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

by Lucy Tempest

  Nariman looked cornered her eyes darting around in desperation as she thought of a wish that would save them without destroying her friend’s marriage and breaking her heart.

  She finally straightened, commanded the genie, loud, final, “For my first wish, I wish for Jumana Morvarid to become pregnant with the perfect son and heir of Darius Shamash.”

  It bowed its head to Nariman. “Wish granted.”

  It snuffed out into smoke, flowing back into the lamp’s spout.

  Like the one before it, the window shrunk and disappeared, leaving us staring into nothingness.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Cyrus finally turned in my arms, unsteady, breath shallow. “Do you—do you think that was real?”

  I released him, what we’d just seen a train hurtling off the tracks, destroying everything I thought I knew in its path. “I-I think so.”

  “I know you’re worried about those being different from portals, but if another one opens with my mother inside, I have to try going through it.”

  I shook my head as I looked up at the peaks, and Marzeya’s last words to me coming back in a gush.

  You’ll find all the answers you seek, but not before you cross the wastes into the realm of a thousand doors. No matter what you find beyond each door, do not leave the path beneath the peaks. Only through appeasing your foe will you know peace.

  I hadn’t given her words much thought when she’d said them to me, mainly because they’d made no sense to me. I’d completely forgotten them after Nariman’s takeover. But now, it was clear she hadn’t been toying with me.

  We were crossing the wastes, and this was the realm of a thousand doors. And no matter what we see inside each, we shouldn’t leave our path.

  But I didn’t have a solid reason beyond Marzeya’s words. Knowing how he felt about her, I doubted he’d listen to her augury so I just said, “We can’t go through any of them, Cyrus.”

  He took my hand to his chest, as if to transmit his need. “Ada, maybe they’re showing us the past because we might be able to change it. Maybe if she sees me, if I talk to her, she won’t kill herself.”

  The desperation in his voice cleaved in my heart but I still insisted, “Cyrus, the fact that they’re showing us the past means none of this is there anymore. Our mothers are gone. What we saw were just echoes.”

  Frustration contorted his features as his hand convulsed over mine. In the light of the nearby window, his rings gleamed—his mother’s silver pearl and his father’s gold signet ring.

  He finally sagged, exhaled raggedly. “She told the truth about my mother and the circumstances of my birth. What if she’s right about everything?”

  “Does it matter if she is? It wouldn’t justify her actions.”

  “I know. But she wished for me, when she could have had a kingdom, or at least the man she wanted. She gave that up for my mother. But it was tragically Jumana’s unwitting wish that forever denied her happiness, made her marriage to my father impossible after she was gone. And when I was born, Jumana left me, but she stayed.” He stopped, like there was an iron grip on his throat. “There can be no justification for what she’s done. But I can’t hate her.”

  “And you shouldn’t. Just see her as she is, all of her, not just what she is to you.”

  “I do see it, and it doesn’t matter to how I feel.”

  I wanted to rave and rant that he couldn’t be this—forgiving, when I remembered I couldn’t ask him to stop being the man who loved me in spite of all I’d done, all I’d cost him.

  He cupped my face in his big palms, eyes heavy and troubled. “If you could change the past, would you?”

  “Anything I would change would lead to never meeting you. So no, I wouldn’t change a thing.”

  “We agreed our paths would have collided no matter what.” A wisp of a smile entered his gaze. “If you left your island like your friend wanted and made it to Arbore, I would have met you there. Or if you were born and raised in Almaskham, I would have met you while being hosted by the princely family. I would have returned to Cahraman with both of Azal’s children, one as my closest friend and the other as my betrothed.”

  I felt lightheaded with the sweetness of his scenarios. Then it suddenly hit me. “You’d still consider marrying me, after all this?”

  His lips quirked in a real smile. “Which part of ‘I love you even more now’ didn’t you get?”

  “I-I guess I couldn’t think beyond that declaration. It was as huge as a mountain and impossible to see beyond. But if your father had a dozen things against me before, he’d have a thousand now.”

