Muhtesem Yuzyil Imagines ♡

Kaya Sultana (By taradiddled on Tumblr)

Kosem raises Kaya. She is a beautiful girl, with hair dark like her late mother's, eyes flinty like her grandfather's, and a beautiful countenance that is both fiery as it is composed. She is kindling bound together, burning with an essence Kosem had yet to see in any of her children or grandchildren ever before. Kosem looks at Kaya and sees a part of herself -- the whimsical Anastasia who'd given up her freedom and her hopes to become a sehzades' dream.

Murad can barely look at Kaya -- he sees only Ayse in the girl's face, and perhaps, he sees flickers of what could have been for Hanzade and Ahmed. It doesn't help that Kaya knows very well the end of her mother's and siblings' lives. She knows that they supped from poisoned cups, together, so they could never again be parted by the Sultan's hand.

"Where is my mother," a small Kaya had once asked her father on that one good day Kosem could force her son to visit his only child.

"She is not here," Murad had answered after staring at Kaya for a full minute, silent as the death that permeated the royal palace. He'd then told Kaya that he didn't want to discuss Kaya's mother anymore, and then abandoned the girl to return to Farya, who'd long learned that she and Kaya were never meant to occupy the same place in Murad's heart.

"You must not discuss your mother with your father," Kosem had told Kaya much later after she learned what had happened. "It hurts his heart to remember her and your brother and sister."

Kaya had then looked at Kosem as if she'd been looking through her grandmother, but had agreed that, from thereon, she'd still her tongue.

Kaya's no longer small -- she's a beautiful young woman, a sultana whom Ayse would have cried tears to behold. She is exactly the picture of the late Haseki Ayse Sultan, and Murad takes great pains to avoid seeing Kaya. Kosem blames Farya for encouraging Murad's distance, and when Farya does cross paths with Kosem and Kaya, Kosem places herself between the two sultanas.

"He is in pain," Farya tried, once, to say.

"As was I when each one of my children was raised in a damask coffin to be taken from this palace of tears," Kosem had responded, eyes fierce. "Go, Farya." She'd taken Kaya's hand in hers. "Back to your husband." And then she and Kaya had left Farya, not once looking back, only looking forward.

Kaya shares her grandmother's distaste for the Sultan's wife. Just as she shares Kosem's distaste for the Sultan. But like Kosem, she keeps her words quiet, doesn't speak treason, and follows her grandmother's example. She is more sultana than any of Kosem's children, save for Fatma and Ayse, who converge upon the palace not long following Atike's death (she'd thrown herself from the balcony of the very garden in which Kosem had once first encountered her beloved Ahmed).

"All my children have left me," Kosem once whispered to the winds on that same balcony. "Please grant me time with my granddaughter." She'd prayed then, dipped low and prayed to Allah to let her have a little more time with Kaya. That'd been when Kaya was four, and now she's fifteen, and about to marry.

Kaya is not pleased with her father's choice for a groom. Kosem is not pleased, either, but she bows her head to her son's orders, and says, "Yes, Hunkarim." She refuses to address him as her own. He is no longer her child. He's brought too much death to the palace -- and he'll bring more, if locking Ibrahim away is any indication of his sense of justice.

"Mother, please," Murad begs. But Kosem does not hear him. She glides from his rooms and goes to Kaya. She tells her beloved granddaughter to prepare herself. And then she goes to her grandson's room, where she finds a despondent to Selim, who is every bit a reminder of his late mother, and Kosem has to summon all her steel and iron to say:

"My grandson, our Hunkar has decided your bride."

Kosem only hopes that she can save her grandchildren from the unhappiness of this cursed palace of tears. Even if she has to watch them both leave the palace together beneath the veils of union, and become forever gone from Kosem's arms.

All creds to original author!!!