Queen of Cahraman: A Retelling of Aladdin (Fairytales of Folkshore Book 3)

by Lucy Tempest

  Cyrus came out of his daze with a lurch.

  After an uncomprehending moment, he rasped, “Nothing, really. Ayman is my cousin through Loujaïne, while you share a father. My mother and Prince Azal shared a great-grandfather—Prince Majid. This makes us…” He counted on his fingers. “Third-cousins twice removed? Fourth-cousins? I don’t know…we’re distant members of an extended clan on your father’s and my mother’s sides. If you’re Azal’s daughter.”

  I was almost certain I was. But as many times as I’d considered it since our trip to Zhadugar, I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that I had a father who was alive.

  What I hadn’t been able to bring myself to imagine was what my life would have been like if my mother hadn’t fled to Ericura. Now I wondered what it could have been like to grow up in a mansion, a member of a clan so big that I’d never run out of family.

  That was all assuming my father would have claimed me. Illegitimate daughters were probably viewed with disgust and discarded like trueborn albino sons.

  But that could have been one more thing to bring Ayman and I together.

  My breath now accumulated in my chest, waiting for Cyrus’s verdict.

  He finally inhaled, as if learning to breathe all over again. “Nariman actually threatened to kill your friend?”

  That was what he took away from all that?

  Fury, at Nariman, at her hold over him, rose like frothing beer to fill me to my eyes. “You still find it hard to believe her capable of something like that, after all she’s done…?” I stopped. The way I’d told it, it did sound like Nariman said she’d kill her herself. But I couldn’t let him believe that, even if Nariman deserved it. I had to be totally honest with him from now on. “But actually, no. She said she was stopping others from sacrificing her to the beast of Rosemead, that if I failed, she’d let them do it.”

  If anything, he looked more dejected. “That’s equally as bad.” I thought so, too. He let out a heavy breath. “I’ve been hearing stories about the beast, like those we hear about ghouls. It’s said both were punished by the gods or cursed by magical entities, turned into monsters, just like some people are rewarded with godhood.”

  “People can become gods…? Wait, what? The beast of Rosemead was once a person?”

  He nodded, eyes unfocused. “That’s the most popular story, that he was a nobleman who was cursed and locked up in a castle in Rosemead. But if you gave Nariman the lamp…”

  “I didn’t give it to her, Cyrus,” I cried out.

  “Yes, yes, I understand your plan now, and see how you thought it could have worked. But she did end up having it because of you. Didn’t that necessitate your friend’s release according to your deal?”

  “She tricked me back,” I said, bitterness choking me. “She pretended to release her from the danger she was never in, only to keep us separated, keep her stranded and according to her, in new danger. I thought the deal was the lamp in exchange for our freedom and our return home.”

  “Where is home then?” I blinked up at him, and he elaborated, “I extrapolated your origins are from Almaskham, and you told me your mother ran to the end of the world to escape Nariman, who watched you all these years, and snatched you through a portal like the one she tossed us in Alabasta through. But you never mentioned where exactly your home was. I can tell you were brought up somewhere north, because you do have traces of Arborean in your accent.”

  After everything I’d confessed, I was still reluctant to tell him that bit of information.

  I gritted my teeth and said, “I’m from Ericura.” His blank look made me wince. “You might know it as Hericeurra?”

  The blankness persisted for one last second then shattered. “The phantom island that has broken free of the Folkshore and roamed north out of our reach? But it’s full of fairies. You can’t possibly be from there.”

  My lips trembled. “I’ll never lie to you again, Cyrus.”

  “I didn’t mean you were, but…” He stopped, huffed in dazed self-deprecation. “Seems I’m groping for one thing I thought I knew to be true. I’ll have to accept that my whole world has been rewritten and go with the flow.”

  “Oh, Cyrus, I can’t even express how sorry I am that your certainty and peace are gone.”

  He waved away my regret. “They only turned out to be obliviousness, so I’m not sorry they are.” Suddenly an almost eager glint lit his jeweled eyes. “So-Hericeurra?”

  “Uh-it’s Ericura now. And there are hundreds of thousands of people on the island, and none of them are Fairies. But they have been isolated for generations, with little knowledge of the outside world, what they think a matter of legend, too.”

  “Who are the inhabitants then? A lost race erased from all of Folkshore’s records?”

  I shook my head. “I think the Pale Men who settled the North were Arboreans, and those who settled the South were Campanians. I only knew this from Bonnie a day before Nariman whisked us to the Folkshore. I stole her a book called The Known World with a map of the Folkshore, and she concocted the theory. I still think it’s the best one to explain all this.”

  He pondered the new information before a frown etched his brow. “I’m sorry, for all you’ve been through, even before birth.”

  A sob hitched in my throat. “I should be the one telling you that.”

  “The one who must beg both of our forgiveness is Nariman. And my father and aunt, for what they did to madden her. They should know no good comes from cheating a witch.” He paused, his frown deepening as if with a new realization. “But—if my father had married her, I might have never met you.”

  “That would have been for the best.”

  He gripped my arms, shocking a gasp out of me. “No, it wouldn’t have.”

