by Lucy Tempest
Why was she here? What would she do?
I stroked my ring, trying to think of some practical wish if she tried anything…
“I remembered you,” she said. “From the vision, the prophecy.”
I blinked at her. “What do you mean, Nariman?”
This was one thing I knew she’d never forgotten. She’d lost only a few months’ worth of memories and this one was older than I was.
“It was very clear, how you looked when you brought me the lamp. I didn’t remember it happening. And yet, I’m being crowned by my husband later today.”
“Prophecies are just guidelines, aren’t they? What’s important is that they coming true in the end, right?”
“That could have been the case, if this little discrepancy didn’t unravel everything else. Once I noticed it, everything came crashing down. And I remembered everything.”
“E-everything?”
“Everything. To the very end.”
All my hairs stood on end. “So…what are you going to do?”
“That’s why I’m here.” She reached out to me and I lurched back so hard I banged my head on the wall. She stepped back, her amber eyes darkening. “Really, Adelaide. What do you think I’ll do to you?”
“I have nightmares of you turning into a giant snake and gobbling me up.”
“Well, even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t. You’re going to be my daughter-in-law.”
“Not very reassuring. A mother-in-law is intimidating enough. And that’s when she can’t hurl her son’s wife into the Land of No Return if she displeases her.”
“Maybe she shouldn’t displease her then? Which will only happen if her son is displeased.”
“So as long as Cyrus is happy, I’m safe?”
She shrugged her regal shoulders. “I’d say it’s a fair trade-off.”
“I’d say it’s a good joke—if I thought you were joking.” I swallowed. “So why are you here Nariman? Why did you feel the need to alert me to the delightful fact that you’re the evil witch again?”
“I’m here to ask your opinion on what I should do.”
I frowned. “Are you mocking me or are you really asking?”
“I’m really asking. You’ve turned out to be exceptionally wise. You made everyone love you when you always gave the right answers at every turn. While I almost lost everyone with my latest spree of wrong choices. So I’m here seeking the benefit of your superior decision-making skills.”
I almost snorted my lung out. “Me? I made so many catastrophic decisions, and you had first-row seat to most of them.”
“Yet, here you are. A street rat from the Folkshore’s forgotten backwaters who has a king-in-hours wrapped around her little finger, is lined to be the queen of a powerful kingdom in months, a kingdom whose population hail her as their savior. I think you’re the most qualified to give me advice on how to handle this predicament, since, in the worst of binds, you always come out on top. So what would you do if you were in my position?”
As unreal as this was, it did seem Nariman wasn’t here to threaten or blackmail me into doing something for her. She was actually asking for my help.
Feeling my world had turned upside down again, I said, “Let me ask you a question first. Now that you remember, how do you feel about everyone? Can you forgive Darius for what he did to you all these years? Can you forgive my mother? Loujaïne? Even Cyrus and Ayman?”
She waved. “That’s the simple part. I’ve already forgiven them all. Even Loujaïne. Easily and completely.”
“Because you believe it was the genie’s compulsion that made them inflict all those injustices on you?”
“Because after all the injustices I inflicted on them, they jumped at the opportunity to forgive me.”
That was simple. And sincere. I couldn’t even begin to doubt she meant it.
I exhaled. “So what are you worried about?”
“I’m worried because right now, I’m the Nariman who has no memory of abusing or imprisoning them. I’m nice and light, a white witch. If they know I remember, I will be the dark despot they all feared and hated again.”
It was my turn to shrug. “Then don’t tell them.”
“You suggest I live my life pretending I don’t remember what I did?”
“It’s a need-to-know basis, and they don’t need to know. Only Darius needs to know.”
Her hand went to her throat over a priceless choker I would have once done anything to swipe. She looked…terrified. “What if he hates me again?”
“He never hated you to start with. This man used all his genie wishes on you…” She started, and I told her about his second and third wishes. She flushed, swallowed and her eyes filled. And I added, “That should tell you what you are to him. As much as he is to you. So tell him. Everything. Always. And I’ll tell Cyrus.”
Her eyes rounded in panic. “No! Not him.”
“Cyrus especially will always love you even if you do turn into a giant snake. But even if not, I’m never lying to him again, not for you, not for anything. There can be no secrets between us and our soulmates ever again. You know what lies lead to.”
“What if the truth yields even worse results? The wedding is in hours!”
“Then that’s your perfect time to tell them. They can’t cancel that late.”
“Adelaide!”
I raised placating hands. Even without her staff Nariman remained second only to Marzeya in power and I didn’t relish the idea of being tossed into another wasteland until I learned how to speak to my elders. “Joking. Sort of. Seriously, you have nothing to fear.”
“But you still fear me, don’t you?” I winced and she grinned. “Good.”
As she turned to leave I called after her, “What will you do now you remember?”
She inclined her head and the sunlight gleamed burgundy over her glossy hair. “I lived most of my life in Cahraman, have done all I could to better everyone’s lives, and there was still so much to be done when my bitterness and rage brought everything down on us all. Now I remember, I’ll atone.”
“How do you atone to people who don’t remember you sinned against them?”
