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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THE BOOK MARIA had sent up to me was thick, its pages yellow yet perfectly pressed, and when I opened up the cover, my fingers made a solid handprint onto the layer of dust.
Clearly, it had been in that library for a long time, and no one had opened it.
It was a shame, for a book like this — A History Of The Persian Kingdom: The Sons And Daughters Of Heaven, written by a some famous, palace historian a few hundred decades ago — would never have been accessible in Babylon, even to the rich. And yet here it was, the ink left to fade away onto yellowed paper in the confines of an old, gigantic library in the West Wing that Maria had secretly snuck into.
I wondered why I'd never seen the library before.
"The library is inconspicuous, Miss," Maria had said. "At least, the one in Prince Cairo's wing is. It's behind a small door, and even I had to ask one of the head butlers to find out about it. It doesn't seem as if it's been entered in years."
"Is it not the prince's private library?"
"I thought it was," she said, "but as far as I could tell, it isn't. The whole room was filled with dust."
Maria stretched her arms out around her head in a wide, open semi-circle, her eyebrows furrowing together. "I suppose the room was about this big. I thought it was odd, Miss, because it must've taken an extremely long time for so much dilapidation to set into all of the shelves and decor of such a big area."
Maria had made a good point, but watching the way she stretched her arms out around her, big doe eyes darting between her left and right hand, it was exceptionally hard for me to try and not smile.
Certainly a twelve-year-old child, after all.
Just as the thought finished coming to me, I frowned.
Exactly. She's only a twelve-year-old child.
"Why haven't you gone and rested yet, Maria? Didn't I tell you to do so an hour ago?"
Maria blinked, her hands falling to her sides. "Miss, I can't."
"Can't what?"
"I can't just go and rest," she said, frowning. "I have to stay."
"No, you don't."
"Miss, I do. I happened to meet Ismal as I was on my way back to the library, and he told me I must stay close," she said. "This incident might have given Miss a scare. I have to ensure that you are all right after all is said and done, to ensure that you stay healthy for yourself and everyone else around you."
