by Renee Ahdieh
He laughed, then heaved his way onto the lowest limb. He swung with grace from branch to branch, his feet and hands moving in perfect tandem.
Despina had to admire the sight. Though he’d seemed reticent to make the climb at first, it was apparent he was more than capable of such a challenge.
More than capable of triumphing in this task as well.
Again, Despina had been bested.
Bested by an obnoxious rake.
She began tapping her foot against the soil in annoyance, waiting for him to reemerge with her winnings and another challenge in his eyes.
A crack resounded through the branches above. Followed by a yelp of surprise.
And the son of the second-most-powerful man in Rey spilled from amongst a tangle of leaves onto the ground below with a terrible thud.
Despina’s heart lodged in her throat.
His arms and legs were splayed all about.
He was not moving.
Without thought, Despina dashed for his lifeless body. The moment she fell to her knees beside him she was certain this was the end for her.
Yet strangely that fact was not her chief concern. She did not want it to be the end for him. Not at all.
“Captain al-Khoury!” she gasped.
His eyes remained closed, his limbs frozen in place.
She searched for evidence of broken bones, her hands roving over a body corded with muscle.
“Captain al-Khoury!” Despina yelled again. She grabbed his shoulders, her fingers running across his face.
His eyes opened suddenly. Clearly. Then shut once more.
“Captain al-Khoury! Are you—”
“Softly,” he whispered.
Exasperation flared through her, bringing a flush to her cheeks. “What?”
“You’re shouting in my ears.” He held back a grin. “Softly, my sweet.”
Despina almost shoved him. “Better I shout at them than bite them off.”
“Oh?” One of his eyes slid open, slyly. “So then you’re good with your—”
“For the love of all the gods, Captain al-Khoury!” That time she did shove him.
His laughter was low and hoarse. “My name is Jalal.”
“You arrogant ass.” Despina fell back on her heels, her pulse thundering. “I nearly died of fear.”
“Fear of what?”
“Fear I wouldn’t be able to collect my reward,” she retorted scathingly. The instant the words escaped her mouth, Despina wanted to take them back.
He aimed his grin at her. “And here I half expected you to be afraid I might be injured.”
“Not you.” Her lips twitched. “Only the flower. I’m not completely heartless.”
“No,” he agreed. “Only partially.”
Despina harrumphed. After a moment, the defiant tone in her voice fell away. “It—it was foolish of me to ask you to climb the tree for that flower,” she said softly.
He looked up at the darkening sky. “Even more foolish of me to agree. I’ve been afraid of heights since I was a small boy.”
“You didn’t show it,” Despina said. “I thought you were merely griping about having to do work.”
“I work all the time,” he insisted, despite another dismissive roll of Despina’s eyes. “And I’d much rather fall to my death than admit a weakness to you.”
“The captain of the Royal Guard wants to impress a lowly handmaiden?”
“A clumsy young man wants to impress a beautiful young woman.” He met her gaze, his dark eyes piercing. “The question is, did it work?”
Despina held back a smile. “You failed to retrieve my flower.”
In response, he lifted his left fist and unfurled his fingers. In it was the crushed stem of jessamine she’s requested from the topmost branches. Its delicious aroma spilled into the air around them, clean and unmistakable.
“You ruined it, Captain al-Khoury,” Despina said flatly.
“Jalal.”
A pause. “Jalal.”
“Do you wish for me to retrieve you another?”
“Not in the least.” Despina smiled. “The ruined flower will do.”
His gaze still had not left hers. “It smells like you.”
“A ruined flower?”
“Yes.”
“How flattering.” She laughed.
At the sound, his features softened. “Touch my face again.”
Despite her sense of caution, Despina lifted her hands to his jaw and bent closer. He smelled like sweat and steel and the green of newly trod grass.
So much more than a boy with an arrogant smirk.
Jalal leaned into her touch. “Had I won the wager, I would have asked for your name.”
“Is that all?” Despina snorted.
“Then I would have asked when you would kiss me.”
“Only a kiss?”
“Only a kiss. Nothing more.”
Her heartbeat quickened. “How am I to believe that, given your reputation?”
“Time will tell.” He beckoned her closer, lifting himself on an elbow. A calloused finger traced behind Despina’s ear.
And for a single moment, they forgot who they both were.
The captain of the Royal Guard. And the queen’s handmaiden.
It was she who kissed him first.
Without thought. Without warning. Her lips found his.
Startled, Jalal fell back to the ground. His arms encircled Despina. When he kissed her back, it stole the very breath from her body. The touch of his tongue against hers sent a swirl of maddening desire through her.
No boy had ever kissed her like this.
No man would ever kiss her like this.
“Despina,” she whispered. “My name is Despina.”
ENDLESS POSSIBILITIES
DESPINA WAITED ALL DAY FOR THE CALIPHA TO CALL for her.