  “When you save Cahraman with me…”

  “…from the disaster I caused it.”

  “…he will come around.” He stepped away, pointing down the ravine. “Let’s explore the other windows. I’m sure we’re being shown all that for a reason.”

  The next one flared to life and I could understand why Cyrus wanted to leap inside. It was displaying its macabre scene as clearly as if it was happening before us.

  Nariman was shaking Jumana, hissing for her to wake up. When she didn’t respond, Nariman turned her over and fell back with a horrified gasp, hands over her mouth.

  Eyes wide open, face and nightgown stained with dark vomit, Jumana lay dead. By her limp hand was an empty, bulbous bottle tagged Sleeping draught—one drop.

  Cold, aching misery chilled my bones. I’d hoped it would turn out Jumana hadn’t killed herself. I’d even suspected Nariman had been the one to kill her, to get Darius.

  But she’d told the truth about that, too. Instead of a drop for a single night’s rest, Jumana had downed it all for an eternal sleep.

  Somewhere, a baby cried.

  I snapped back to the window, saw Nariman stumbling back, tripping over her own feet to come crashing down by a gilded crib. The baby cried harder, a heartbreaking call of distress, as if it knew the terror of losing his mother.

  Face pale, hair hanging over her face, she struggled to her feet, bent to look at him

  “I didn’t think…” A sob stopped her, a tear splashing down on the baby’s cheek. “I didn’t think she would do this. Not when she had you.”

  The baby cries rose to an ear-splitting pitch. She winced as she too began to cry. “There’s nothing I can do. They’ll either send me home or execute me the instant her funeral is over.”

  Strangely, the baby’s wails quieted into whimpers, a small hand reached up from the bundle. Nariman cautiously extended a finger, and the baby latched onto it, and something in her shifted, like a light had come to life behind her eyes.

  “It’s alright, I know what to do now,” she cooed, bending to pick him up in reverent arms. “I’ll remain here with you, at any cost. I won’t leave you alone. I’ll make myself useful to your father, even indispensable. He’ll have no choice but to keep me safe, keep me here. Then I’ll make you everything your mad grandfather isn’t, powerful, compassionate and clever.” She smiled with such warmth and indulgence down at him, a look I didn’t think her capable of. “You will be a prince unlike any the Folkshore has seen before, isn’t that right, Cyaxares?”

  The baby snorted.

  “Hideous name, isn’t it?” Nariman held him up to the light, the corners of her lips twitching as he smiled. “I’ll call you Cyrus.”

  When that scene ended, Cyrus didn’t comment.

  He didn’t need to. This only cemented his unswerving allegiance to Nariman. She had been his mother. And from the way he’d turned out, a great one.

  In roiling silence, he moved away, stopped by the next window.

  The scene inside it was taking place in the same mansion where we’d first seen Jumana and her witches. It was another bedroom, where an unkempt Loujaïne sat on a messy bed, glowering up at a man in a pristine white robe, who had his back to us.

  “Where is my baby?” she demanded, her silver eyes sparking with anger. She looked so young, barely seventeen. “Where is our son, Azal?”

  �
�That thing you birthed was not my grandson,” a man said, deep voice cold, detached. “The physician says it was a demon, the spawn of your evil god, Agramain.”

  She gaped at him before she looked behind him, eyes becoming frantic. She got to her feet and swayed, hands pressing between her hips. Another man rushed to support her back on the bed, kneeled beside her, but still had his back to us. “Azal, tell them it’s not true!”

  The scene suddenly shifted, and we saw the young man from the front. No older than Cyrus, he was tall, with black hair, wide shoulders and swarthy skin. His almost black eyes—my eyes—shone with regret. “I’m so sorry Loujaïne—” He stopped, mouth unsteady.

  “Don’t apologize to her,” the man barked. “She’s the one who brought this curse into my family. I’m sending you back to your father before you blight us any further.”

  “You can’t send me anywhere! I’m his wife!”

  “He’ll divorce you,” his father—my grandfather—said. “He married you solely because your father insisted on trading you for Jumana, as you wanted. But I can’t solidify an alliance without children.”

