✵ featured ~
❝Once upon a time in Baghdad, a street girl teaches the Khalifa of the kingdom why a king needs a queen.❞
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Started: June 5, 2021.
Completed: March 30, 2022.
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cover by @xniftykayx
featured on wattpad historical fiction, undiscovered...
You taste like Heaven, but God knows you're built for sin.
— Framing Hanley
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Al Shafay
The song of rain is a lullaby seeping into his room at the fall of night. He reclines in his chair and listens to it with his eyes closed. It goes from a soft drizzle to the sky pouring yet he finds comfort in it. The arrows lie scattered on the table before him and the wound on his back stings and burns. Amidst the chaos in his life and within him, he's willing to grasp onto any moment of warmth and solace, no matter how fleeting.
"She doesn't want to marry you."
His conversation with his vizier plays in his head. It had been like a nail hammered into his skull.
"What does she say?"
"That she's not your slave, and if you consider her a price to be won, then you've lost already."
He knows her reasons. He's well aware the treasures and titles don't appeal to her. But it's something else entirely-- rather, it's someone else holding her away from him. It blazes a fire in his heart.
"She will marry me. I won't lose."
"But she's right, my son. You're not in a battlefield against her-- this is not a war for conquest. And she's not your slave. You're forcing her."
"No. She will come to me herself."
"By you making her circumstances desperate."
"I want to make her my queen. I want to do so by marrying her. What is so wrong about it?"
"You want to make her a queen by treating her like your slave. This approach, sayidi, is what is wrong."
He bites his lip between his teeth. If her lover wasn't in the picture, would she still be so adamant? If she knew his truth, would she still reject him? He remembers, but she doesn't. And if she's in oblivion to what he knows, she's kept in denial by the man she fancies. He wonders if she would still look at him the same if this blindfold was removed? If he who is holy turns all dirty, will she still name it love?
A knock at his door interrupts his musings. He opens his eyes and turns to it. Exhaling to calm himself, he goes to answer it.
It surprises him when he finds Noura at his door at the given hour, and in her given state-- soaked as if she had been standing in the rain. He frowns before composing himself.
"What do you want?" he questions, trying to keep his tone leveled and not give away his worry.
"Can I come in first?"
He stares at her and she parallels his look, appearing stubborn, unaware of the havoc she's creating within him. Her presence in the confines of his room will sweep him into another world-- dark and appealing. But restraining his thoughts, he steps aside and she gets inside.