Waited all day for the calipha. Not for Jalal al-Khoury.
She was certain the young queen would request her presence. After all, they’d spent a good deal of time together yesterday afternoon, and the calipha had been receptive to the cosmetics Despina had brought to her chamber.
Not to mention their discussion on the young queen’s gift to the caliph.
But the sun rose and fell without a word from the calipha or her servants.
When Despina returned to her chamber, she found a spray of jessamine before her door.
Her heart leapt at its sight.
No. Only a fool would fall prey to such an enticement.
Would fall prey to such a boy.
Even if he does kiss like a man.
Despite the yearnings of her heart, Despina ignored the tiny sprig of flowers. As luck would have it, they blossomed overnight and left a fragrant reminder at her doorstep.
The following day came and went without a word from the calipha. The hope that had kindled within Despina two days ago began to fade; the young queen had no intention of bringing Despina into her fold.
No intention of bringing a new handmaiden into her confidences.
But Despina did not allow herself to fall to despair. For it did seem the calipha would not draw attention to Despina’s superfluousness after all. Their conversation had produced at least one desired result.
Despina would not be demoted or dismissed.
There was that.
She spent the third day following her chance encounter with the queen—and her ill-fated stroll with the captain of the guard—reorganizing a pile of already pristine silk and damask.
When Despina moved beyond the tiny chamber housing the garments and through the queen’s empty bedchamber, she saw the parchment with the beautiful calligraphy rolled into a bundle. Stowed to one side, unfinished.
Though it gave her pause, Despina knew it was not he
r right to pursue the matter. Not her right and not her place.
The young calipha would make her decisions. Choose her own way.
As with two nights before, when Despina returned to her chamber door at dusk, she found another sprig of jessamine lying on the marble threshold.
She stepped past it. Thought better of it.
Sighed.
And brought the flowers inside.
DARK DAYS AND A NIGHT OF LIGHT
ALAS, ALL DESPINA’S WAITING PROVED FUTILE, FOR the calipha never called on her again. Several months passed in relative obscurity. But Despina continued to hope for a word from the queen. To wait—
For a tragedy that shook their world at its very center.
The palace had been shrouded in shadow for the last two days and nights.
Everywhere Despina walked, servants tiptoed about the corridors, their shoulders hunched and their whispers low.
Every face she encountered was agonized, every pair of eyes bloodshot.
There were no more tears left to shed.
The young Calipha of Khorasan—Ava, the girl who studied calligraphy and spoke with the gentleness of a passing breeze—had perished.
Two mornings ago, the caliph himself had found her on that very same balcony, cold and motionless and alone.
Thankfully, Despina had not witnessed what had happened that fateful morning.
She’d heard the wails as the news spread through the marbled hallways. She’d heard the queen’s servants cry to the heavens.
Very briefly, she’d seen the caliph’s face.
Haunted. Horrifying.
The one face Despina had yet to see belonged to Jalal al-Khoury.
Ever since that evening when she’d brought the sprig of jessamine inside her chamber, not a day had gone by that Despina had failed to see the captain of the guard. It was almost as though he’d planned to be exactly where she was at the most opportune moment of the day.
Words were often exchanged. Teasing words. Cajoling words. Brief kisses were stolen at odd hours. At times they were sure to avoid any errant gazes.
After several weeks of this, he began making another request. For the last month, not a single day passed that Jalal failed to ask her to stay the night with him.
Despina never did.
Losing herself in a few kisses was one thing. Being as foolish as her mother was quite another. She refused to be the mistress of a rich man, to be discarded at his earliest whim. And she would most definitely not be the plaything of a notorious scoundrel like Jalal al-Khoury.
No matter how much her heart begged her to see otherwise.
No matter how much his absence these last few days troubled her.
Despina did not know if she should seek him out. It was possible he might find it improper for her to wander the halls in search of him. After all, in this palace she was but a servant.
But she had to know if Jalal was well. Recent events demanded that she know.
Earlier this evening an even darker shadow had fallen across the palace. Though the young queen had been laid to rest in the afternoon, and all should have been on its way to mending, something sinister had taken root instead. Despina heard that the Royal Guard had been sent to accompany the king on a visit to see his late wife’s father.
Despina had not been present when they’d returned. But she felt the gathering shadow. The cold hand of evil seemed to grip tightly the palace itself.
And now she could no longer deny the yearnings of her heart.
Despina had to see Jalal.
Late that night, she moved into the corridors, a single scented taper clutched in one hand. She’d thrown a loose robe over her linen nightclothes. Her hair was unbound and flowing down her back. Her reflection in a passing mirror appeared quite ghoulish—a creature of nightmares, her eyes hollow and her face pale.
Despina tried to rearrange the tangles of her hair, but her efforts were halfhearted at best. Anyway, she did not think anyone at the palace cared much for appearances or propriety at this moment. The current state of things was one of churning turmoil.