She gave me one last glance from the doorway before she disappeared, the last thing she said echoing in my head.
“I remember.”
Before we left the palace to go to the nationwide celebration that encompassed the liberation of Cahraman, the royal weddings and Cyrus’s coronation, Nariman had summoned me to her quarters.
I’d found Darius and Cyrus there, and she’d already told them. If anything, they were relieved. The strain of acting around her had been getting to them. Now they didn’t worry about slipping up again. And now they were all on the same page, they could finally turn a new leaf.
We’d also agreed we’d only ever needed the lamp to undo what the genie had wrought, and no matter what, we’d never need such far-reaching and potentially catastrophic magic again.
So Cyrus had marched up to the simurgh’s nest, given her the lamp and she’d promptly flown it to the Cave of Wonders, and hid it where it would never be found again. Hopefully.
Darius had given a council-approved excuse for his abdication, citing gaps in his memory that could affect his judgment. His wedding to Nariman, as well as Loujaïne’s to Farouk had also been blessed by both council and high priests.
The double wedding had been a lavish and beautiful ceremony and unlike anything I’d ever seen. The grooms, all in white, had been escorted in first by dancers juggling scimitars. The brides all in gold, with their hands covered in intricate henna tattoos, and draped in jewelry, had come next, accompanied by a mindboggling explosion of color and bellydancing.
The girls and I shared our own carriage, closely following the newlywed cavalcade. It was a bit sad that the first time the Final Five sat together as friends, rather than rivals, was also the last time we would do so. Fairuza was due to leave via portal tomorrow morning, and Ariane was to board a ship off the coast of Abalone
Beach and sail back to Tritonia.
Speaking of Fairuza, Cyrus had assured me her father, King Florent, would send a search party looking for Bonnie and Seamus Fairborn, armed with my exact descriptions. He’d promised me that no matter what, we would be safely reunited, and Bonnie would be a guest of honor at our wedding, and offered the duties and privileges of the bride’s sister.
It was a shame I couldn’t set her up with Ayman. Cherine had laid her claim by giving him an engagement ring—really one of her own, like Cyrus wore his mother’s ring.
Not that I could worry about who Bonnie ended up with now. We had to find her first.
My ring still held Esfandiar. I’d offered to free him again but he claimed he wouldn’t be set free until he’d repaid his debt to me. I didn’t know if it was a magical binding or an honorable one, but he claimed he could travel as far as he wished, but if I were to call for him, he would come running, or puffing, back to me.
It was comforting to think, that no matter what, I would have someone who could never disappear, would never grow old or sick or die.
But I kept coming back to one thing. That without Nariman, I would have never met my friends, uncovered my past, found my mother, freed Esfandiar or found and loved Cyrus.
In spite of all she’d done, I practically owed her everything.
That last confrontation left me even more conflicted about her than ever. She was definitely a very interesting person, as Cyrus once described those bound for hell.
Though I wished the opposite for her, mostly for Cyrus’s sake, and Darius’s, I was still thankful I wouldn’t be spending much time around her. She was just—too interesting at times.
But Darius had promised they’d move to the island of Iacoöt to govern it. Nariman was brimming with innovative and exciting ideas about how to establish it as Cahraman’s eastern seaport for trade and tourism. Cherine, ever the busybody, had claimed she’d heard them discussing potential baby names and getting a pet or two.
Farouk and Loujaïne would remain at the palace, so would Ayman and later on Cherine, who’d be part of Cyrus and my household. The simurgh was also now an official member of the palace staff.
The celebration traveled into the palace gardens, to await the final ceremony. It would be the first time the crown would be traded from one king to his successor while he lived.
“Ayman!” Cherine skipped over to him, latching onto his arm. “You get to meet my family today, isn’t that exciting?”
“Do I have to?” He made a strangled sound, like a sad dog. “What if they don’t like me?”
“Then they’ll keep their thoughts to themselves.”
That earned a smile from him. “Or else you’ll do what?”
“Practice my singing at odd hours of the night, off-key,” she said intensely, making him laugh. “And if I lose my voice I can always bring out my brother’s oud.”
“I doubt you can play that,” Cora said. “The average oud is bigger than you.”
I laughed at the image of Cherine wringing cacophony out of a giant pot-bellied lute, to punish her parents for making less than stellar remarks about Ayman.
“Our family is here!” My mother rushed to me, dressed in a flowing, silk lilac gown, her hair down, its grey now tinted with henna. I could now easily imagine her as a princess’s companion and a prince’s wife. “They’ll sit by us during the ceremony. Your grandmother can’t wait to meet you, neither can your cousin Karima.”
My heart fluttered with excitement. I was finally meeting the family I’d asked her about for years. I’d see more parts of myself in other people after a lifetime of feeling out of place.
Ayman cleared his throat, directing our attention to where he was staring.
A tall, dark man was striding towards us, his red kaftan embroidered with gold. His pace quickened with every step until he broke into a run.
“Dorreya!” he yelled.
My mother’s face instantly shone with hope as she ran towards him, arms outstretched.
I saw his face clearly over her shoulder as they tightly embraced.
