by Lucy Tempest
“I am.”
She tilted my head down and pressed a kiss to my forehead. “I’ll go then. See you when this is over.”
In minutes they were gone, and I turned to Cyrus, my chest caving in with dread and worry. He silently took me in his arms.
I dove deeper into his strength, twisting the carnelian ring around my finger, my thoughts tangling.
I’d thought of how to use my so-called advantage until I felt my brain melting. Nothing felt good enough. But Cyrus and my mother insisted I’d know what best to do in the moment. Their confidence in my quick and versatile thinking should have filled me with drive, but instead felt like a ball and chain. Everything rode on me being clever enough, distracting her long enough, in those crucial moments.
What if I failed again? Worse, what if we only pushed her to use her third wish, instead of fixing Cahraman, to drain us of will, ending our resistance forever?
He squeezed me harder, pressing his lips to my ear. “You are a lot cleverer than you give yourself credit for. When the time comes, you will know what to do.”
Like always, he seemed to be listening in on my insecurities. Ones I couldn’t afford now.
I couldn’t be this team’s weak link. I wouldn’t be.
“Just promise me something.” I looked up at him, saw the somberness in his eyes, knew what he’d say. I covered his mouth so he wouldn’t say it. He only kissed my palm and did. “You have the ring, Esfandiar and the feather. If there’s nothing to be done, use them all, run away, and take everyone you can with you.”
Eyes and throat burning, I grabbed his hand and kissed it back. “I promise I would get as many people as I could out. As for me, I promise that whatever fate awaits you, I share.”
He stepped back, looking down at me, an amalgam of awe, admiration and love blazing in his beautiful eyes. “If you ever questioned why I chose you, here’s your answer.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
“Did we agree on a signal from either Ayman or Cora?” I asked Cyrus after we landed outside the palace walls, itching to make our move.
As if answering my question, an explosion blew apart one of the western towers. Fire immediately raged and a column of black smoke billowed into the sky.
“That would be the signal.” Cyrus looked back as I clung to him. “Ready?”
I’d barely said yes when the simurgh shot into the sky and towards the palace.
As we approached, the chaos our friends had unleashed zoomed closer. The imprisoned citizens, freed by Ayman, had flooded out to the gardens, thousands of men and boys clashing with as many guards in the backdrop of a hedge-maze set ablaze.
We were close enough to the palace when my heart almost leaped out of my chest as a familiar figure zipped across one window, his dark cloak flowing behind him like raven wings—Master Farouk!
Dozens of palace workers were running in his wake. They disappeared behind the walls separating the windows, then reappeared on the floor below as they descended the spiraling stairs. But he did on the one above! I wanted to scream for him to get out, but even if he heard me, I knew he wouldn’t. He would go get as many people out as he could first.
Then I could no longer see him and we closed in on the top floor where I caught a glimpse of Cora bludgeoning guards with her shield while people cowered behind her, among them Princess Ariane. I’d almost forgotten about her! I wondered where Fairuza was, hoped she was in the back and I couldn’t see her. But it was clear Cora was holding her own, would get them and the others out.
But there was no sign of Nariman. She hadn’t come out to watch us arrive, or try to blast us out of the sky, as I’d hoped.
So where was she?
The unanswered question felt like the first rip in the fabric our plan.
The simurgh flew over the roof and perched above a huge half-moon balcony spread with gleaming, gold-veined marble, what Cyrus said had been his father’s quarters.
“This will do,” she said, nodding appreciatively at the width below her. “A good place to build my nest, at last.”
“Even if we don’t succeed, my wish stands, and you’re free from Alabasta.” Cyrus jumped down, reached up to ruffle her feathers. “If we do, you don’t have to settle for this. I’ll build you the highest tower in the land to nest in.”
It bent to bump its head against his. “You’d better succeed then. Yours should be a far better tale than the tedious ones described by men like Esfandiar of Gypsum.”
He huffed a chuckle as he helped me down. “Come to think of it, they’re not very well written.” He caught me in his arms as I jumped, his eyes filled with a baffling calmness, a warrior going into battle and at peace with all outcomes. “Think we can do better? Write our own anthology to document our own adventures?”
“I bet we can.” My lips shook on a smile. “I can’t wait to read your version, to find out everything that went inside your head all this time.”
“No need to wait. I’ll tell you everything once this is over, and Ada—Adelaide…”
He pulled me into his arms, and his lips covered mine in a kiss that felt like everything worth fighting for, a future, a family, a kingdom and a love that would spin its own legend.
He finally raised his head and said, “Whatever happened, only you could have become my princess. Whatever happens, you’re already my queen.”
I could only jump up and kiss him again, and hope with everything in me that I would fix everything I’d broken, and deserve all this faith and love.
The king’s quarters were empty. They were also no longer dungeon-like, had been refurbished and cleaned, looked almost exactly as they had when I’d come to steal the lamp. Maybe Nariman had been sleeping here?
How soundly did she sleep thinking she’d doomed Cyrus to death by dehydration in Alabasta?
With our second destination the throne room, Cyrus stopped in the doorway before we exited the chamber. “I have to ask, where did he keep the lamp?”