  “I’m the reason for this mess!” I cried. “I practically exist for the sole purpose of ruining Cahraman. It was foretold long before I was born, and if I....”

  He shook me, once, stopping my tirade. “You didn’t seek out this destiny, didn’t know what would happen. Nariman did. You had as much of a choice in this as I did.”

  The understanding in his eyes, the absolution in his words, demolished the tough front I’d had for so long. Not only for the last few months of guilt-ridden duplicity, but during the lost years on my own. I broke down.

  Groaning, he wrapped me in strong, soothing arms, held me against his chest as I bawled.

  But those tears were nothing like the ones of guilt and self-pity I’d wept when I’d woken up in Alabasta. Those were cleansing, reviving. I felt the strain of years unwinding, like my bones had been bound with bronze wire that was now melting as they were recast in his hold.

  “I take it back,” he whispered against my forehead. “I don’t believe anything could have kept you on that island, kept you away from Cahraman, or from me. Our fates have been intertwined long before we both came to be.”

  When he put it that way, it sounded both wonderful, and terrible. What did it matter what we did, if our fates were written and inescapable?

  After I had no tears left, I finally let the guilt and anxiety to subside, and allowed myself this contentment.

  It didn’t last long. His arms suddenly tightened around me as his voice rumbled beneath my cheek. “It plagues me, the thought of what she’d do with her remaining wish.”

  I looked up from the circle of his arms. “It could be to put Cahraman back as it was.”

  “It could be.” His frown said he wasn’t convinced. “But I still don’t understand why she’d done it this way. She could have altered our memories, made herself my father’s wife and queen, and continued things as they were. It doesn’t make much sense why, after years of helping my father, raising and steering me and our kingdom in prosperous directions, she would waste such precious magic on ruining it all.”

  He had a point. I remembered her face before she’d banished us. Could things have gone differently from what she’d envisioned? Could this inverted Cahraman have not been what
she’d had in mind when she’d made that wish?

  “She said you had to watch what you said around genies, right?”

  “Stories about genies sometimes involved them granting wishes in the worst way imaginable, using your own words against you, for their own amusement.” He raised my hand off his chest, thumbing the ring. “What did Nariman demand of the genie?”

  “That he made her queen of Cahraman.”

  He exhaled. “Then this is her doing, not the genie’s trickery. She did say she wanted to break the people first.”

  There was nothing I could do to alleviate his crushing disappointment in the woman he considered his mother. But his words brought me back to my ring.

  I’d known from the start it had major limitations, but I couldn’t decide if its failure to answer wishes it had granted before was to amuse itself, or because it was malfunctioning.

  But what mattered was what I’d already done with it. The one thing I hadn’t told him yet. How I’d used it to compel him.

  He said nothing when I told him. He remained holding me, but I could feel the distress radiating from him. It had plagued him, too, the idea that he’d just let me go. He must have hated himself for it. Now he knew it was I who’d robbed him of his will.

  “Don’t ever do anything like that again.”

  His pained rumble almost made me burst into tears I no longer had.

  Before I could swear I never would, he broke away from me.

  But he didn’t storm off, as I’d feared he would. He always surprised and humbled me with the unexpected and undeserved gallantry and kindness of his reactions.

  He instead continued supporting me as we resumed our walk. I thought better than to pursue more apologies or promises right now, let him be as we waded through the wasteland of lost souls denied an afterlife.

  Miles later, he suddenly said, “Was seducing me part of the plan or was that your idea?”

  My ears caught on fire. “Seducing you? How did I seduce you?”

  His lips twisted wryly. “How didn’t you?”

  “Didn’t I need to know who you were first to do that?”

  “And you really didn’t know?”

  “No! Cyrus…”

  He raised a hand. “I believe you. I do. And feeling I was only myself to you was part of what made you irresistible to me. I told you my life was preplanned and I was a train on iron tracks, never diverging from the path. Even when I tried to change course, I still believed I’d end up forced to marry Fairuza. But you came into my life like a sandstorm, and you derailed old plans and beliefs as you continuously shattered my expectations.” He sighed deeply. “I didn’t want to like you because I thought nothing could come of it, especially at first, when your actions made no sense.”

  “And though they didn’t, you still took me to the vault, and later said it was a test.”

  “It was, but I also needed any excuse to be around you, because when we were kept apart, I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I needed an answer, preferably a bad one, so I could put my interest in you to rest. I still thought I was destined for Fairuza.”

  “U-until when did you think that?”

  “Until you climbed down that wall to save Cherine. I didn’t look back afterwards.”

  The new insight into his thoughts and feelings was a surge of happiness that made me soar from this place of despair straight to heaven.

  Next moment, I smashed back to bleak reality. “If-if only you heeded your suspicions. I’m the worst thing that’s ever happened to you. When you gave me the silent treatment....”

  “I wasn’t. I just couldn’t talk. Not because I was that angry, because I was…devastated. If I’d known your ring could erase memories, I would have asked you to return me to the moment before I learned anything.”

  “I-I…” I couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. I wished I’d never existed.