  “But I gave you a child!” she cried out.

  “No, you didn’t,” the older man said ruthlessly. “Now everyone knows you can’t give him, or anyone else, children. I want you out of here by tomorrow before you taint my house any further. Then I’ll pick another wife for Azal.”

  “He can’t do this to me, Azal” she moaned, clutching at Azal, looking about to be sick.

  “Please, Loujaïne, just go…”

  She pulled away from him, eyes huge and accusing. “You want me to go? Did you put your father up to this? If you think he’ll let you marry that witch if you get rid of me…”

  “This has nothing to do with her, please, Loujaïne…” Azal’s deep voice cracked. “I swear I had nothing to do with it. You know I was in Cahraman when you went into labor.”

  “Visiting her?”

  “No, Loujaïne, listen to me… it’s better this way…”

  “Paranoid and jealous on top of cursed,” the old man sneered. “I’ll be doing you a favor, Azal, ridding you of her. Xerxes himself wouldn’t want her now.”

  Azal looked over his shoulder, a murderous glance in his eyes. “Isn’t it enough what you’ve done?” He turned to Loujaïne, a hand extended in entreaty.

  She smacked it away. “You want me to go? I will, and I never want to see you again. And I’ll leave tonight. Now get me my baby.”

  “There is no baby,” the man said.

  Azal’s shoulders slumped, his face turning away as if he couldn’t face her anymore.

  Her silver eyes brimmed with dread. “W-what do you mean?”

  “I mean it’s been left out for its fellow demons to reclaim.”

  Loujaïne screamed and the scene blinked out.

  We stood there, panting almost as hard as she’d been.

  Before we could catch our breath, another window yawned open, revealing a moonlit balcony that overlooked the diamond-like towers of Almaskham.

  Dorreya, in a sheer, sleeveless, lilac gown, was leaning on the banister, the autumn breeze playing with the loose locks of her rolled-up hair.

  “Nice view,” said snarky voice.

  Dorreya jumped with a yelp that echoed into the night air. Standing before her like a specter, as it had before me many times, was Nariman’s projection.

  My mother backed up a step, hand on her heart. “Nariman? How are you here?”

  “I’m not.” To prove her point, she dragged her hand through the balustrade as she approached. “A trick I learned from ancient scrolls in Zhadugar. I thought I might check up on an old friend. You disappeared quite suddenly, didn’t even say goodbye.”

  “I-I left a note.”

  “After all these years, your farewell to me is ‘I’m going back to Almaskham?’” Nariman said in pretend nonchalance. “How did you do it, by the way? We were under lock and key.”

  “My mother used to open portals that bridged long distances. I thought I’d never replicate her spell until one day I opened one from our quarters to here, feared I’d never do it again and couldn’t waste the opportunity. I-I didn’t mean to abandon you.”

  “Well, you did,” she sniped. “I’m still a hostage in that palace.”

  “But I heard you were in charge of the prince?”

  “Oh, you’ve heard?” Nariman sneered, moving to reveal the snake staff in her other hand. “He’s three now, by the way. Looks just like his father, except for the color of his eyes.”

  “I…how is Darius?”

  “He’s been making me promises since Jumana died and not following through with them.” Dorreya winced and Nariman gazed out at the city. “Keeps telling me we’ll take Cyrus and move to a governor’s manor in Sunstone. Or that he’ll convince his father to let me take Cyrus back here. Or to let him marry me.”

  “Would Xerxes allow that?”

  “Of course not, I have to wait until the madman keels over. Until then I’m at his mercy, always afraid he’ll accuse me of practicing black magic and execute me.”

  “But you’re not using any magic?”

  “None that I would like. I will as soon as Xerxes dies. I have so many ideas on how to improve the land with magic, how to make investments in emerging nations across the ocean. That’s assuming Loujaïne will stop nagging Darius. If there’s anything that poisons a man’s mind worse than dark magic, it’s the whines of a dependent.”

  Dorreya winced at the mention of Loujaïne. “She has been through a lot.”