“On his nightstand.”
He let out a single huff of laughter, no doubt imagining all the trouble we’d had searching for it, and all the trouble it had caused, when his father had keeping it beside him like a jug of water. “You think he used it?”
I nodded. “To banish Nariman. I also think he was going to use it the night I took it. That’s why he had it out. To make you forget me and choose Fairuza.”
Cyrus said nothing for a minute as we ran down the deserted hall.
Then he hissed, “I have to save him—so I can strangle him myself.”
“Cyrus!” I gasped as the din of chaos traveled up to encompass us, stampeding feet, clanging metal, shouts and screams. I didn’t dare imagine their context.
His chuckle was furious. “Don’t worry—I’ll just rub his nose in the fact that if he hadn’t tried to control me, you wouldn’t have found the lamp and none of this would have happened. He’d choke on that on his own.” He kicked a fallen shield viciously. “I don’t know why he never married Lady Rostam. They’re perfect for each other.”
I was about to point out he hadn’t because of Jumana’s wish, when I realized two things. That had been a rhetorical question. And the yawning cacophony was an incoming stampede.
Palace workers burst into the hall in a total panic, pursued by roaring guards. In seconds, hundreds of thrashing bodies separated us from the throne room.
I had a feeling this was Nariman’s doing. She was toying with us all.
I lifted my shaking hand to my lips. “I wish the guards let the workers go.”
Nothing happened. Too optimistic? Probably, since they were compelled to fight.
I made another one. “I wish the guards left this floor.”
Nothing again.
“I wish they all separate and let us pass.”
Nothing.
“I wish Esfandiar came here now.”
With a puff of fiery smoke, Esfandiar was glowering at me, owl-like eyes displeased.
“Why did you pull me aw
ay from where you wished me to be? I was in the middle of easing your little friend’s escape.”
I tapped the ring. “Because this part of you is proving useless. I thought this you might do better.”
Esfandiar eyed the warzone. “And what would you wish me to me do here? I don’t deal in clearing riots. There are no minds to bend with the mindless.”
“Well, it’s not like I wish they all drop dead so we can pass, but I’m sure…”
“Mistress!” His whole face became the color of his eyes.
“What?”
“Hasn’t anyone instructed you in the basics of commanding a genie?”
“But you’re not one!”
“Yes, but I still abide by the same rules.” He raised three fingers, tapping their tips for emphasis. “I can’t kill anybody, neither can I undo death, and last, I can’t force someone’s will so they’d do what they never would willingly. Meaning I can’t make someone kill for you, or love you.”
Cyrus, in battle position between the masses and I turned to Esfandiar, shouted over their uproar, “So, if my father had attempted to make me love Fairuza using the genie, it wouldn’t have worked?”
Esfandiar shook his head. “Not only that, but breaking magical rules backfires on the user.” He looked unsteady, as if he’d gotten the fright of his life. “Mistress, you’re lucky I’m not a proper genie or else your inadvertent wish for their deaths might have turned you into a ghoul.”
“What?”
“Well, not exactly—that was just dramatic license. It’s the writer in me. But making a forbidden wish of a genie has dire, and might I add, immediate consequences. Anyway, ghouls, for the most part, mutate from irresponsible magic, theirs or others. Your mother should tell you some cautionary tales about witches who overreach with their magic or those who break fundamental magical rules. Like this Nermine—or whoever you’re here to fight and the fallout of her misuse of magic causing this mess—”
Cyrus swung around from swatting away those who’d come too near. “Wait—what?”
Esfandiar spun a finger in a circle. “The state of your kingdom? She didn’t wish for this, but the genie, the one who likes to have the last laugh, gave it to her infected with her own bitterness and stress and anger. Now it’s getting worse because she’s stretching her power too thin, to keep everyone under control and to keep everything from falling apart further and failing. The deterioration is a manifestation of her own decline.”
So she hadn’t done any of this on purpose.
I still asked, “How can you tell?”
His eyes flared with the fire that had scared me witless when I’d first seen him. “I can see it, the way a cat sees in the dark…”
The mob suddenly swelled and before I could see what was happening, I’d lost sight of Cyrus. I threw myself after him but a shield slammed into my chest and knocked me flat on my back. I hit the marble floor and smacked my head hard.
Pain pierced my skull and my sight flickered. I tried to stand back up, but the most my throbbing head could command was to drag me up on my elbows as three burly guards separated from the mass, the nearest one’s angry face flooded with bright red blood.
Esfandiar gripped my jaw, moved it. “Wish something, fast! Say, I wish they knocked each other out! I might compel them to do that since they’re keyed to aggression.” His eyes flared brighter as if with something that hadn’t occurred to him before. “Oh—you didn’t wish me to clear the riot, you wished to bypass them! Say I wish you got me out of here.”
I tried, but nothing coherent came out.
The men came too close and with a shriek of frustration, Esfandiar evaporated into smoke and went up the first man’s nose. The man’s eyes flashed yellow before he let out a petrified scream and started scratching at his face, slamming into the man beside him, sending them both crashing back into the battle.
That left of the third of them advancing on me. Hovering on the edge of unconsciousness, I couldn’t get up to flee. I felt down my side for my dagger, unsheathed it just as he lifted me off the ground by my shirt.
