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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A PAIR OF EMPTY BLACK EYES haunted me throughout the next day.
"Miss, are you alright? You seem a little distracted today," Maria said, her voice odd. In the mirror, I could see her hands fidget with my hair. "Did you not sleep well last night?"
"I slept just fine," I said blankly. "Finish making me up, Maria. I'm tired."
"Oh, okay. I'm sorry for the wait."
As I stared at the strands of hair around Maria's hands, I suddenly had the thought of cutting my hair.
It's too long.
My eyes drifted over to the brush the girl had in her hands, and then to the way she curled my hair around her fingers, and then suddenly, to the way another's hands, bigger and rougher, had brushed across my hair last night.
I looked away from the mirror. At the same time, I wondered if I'd gotten to that point of a post-traumatic incident that even my own face would become a trigger.
I remember that, when I was younger, Babylon was a town that grew famous for its murky, lurking horror stories, spread through the word of mouth, lullabies and bedtime stories. There were even some people whose sole profession was to tell these stories and scare children.
I didn't have very many memories with my mother, but I did know that she absolutely loved these stories, and would tell me one every night.
She had a favorite one, of course, and I'd heard it from her maybe three times, and from everyone else, too many times to count. It was a weird, spooky story that was always her first choice when the moon was high and the owls sounded like wolves outside.
Once upon a time, there lived a little girl. This little girl lived alone, as her parents had died when she was very young. In fact, she didn't remember much of her parents, an they didn't leave her much to remember them by, either. The only thing they did leave her was a very big mirror, nailed down in the center of her bedroom.
The little girl didn't know why the mirror was there, but it was very pretty, so every day, she would clean the mirror and make sure that it was spotless. Because she didn't have any friends, sometimes, she would even talk to the mirror. She would tell the little girl looking back to her about all of her problems and all of her nightmare, and eventually, began to do this every single night.
One night, the little girl was awaken by a bad dream. In order to comfort herself, as usual, she went down from her bed and sat down in front of the mirror.
But today, the little girl in the mirror looked different. Usually, the girl would follow whatever she did, but today, when she sat down and smiled at the mirror, the little girl didn't smile back.
Suddenly, she realized something was wrong.
Two hands reached forward from the mirror and, to the little girl's horror, she watched as the hands pushed through the surface and wrapped around her neck.
