This Woven Kingdom

So long as the kingdom remained at peace, the royal elite—legitimate and illegitimate alike—would continue to host parties and incur debt, which meant Alizeh might yet find ways to extract coin from their embroidered pockets. The intricate, glittering piece was her only order this month, but Alizeh nursed a secret hope that the gown would conjure clients on its own, for such fashionable commissions were, after all, the direct result of an envy born only in a ballroom, around a dinner table. It was critical that she first acknowledge this in order to next acknowledge something else: there was no future for them. Thirty-Five MUSIC SWELLED IN KAMRAN’S EARS, the screaming darkness of his mind punctured occasionally by the sound of laughter, the clink of glass and silver.