I thrust the dagger up towards his thigh, was too easily blocked by his own sword.
I was about to bite his nose when I heard a loud whack, then the man swooped down towards me.
I squirmed away from his plummeting mass but he crashed over my legs. I scrambled from underneath him to feet I still couldn’t feel and realized—he was unconscious.
My gaze rose to the person standing above his prone form. The one who’d saved me.
It wasn’t Cyrus or Cora, but Princess Fairuza of Arbore, brandishing a heavy brass vase.
Then she stomped. “About time you showed up!”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
I threw myself at her, brimming with gratitude. “I am so glad to see you.”
Fairuza crowded me away to a still empty corner at the far end of the hall. “I never thought I’d hear you say that.” I huffed, only for pain to boom again in my ringing skull. “Truly though, where have you been? I expected you to have found a way around this by now.”
The pulsating headache skipped a beat. Fairuza didn’t know anything about the real me. So why would she think that? “Why me?”
She shrugged, tucking the vase under her arm. “You always seemed to find a way around any problem, so I thought you’d do something about that mad witch.”
“I wasn’t in the palace when she took over.” I winced. “So what has she been like? Has she hurt any of you?”
“No, she only kept us locked up. She eventually let those who agreed to ally themselves with her, or even work for her, out. She even occasionally held dinners for those, but once the situation in the city got too much for her, we remained in our rooms.”
I had a feeling she’d been one of “those.” “What did she ask of you?”
A glint of guilt flashed in her turquoise eyes. “That I ask my father to recognize her sovereignty as Queen of Cahraman. I didn’t mean to betray the royal family, but I wanted to go home. I want to see my brothers and sister one last time.” Her voice suddenly grew pitchy and I took a good look at her, realized she looked worn out and waif-like. “I don’t want to die here.”
I grabbed her by much thinner arms. “Fairuza, she has a genie. If we can get the golden lamp it lives in from her, we can use a wish to break your curse.”
She perked up. “Do you think that would work?”
“Why wouldn’t it?”
“I don’t know. But what other options do I have?” She wiped her eyes with a delicate swish of her finger, before pointing behind us. “Tell me you have a solution for this first.”
“I do,” I rasped, held the ring to my lips and wished for Esfandiar back.
He didn’t show up. And the riot was encroaching on us. We’d be engulfed in the violence in moments.
“What do we do?”
The one thing left to do. I held my dagger at the ready. “Fight our way through.”
Hugging her vase, Fairuza let out a long-suffering breath. “This again?”
“At least they don’t have fangs, or claws, or an insatiable hunger for human flesh.”
“But they have sharp weapons, brute force and bloodlust.”
“Still better than the ghouls.”
“Oh, definitely.”
I held out my hand to her. “Let’s go.”
Gripping onto each other, Fairuza and I dove into the warring crowd, narrowly avoiding sharp swipes or being knocked down by falling fighters.
Fairuza squealed behind me. I turned to see her slam her vase into someone’s face.
The man with the bushy beard took the hit but didn’t fall until fire-colored smoke fled his ears, nose and mouth, materializing into Esfandiar.
“A fairy!” Fairuza shrieked, slamming her vase harder in his face.
“Wait—ouch! Miss, would you—ow—please—” He vanished in a puff of smoke before she could bludgeon him, reappearing by me. “—not bash my head in? Not that you could—but it
still hurts— Duck!”
Ducking while dizzy sent me tumbling on all fours, but it did the trick in avoiding someone’s meaty fist. Fairuza joined me on the floor, in between the tangling legs.
“You know this fairy?” she yelled over the cacophony.
“He’s a genie, sort of. He’s with me.”
“With you, huh? As in you can command him to get us out of here?”
At her direct yell in my ear, the last of my disorientation evaporated. And I yelled, too, “Esfandiar, I wish you get us across this fight to safety!”
He scooped us both up by our waists, to Fairuza’s dismay. “As my Mistress wishes!”
Like a cannonball, he tore through the barrier of people, knocking them left and right around our awkward formation.
We emerged on the other side of the turbulent sea of bodies.
“Now I wish you to find Cyrus.”
I suddenly saw Cyrus’s head, right in the middle of the conflict. He was swatting attackers only to be swamped with more.
“I wish you get Cyrus out of there and safely with us.”
In seconds Esfandiar brought Cyrus to my side in the same method.
The moment they stopped before me, each man pushed the other away and dusted his clothes, pretending the other wasn’t there.
“Let’s get into the throne room before this mob engulfs us again,” Cyrus said.
We turned towards the end of the hall, and I discovered even in the dimness the massive, double-doors were how they used to be. Deep red, with a gold simurgh painted across them.
As we stopped in front of them, Cyrus noticed Fairuza for the first time. The regret that overflowed in his eyes overwhelmed me.
This was the first time he’d seen her after he’d learned of her curse. He felt he could have been kinder to her at times and that his rejection of her, and the Bride Search had wasted a lot of precious time for her. For a man of action and accountability, the helplessness to do anything for her or to fix mistakes he’d made even unknowingly, was terrible.