One Thousand and One Nights (It so happened...)

Nine Celestial Bodies That Shine

  
   The wedding being in the evening. Dilruba had hardly had any sleep. She was sure she was the most raggedly looking bride her maids had ever seen considering how much they passed looks to each other.

   She felt like she was being prepared as a sacrificial lamb. She remembered the vizier's words. "This would change nothing."

   Dilruba felt suffocated. Would it not? Would it not change? The eerie feeling that she was walking to her death gripped her. She walked out of her chambers, running and running.

   Her feet hurt from running batefoot, her lungs burned but she didn't stop. Her vision was blinded with tears and it was too late until she saw a horse trotting towards her.

    "Woah!" The man on the horse said. She skidded to a stop and her eyes widened as the horse rose to his front limbs and neighed loudly.

    "My lady? Are you okay?"

  For a moment through her tears she saw him but it wasn't him. She was always Scherezaade for him.

   "My lady!!?" Strong arms gripped her shoulders shaking her.

   "Do you want to get out of here?" The neighbor king asked her.

    She nodded. "Forever?"

    "Forever. Take me away." She rasped.

  In an instant, she was on the horse and she found them riding out of the palace gates and towards the highway.

   She was free. Free. That's all she could think.

    Later they stopped at the meadow overlooking the castle. Wind blew her hair and the grass tickled her ankles. She couldn't wrap her mind around the fact that a few hours back she was a prisoner there.

"Do you want to hear a story?"

  "Yes. My lady."

***
Dilruba walked all the way to the capital alone and when she reached the capital, the sights made her weak hearted, the disease and poverty were very different from the prosperous country that it was a few years back.

She walked to the palace and told the palace guard that she was the sister of the queen. The man frowned but accepted it as truth as she looked a bit like her sister.

The guards took her around the palace and she found entering the basement.

  "I don't remember the throne room being here. Where are we going?"

   "To the dungeons."

Fear tickled her neck and she tried to run but they grabbed her arms. "Where are you running? Don't you want to meet your sister?"

   In the dark dungeons, she found her sister Rania and her husband. They hugged her and weeped.

   "What happened? Why are you here?"

      They recounted the tale of how the throne was ursurped by the general and how they were imprisoned.

  Shock slapped her as she realised how terrible of a misunderstanding she had developed. Orion and the troupe they were planning to overthrow the ursurper king and queen and not her sister and brother in law. She weeped tears of remorse and wondered if it was too late.

***

    Dilruba stopped and watched the castle. The castle seemed so dauntingly beautiful. The same castle where she couldn't even step out of her room without the mad king's orders.

***

    Fireworks went all around as the wedding was complete. There were chatters all around him and his sister embraced him, "My well wishes to you, my dear brother."

   He smiled but he felt empty inside. The post nuptial rituals were quick. He looked at the figure in red veiled in front of him.

   He sighed a breath of relief. He knew it wasn't her. Only he knew. He knew she would've been far gone by now. She might've even crossed the border into Zeraliya.

   She deserved to be free. He decided. Free as any bird. Not caged with him.

  The moon rose high in the skyand he walked into his wedding chambers. He saw the woman he had married on the bed veiled.

   She was a slave who was willing to give up her life in exchange of riches provided to her family. She knew she was about to die in a week. There was no deception between them.

   "You can rest, Khatun." He told her.

  He poured himself some wine in a goblet and walked to the window emptying it. The full moon was out in all its glory.

    Do you look at the same moon too? Dilruba? The same stars adorn your sky too?

***

A/N: Vote and comment!