurely, her staff aimed at me, singeing me with one blast after another, toying with me, driving me to the ground.
“I’ll take that.” She picked the lamp up by the spout, put it back from where I’d swiped it minutes ago. “As for you, I hope you enjoy your trip to the Land of No Return.”