A servant girl wandering the halls at night in her simplest of garments and disastrous hair was certainly the least of anyone’s problems.
Despina made her way down a corridor toward the wing of the palace that housed the highest-ranking members of the Royal Guard. Since Jalal also happened to be a member of the royal family, she knew he’d been afforded the option of having his own, far grander chamber in the east wing with the rest of his kin. His father, the shahrban, had an elegant chamber of his own there.
But Jalal had opted to take a room near the men in his charge.
It was an easy room to find. The only one with a guard posted outside the door.
Despina halted. Took quick stock of her surroundings. Wrapped her loose-fitting robe more tightly about her.
She cleared her throat and stood tall. “I have a message for the captain.”
The guard at the chamber appeared weary, but he still waited for her to offer him a better explanation than that.
“I—I was handmaiden to the . . . queen,” she whispered.
Immediately the guard glanced both ways. Then he stepped back, his expression just as harrowed as hers.
Without hesitation, Despina raised her fist to the heavy wooden door and rapped on it twice.
No answer.
She lifted her hand again. Three hard knocks.
No answer.
“Captain al-Khoury?” she said. “I have a message for you.”
Another moment passed in stilted silence.
Sighing, Despina turned away.
“Come in,” a gruff voice said from beyond the doors.
This time, Despina did hesitate. The voice within sounded nothing like the one she knew. When Despina tried the handle she found it unlocked. It scraped open, the sound cracking through the ominous silence.
It was pitch-dark inside the chamber, save for the light from her single taper.
Jalal was seated on the stone floor, his back against the wall.
He said nothing. He did not even glance in her direction.
Despina wavered only a moment more before she moved toward him.
“Jalal?”
His head turned toward hers. Agonizingly slow.
Even in the low light, his haunted expression brought her to his side in an instant.
“You’re here,” he said in a barely audible voice. “You’re here.”
She crouched beside him and lifted the taper to his face, soothing phrases collecting on her tongue and her free hand raised to—
His cloak was stained red at its center.
Despina gasped, placing the taper on the stone floor before reaching for him once more. “You’re hurt.”
“No.”
“Don’t play the hero,” Despina insisted as she began searching for the source of his wound. “You’re bleeding.”
“It isn’t my blood.”
“Then whose blood is it?”
He did not respond immediately.
“Jalal?”
“It’s—Ava’s father’s.”
Another gasp. “You killed Ava’s father?”
“No.” Jalal bent his head. Without a word, his face fell into his red-stained hands.
Despina sat with him. She brought a bowl of water to his side and removed the bloodied cloak in silence.
With great care, she washed the blood from his hands.
Jalal pulled her close. “Don’t leave. Please don’t leave.”
“I won’t.”
A FAMILY’S LOYALTY
DESPINA CLUTCHED AT THE HANDLE OF HER CHAMBER door. She locked it.
Once. Twice.
Then she ran to the looking glass propped against her wall. Without hesitat
ion, she stripped off her skirts. Kicked off her sandals. Shimmied from her undergarments.
Then she stared at her naked body in the silver before her. She turned this way and that, studying every curve for any telltale sign.
No.
It wasn’t noticeable yet.
No one would be able to tell she was with child.
Her moment of relief gave way to grim realization.
That will not be the case for much longer.
She had only a few months left to keep this a secret. Only a few months to seek order in the chaos she had wrought.
The chaos of a mere few months spent with Jalal al-Khoury.
Despina continued to stare at her reflection in cool silence.
Fool. Worthless fool.
She was her mother all over again. Carrying the child of a man who was not her husband. Carrying the child of a man who would never see her as an equal. Whose family and friends would see her as a scheming whore.
Worse, Despina had even fallen in love with the cad. A life of careful consideration undone in less than a season.
She stepped closer to the mirror, willing her reflection to disappear. Just for a moment.
So many secrets. So many lies.
In an instant, she made a decision. Despina could not tell Jalal about his child. He could never know what this meant to her. He could never learn how much she loved him.
She would never give any man that kind of power over her.
No. Despina would continue working at the palace until she could hide the truth no longer.
Then she would set her world straight, once and for all. This child would not be raised to fear or hate the world around it. Be made to bow and cower to lesser men.
No. The world around this child would bow first.
Despina collected her things and dressed herself again in a calm and collected fashion.
After all, she still had a job to do. She had to prepare the garments for yet another marriage. The bridal shroud of yet another queen.
The caliph was marrying again at dusk. Despina had lost count of how many young girls had been brought to the palace to wed a king only to die the following day.
After the first few deaths, Despina had elected to remain at a distance. She could not stomach gazing into the eyes of these young, scared girls as they marched to their untimely demise. Could not stomach the willful destruction of life.