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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PRINCE CAIRO'S VOICE WAS unlike that of Prince Finn's, one that was loud and brash and stung the eardrums of whoever was nearest to him, nor was it similar to Prince Raza's, slow and steady, but with each word pointed to kill.
Prince Cairo's voice was more of a low, sharp timbre, just loud enough to bounce around the library and make the book in my hands falter, enough that if I hadn't collected my wits fast enough, the book would have been sent tumbling onto the floor.
The voice of a King.
The moment the thought entered my head, a bead of cold sweat dripped down the side of my neck.
Although unspoken, and never been told, I'd been in the Palace long enough to pick up that this wasn't a thought that I should be thinking.
Not if I wanted to ever keep thinking.
"Who's there?" Prince Cairo asked again, and once again, I kept mum.
From the time of his voice, he didn't sound angry, but I couldn't shake that feeling of being caught doing something I wasn't supposed to be doing, and it was only when I looked down at my hands that I saw how hard I was gripping the covers of the book, so tight that my knuckles had turned pale and the pages had started to wrinkle.
And perhaps it was an effect of having been pampered in the palace for too long, and for not having had enough situations to test my daily, hand-eye coordinations, because in the next moment, I had let go of the book.
I don't want to ruin the content.
As the thought passed through my mind, another one quickly followed up to it:
Even if I hadn't ruined the content, as the book slammed down onto the floor, I might as well have just ruined myself.
This time, I didn't have to look down to know that my hands had started shaking, once again. In the wide, circular room, the sound of Prince Cairo's fallen footsteps felt as if they'd grown hands, snaking around the base of my throat, grasping it so hard I couldn't breathe.
Briefly, I wondered whether it was normal to sweat or shake this much when encountering a person. After all, I'd never been the nervous type, and there were barely any interactions in Babylon that had my spine shivering as much as it did when I met Prince Cairo. None of the other girls seemed to feel it, either, judging from the leering, longing looks I'd seen them throw in the hallway at times.
I wondered if I was the only one who knew that with every look, they were offering themselves to slaughter.
Probably.
The girls would become much too good at acting, and much too scary if they could still act like that when knowing.
Before that moment, I hadn't realized that Prince Cairo was the type to walk so quick, because in the brief second it took for me to snap out of my trance and close the book shut, his footsteps had ceased, and his hand had already made its way onto my elbow.
