Twenty-Nine

Alizeh confronts Cyrus about his memory of the flower field, insisting she never abandoned him during Iblees’s torture. He initially believes she left, until the bloodstain on her dress forces him to accept she stayed, tended him, and brought him home. She confesses she wiped his blood away with her tears, humbling him.

Cyrus explains his cycles of torture and “medicinal sleep,” sometimes twice weekly, and his dissociation afterward. Tension turns intimate as both acknowledge his delirious touches; he asks to make her his queen. Alarmed, Alizeh accuses him of seduction to secure marriage for the devil’s terms, and they argue over intent and trust.

Pressed, Cyrus reveals he has dreamed of Alizeh for months—visions he now believes Iblees planted to unmake him—making it impossible for him to distrust or forget her. He admits he sought to hate her but finds her more compelling in reality, declaring painful desire and dependence.

Alizeh, moved yet resolute, rejects romance under his bondage to Iblees, saying he cannot choose her first. She might accept a marriage in name only to claim an empire for her people, devastating Cyrus. He begs to be left, asking only to know how she will someday kill him. As they question what they will be tomorrow, an urgent knock rattles the door.