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...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
ONCE UPON A TIME, in a faraway place, a little boy's footprints edged itself into the sand.
His steps were slow, his feet blistered and calloused from the afternoon summer heat. He'd been walking for quite a bit of time now, screaming himself hoarse along the way, but for how long exactly, he didn't know.
This little boy's name was Cairo, the third and youngest prince of the Persian Empire.
Cairo looked around, his eyes stinging from the wind. How odd it was, he thought, that such a hot place would have such a strong breeze. But no matter how strong, the wind, it seemed, carried anger, and it lashed at his small arms like sharp, metal studded whips.
Cairo winced, careful not to touch his scratched forearms, before he looked back up, his eyes straining to catch a trace of a building, or market, or a palm tree to rest under, for even just a short while.
But all Cairo found was sand.
His father had warned him of this, of course, just before he left. Mohammad Syahir had looked at him, his black eyes so cold in comparison to his youngest, and said, "You turned six two months ago, Cairo. It's time you went through what your brothers did. You cannot run away forever."
Cairo had nodded, his head turned down and his chin tucked in in an effort to keep back his thoughts that his brothers, Raza and Finn, had both been ten when they ran the test, and that the both of them had been trained to memorize the kingdom's map since they were five.
On the other hand, Cairo had not been given any of those opportunities.
But, unlike Raza and Finn, he couldn't just come up to his father and demand the same treatment.
Even at six, he knew that a concubine's son did not get the same privilege as a queen's.
"Find your way back home, Cairo. Find your way back to the palace. Only then will the people acknowledge you as a true prince of the Persian Empire."
Cairo had lifted his head then, wanting to say that no matter what he did, until Syahir decided to hail his mother up as the third queen, the people would never acknowledge him as a prince of Persia; but by the time he'd gotten the courage to open his mouth, his father had ridden off.
When that had happened, the sky had still been painted a brilliant scarlet red, the same shade of vermilion his mother would paint on her lips, but now, it had faded into a dark, dark blue, the moon just barely peeking out above him.
It had been so hot before, and now, it was so, so cold.
"Pap-- Father, I want to go home," he whispered to himself, his eyes hazy, but even then, he managed to catch himself from calling the King, Papa, a privilege only official children were allowed to use. "Father, I miss Mama. Mama, where are you? I want to go home..."