  He stepped away from me, his eyes solemn. “But I now wouldn’t give up this knowledge for the world. If anything, it makes you even more incredible in my eyes. It makes me love you even more.”

  I panted. I blubbered. Then I launched myself at him, and drowned him in tears and kisses.

  He was starting to hug and kiss me back when a burst of light enveloped us.

  He raised his head, gently tapped my brow. “Open up. It seems we’ve earned our passage.”

  I forced my eyes open, saw our path had curved, leading us to a circle of twinkling white light in the distance, like a star had left its distant cousins and landed on Barzakh’s bleak ground.

  He gripped my hand tight and led me towards it.

  This time when we entered the bright unknown, it would be willingly. Whether it would be our passage to the next stage in our quest, or the end of our path, I, for once, didn’t care.

  Nothing mattered as long as he was with me.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The distance to the light turned out to be far longer than it seemed.

  Or it was receding. I wouldn’t put it past a place where souls were trapped forever.

  At least our path became more interesting with the glimpses we saw into the other realms, each in a giant iridescent bubble. Cyrus said they seemed to be where all the creatures that populated the Folkshore’s mythology came from.

  We now passed by one filled with blue and purple fields, white, opalescent trees and clusters of metallic, conical buildings and crystal stalk-like towers in the distance. The sky in that bubble wasn’t only adorned with stars and their mapped-out constellations, but with moons—plural.

  Every now and then, the bubbles’ inhabitants came close enough for us to see—none of them human. I turned my head and found one of said creatures passing within arms reach of me.

  I grabbed Cyrus tighter. “Is-is that a fairy?”

  “I believe so.” His lips curved as he looked down at me. “For someone who killed ghouls and faced witches, genies and simurghs, how come the sight of a beautiful creature like a fairy rattles you so much?”

  I shuddered again. “Entrenched beliefs, I guess. Fairies are the stuff of nightmares on my island. Their very beauty is said to be a weapon, a trap. We were told from childhood about their ruthlessness in toying with humans for sport. I was raised on stories of fairies kidnapping and forcing humans to be their mates, or sacrificing them to the Horned God or even eating them.”

  “We do have stories reflecting those, but I believe we’re safe. I believe this…” He pointed to the glittering settlement the fairy was heading towards. “…is Peristan. The city of the peri—the benevolent desert fairies. But I do understand your anxiety. I grew up on stories of all these places and beings, and it’s still unsettling to see them for myself, especially in our situation.”

  “Apart from your laughing fit when you saw the simurgh, whom you proceded to boss around, I may add, you don’t seem unsettled in the least.”

  “I’m a better actor than I thought, then. You must be rubbing off on...”

  Our gazes locked and we both winced.

  Air deserted me on a miserable sigh. “Think you will ever forget how I lied to you for so long, no matter what my reasons were?”

  A long moment passed as my guts strangled each other. He might still love me, might forgive me, but he would never forget.

  Then he exhaled. “Actually you’re not a good actress at all. Nothing you said or did added up, and that’s not the hallmark of an even adequate liar.”

  “Cora once told me the same thing. That she knew I was lying about everything the moment she saw me. She didn’t care, even protected me from exposure. She said it was because I entertained her.”

  “One thing Miss Greenshoot and I finally agree about.” He chuckled. “I knew you were hiding more than you showed, and I also didn’t care. Because you did entertain me every second I was with you, then you mesmerized me, until you became all I could think about.”

  “But maybe this is exactly why I’m the best liar. You said I manipulate others into making up their own mi
nds about me, in ways that serve my purpose. And it is what I did during those years in Ericura, and since I came here.”

  His gaze was vehement with conviction as he grabbed my hands in his. “Are you wallowing in guilt again? Feel you need more punishment for what you were forced to do? Well, you’re never getting any more blame from me to feed your need for absolution. You did it to survive, then to save those you love, me included. Like you said, you did all you could, and that it didn’t work, doesn’t make you to blame. In my book, you did everything right. End of story.”

  Wonder filled me, brimmed in my inflamed eyes. “I have to believe I did do something right. Why else did fate put you in my path that first night, then made it possible for me to inspire such unbelievable emotions in you?” I dragged the hands holding mine to my lips. “I hope you know how much I love you, that I would easily die for you.”

  He returned my kiss, my pledge. “And I for you.”

  At one point, we realized the light was on top of a mountain.

  It felt like forever before we finally reached its foot and our lit path led through the ravine between its peaks. As soon as walked in, ovals of light yawned into existence one after the other along its depth, pouring a soft glow and muffled noises.

  As we approached the first one, it became certain it wasn’t a portal. It was a window into another place like one, but it wasn’t revolving or blowing out wind or making an effort to suck us in. It just hovered, widening until it was big enough to let a carriage and its horses through.

  The scene inside was an almost bare marble hall centered by a magnificent, spiraling staircase. The first distinct sound to reach my ears was a shriek of laughter.

  A streaking movement came from the right of the doorway, as a girl came into view, with her back to us. She rushed up the steps, with her pale pink nightgown hitched up to her knees and her wavy, waist-long black hair flying behind her.

  She laughed again, melodious and carefree, as she turned towards us. It was…

  Jumana Morvarid.