In the winding streets of the Persian Empire, a poor girl is chosen to become the third prince's concubine.
Aliya Farhad has no interest in the lofty ideas of the palace, the staff, or her lover. Prince Cairo has all the interest in his blue-eyed A...
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AS SOON AS THE WORDS LEFT my mouth, I could almost see the way his eyes turned dark, and the hand that I had placed on his chest was -- in the gentlest manner, but not at all yielding -- pushed away.
Firmly, stubbornly, I raised my hand and once again pressed it to Cairo's heartbeat. "Answer me."
Cairo's hand fell from mine, down to his lap, and I watched as he twisted his fingers into the fabric. His head dropped down to his chin, as if he'd gone back to being six years old, a lonely prince being scolded for nothing.
"Cairo," I said, and it was hard to keep my voice steady. The poets said you took a little piece of everybody you met, melted and molded that piece into a part of you, so that everybody you meet becomes you, the so-called circle of life. I didn't know what parts I had taken from other people, nor what parts they had taken from me, but I wondered now whether I had momentarily taken the shaky voice Cairo had spoken in earlier, sound lilting and shaking at the tail, and he had somehow taken that part of me that refused to speak. "Answer me."
I had my hand on his chest, but the person not a foot away from me suddenly felt distant, and distinctly, it was almost as if I could feel his heart beat fading underneath my fingertips.
A hallucination of the mind, or a premonition of a bad spirit.
"Cairo." My voice sounded foreign to my own ears; sharp, gravelly, a little shrill. It grated on my nerves and eardrums, and in my frustration, I found myself fisting Cairo's shirt between my fingers.
Slowly, he lifted his head. There was a small smile at the corner of his mouth, but his eyes held no delight; still, like an undisturbed body of lake, but in a way that was eerily and frighteningly so.
"Aliya," he said, gaze searching mine, "with my reaction, is it still necessary to ask?"
My hands had clenched his shirt so tight in my fingers that my knuckles had turned white and the fabric had wrinkled, but still I found myself grasping it tighter.
"I don't believe you." The words tumbled out of my mouth. "Tell me the truth."
Cairo didn't speak, and again, I found myself clenching my hands even tighter, pulling him closer to me. I didn't know what I was trying to find, but if it was the trace of a lie, there was none.
There was a horrible taste in my mouth, and an unsettlingly heavy weight in my stomach.
"Well," I choked out, "I don't believe that you're telling me the whole truth."
"Aliya--"
"What? Are you going to tell me that you have prepared for death, Cairo?" I hissed. "Is that what it is?"
He didn't speak, and I didn't stop.
"Have you come to my room tonight with the thought that you would tell me? Tell me that you're dying of some uncureable disease, masking the truth? Or were you not going to tell me, ever? Disappear mysteriously? Make me look for you so? What were your plans, Cairo? What have you thought of?"
