This Woven Kingdom

She was everything he’d never realized he wanted in his future queen: not just beauty, but grace; not just grace, but strength; not just strength, but compassion. He’d heard her speak enough to know she was not only educated but intelligent, proud but not arrogant.

The shackles worn by your people are often unseen by the eye. Feel, they’d said, for even blind, you will know how to break them.

“Oh, now you really do wound me.”

“Friends?” he said, dismayed. “If your intention was to wound me, know you have succeeded.”

Was it terrible that his heart pounded in his chest at the soft sound of her voice? Was it worrisome that he felt nothing but pleasure to be held at her mercy?

“Well, then. You are coming to Tulan,” Cyrus said, taking a quick breath. “To marry me.”

Alizeh gave a sharp cry, and fell off the dragon.

“You have consumed my thoughts since the moment I met you,” he said to her. “I feel now, in your presence, entirely strange. I think I might fetch you the moon if only to spare your tears again.”

Once more, the nosta flashed warm against Alizeh’s skin

And the moon—the moon is a great comfort to me.”

“That there lingers any uncertainty in your mind that you’ve not committed a grievous error says only to me, sire, that you should have your neck checked by the palace butcher.”

Alizeh dared not breathe.

Even in silhouette she couldn’t see him, not properly, but then—it was not his face, but his voice, that had made the devil notorious.