{a wattpad featured story-- 6/29/18 -- 7/20/18}
an HTBC book of the month for November 2018
cover by the talented ellis ( @rubyruins )
❝the night has a thousand eyes, and the moon knows all your secrets.❞
--in which a young woman bravely defies the...
❝In a murderous time, the heart breaks and breaks, and lives by breaking.❞
--Stanley Kunitz, from "The Testing Tree"
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THEY WALKED IN SILENCE.
Though her hijab Scheherazade would catch glimpses of the guard that walked by her side–a square jaw, a thick beard, the curve of a scar just above his left eye. She let herself think of how it had happened, how perhaps he had blocked the blade of an enemy soldier that come too close to the sultan. Perhaps he had been captured as a ransom and tortured as a result. Perhaps it was an old thing, from training with his fellow guards, the very ones that walked behind him. He had not dodged the arc of the scimitar fast enough. His hesitation had cost him his beauty.
Perhaps, she thought, and here she sucked in a breath so sharp that she felt him turn to look at her, perhaps it was given to him by the one he loved the most. Perhaps they had fought, and they had threatened him, and he did not wish to kill them but let them scar him instead.
Perhaps this was the sign of his loyalty, a flame flickering in the night.
They paused underneath an archway. Up ahead, one could see the haze of incense burning, the lanterns hanging from the entrance of the khayma illuminating the figures inside.
"Sayidati," the guard said, and she almost did not turn. He touched her once, then, gently, and pulled back as if he had been burned. From the corner of her eye she saw him glance toward the khayma, the muscles in his jaw tense as he swallowed.
"May the sun shine on your path," he murmured, removing a weapon from its sheath.
"And may it never set on yours," she murmured in response. He knew what this was, and so did she.
In Al-Zahureem, one only spoke those words when they were about to bid a man farewell for the last time.
"I have seen many things," he told her, "but I have never seen a woman walk to her death like you have."
He opened his hand, palm up. Inside, there was a knife, ivory hilt gleaming in the torchlight.
"This was my father's before me, and his father's before him. But before this, it was the sultan's. It always has been."
His hand curled into a fist once more. "When the sultan took the throne, I swore to protect him with my life, with my honor, and with my blade. I have done all three, but I have done something else as well."
A breath. "I have loved him. With everything in my being, I have loved him as well as any other man could hope to from a distance."