  “It’s been four years. She ought to have remarried and shoved off to whatever lord’s household she clearly wants to run.” Nariman nearly shouted, wound up and frustrated. “I’m so tired of her trying to control Cyrus’s life because she can’t do that to her own children.”

  Almost thoughtlessly, my mother touched her stomach. “She can’t have children.”

  Nariman laughed sarcastically. “I see Azal hasn’t told you.”

  “Told me what?”

  “Loujaïne did give him a child, a boy paler than a Mjallander. What did the Avestans call them? Zāl?” Nariman’s bitterness became so intense I could almost taste it. “They dubbed him a bad omen and took him out to Hylamahn to die.”

  After a long moment of growing horror, Dorreya choked, “Azal would never do anything like that!”

  Nariman waved her objection away. “Don’t worry. He’s alive—no thanks to your Azal. He was taken in by a simurgh of all things.” Nariman tapped her nails over the head of her staff, watching Dorreya. “I think once he’s old enough, I’ll find a way for Cyrus to meet him, might even bring him to Sunstone.”

  “To reunite him with Loujaïne?”

  Nariman made a rude noise. “To be with his cousin. I want to give Cyrus a companion untouched by the culture of the peasantry or the conditioning of the nobility. Someone who’ll be loyal to him above class, nation or family, something none of us ever had. A right hand, so to speak.” She huffed a mirthless laugh. “Hmm, that would be ironic considering the wrong hand fate has dealt him.” She gave my mother an intrigued once-over. “What did Lord Itejah name his twins? Yasser and Yamin?”

  “Ayssar and Ayman,” Dorreya corrected, looking more anxious by the second. “Left and Right.”

  “And what will you name yours?”

  Dorreya stiffened. “What do you mean?”

  “You’re pregnant,” Nariman stated gleefully. “Congratulations, it’s a girl.”

  I could hear Dorreya’s soul shake through her unsteady voice. “How would you know?”

  “I saw her in a few glimpses while gazing through my crystal ball.” Nariman’s grin grew uncomfortably wide. “It looks like she’s going to be the answer to all my problems.”

  We didn’t get to see Dorreya’s response before the scene ended abruptly. We didn’t need to. We already knew what had happened.

  Now I knew exactly why my life—all our lives, had ended up the way they had
.

  There was one thing I hadn’t shared with Cyrus yet.

  I turned to him and just said it. “I think Nariman killed my mother.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Cyrus’s eyes widened in horror. “No!”

  My chest felt too small for my lungs as they swelled with yet another dreadful realization.

  That his ‘mother’ had killed mine.

  But I had to get this out before the suspicion gnawed me hollow. “Nariman came looking for me long before she kidnapped me. Once before I was born, as you saw, and I believe the second time was on the day my mother died.” When he continued to gape at me, I forced myself to continue. “One night, my mother up and left with no warning, never to return. The sheriff came days later to give me her bloodied cloak, what they found miles away. I spent years afterwards, alone, on the run, going crazy wondering why she left, or how she died. Now I think I know. She left to lure Nariman away from me. She sacrificed her life to save me from her. And she died for nothing.”

  Cyrus teetered on his feet, as if he’d had too many punches to the head. “No, Ada, she wouldn’t. If she hasn’t killed my father, or Loujaïne, whom she hates, for good reason, then she wouldn’t kill your mother. She was her friend!”

  “Who she believed deserted her in exile, fled to live her life, to be with the man she loved, while Nariman lived in fear and isolation first, then exploited and unappreciated, later, ending up discarded and banished. She’s long stopped considering her a friend. She’s become one thing to her, what stood between her and the key to everything she wanted. Me.”

  He still shook his head. “She couldn’t have done it, and I’ll tell you why. Lady Rostam is a being of extremes it seems, but when she loves, she does deeply and irrevocably. It’s the only explanation why my father is still alive. As Cherine said, she would have executed him from day one, if she is the kind to go to any lengths to get what she wants.”

  “Have you seen your father’s condition? And she was going to kill Loujaïne.”