Prince Azal, a square-jawed man with an aquiline nose, thick, arched brows, a cleft chin, and sun-worn golden-brown skin, pulled back to hold my mother’s face in his hands, his intense dark eyes roaming over her features with reverence.
After they murmured to each other for endless minutes, no doubt exchanging questions and explanations, my mother nudged Azal’s gaze my way.
This man was my father. The man I’d wondered about all my life, whose face I’d tried to piece together through the differences between my mother and I.
Slowly, he retreated from their embrace, blinking. He put a hand over his mouth, losing all color. “You…you look just like my mother.”
“Is she still alive?”
“Very much so.” He exhaled. “My father on the other hand, is thankfully long dead.”
I nodded. “I heard terrible things about him.” And from him.
He scowled as if he wanted to stab the memory of his father. “If you have, they were all lies. He was far worse. My mother was an invalid till the day he died. Now she is the sunniest, healthiest person I know. She’s going to be delighted to see you.”
Encouraged by his passion, I reached out and grabbed Ayman by the elbow before he could flee, dragging him before Azal. “She’ll be happy to see us both.”
At first he was taken aback, seeming to realize that Ayman was the young boy who’d been Cyrus’s friend. Then he seemed to quickly piece together the situation.
“How could it be?” He sounded gravely agitated. “He-he killed my son.”
I stepped in to spare Ayman the pain of recounting his own tragedy. “Do you know the story of the White Shadow of Avesta? That’s how.”
“So, the simurgh on the roof…?”
Ayman nodded.
“I’m—” He stopped, pressing his fist to his mouth. “I don’t know where to begin.”
“You can start with begging his forgiveness, every single day of your life!” Cherine hissed, bringing his gaze downward.
Ayman raised his littlest finger, showing him the citrine ring Cherine had stuck on him. “Cherine Nazaryan, my betrothed.”
“I-I…” He looked on the verge of tears. “I don’t want to make myself sound like a victim, but I was. We all were. My father made King Xerxes look like a delight. He enjoyed cruelty, was the worst kind of zealot. We weren’t his family, we were his hostages. Everyone knew that and no one intervened, starting by my uncle and his wife. He was the one who held the princedom’s purse strings and did it so well, everyone allowed him his domestic—eccentricities, as they called it. No one even talked about it, pretended it wasn’t happening.
“Xerxes only thought he was exercising his rights per our culture, and thought his daughter would be safe, and I that had been her choice. Then before she delivered our baby—you, my father sent me to Cahraman. I only went to beg King Xerxes to take us into his court. I was only eighteen and I knew no one else would cross my father. King Xerxes refused, said a wife must always reside in her husband’s court and never return to her father’s. I went back, defeated, only to discover my father was keeping me away until he saw my child for himself, and decided to keep it or not, without me bothering him about it. It turned out he always did that with the wive he kept across the Folkshore, discarding all the girls they bore him and all the boys that didn’t meet his requirements. I came back to find it already done.
“When he said I’d divorce her, I was relieved as her father would have to take her back. I’d been afraid he’d insist on keeping her and forcing us to have more children for him to pick and choose from. The only reason he treated her well to start was because he didn’t want to lose her father’s favor. But after she was considered cursed, her own father didn’t stand up for her, and mine would have felt free to treat her like he treated all of us.” He looked at Ayman, eyes filling. “Until the time I found you with Cyrus at court years later, I’d never seen
an albino—and everyone around me believed what my father his priests and physicians said. Then I saw you and I knew it was all lies.”
Ayman managed a quiet, “I thought you hated me.”
“What did I ever do to make you think that?”Azal exclaimed.
“You glared at me like you wanted to kill me.” Azal looked stricken, and Ayman pointed at his face. “Like that. This is how you always looked at me.”
I tugged at him. “I think this is his devastated face, Ayman.”
“I was devastated every time I saw you, because I knew you were just a boy, and not a demon and that my son—whom I thought was killed, would have been just like you.”
“The servants told me you wanted me out of court.”
“They lied! After you left the court with Cyrus, I sent scouts looking for other albino children, to bring to me if they found them in danger. I have six foster children at court now, and the oldest is twelve. I was trying to save the child I couldn’t save in them.”
Ayman would go to Almaskham and find six more children like him? He wouldn’t be alone in his condition anymore? Would know what we all felt, the security we took for granted, of having people around who looked like us? My father was a human simurgh!
That was so—unexpected, and incredible!
My mother threw herself at him, hugging him with all her might. “I knew you would never be part to something this unspeakable. I told them so.”
Eyes filling and throat closing, I asked, “When did your father die?”
“He died right after Dorreya came back to Almaskham. It was the only way I could have married her. I wouldn’t have risked doing it while he lived.”
“Did he die or did someone kill him?” Ayman asked.
Azal’s black eyes simmered with hatred even now. “We’ll never know, would we?” He cleared his throat. “But I refuse to talk about that foul man a second longer. Not when I have two miracles standing before me. May I know your names?” We told him and he placed a fist on his heart. “I feel there are stories behind these names. Stories you’d be willing to tell me one day?”