“No, Marie.” Her voice dropped to the saddest tone you could ever hear, and her gaze went somewhere I couldn’t point at. “He will be busy doing something else. I’ll make sure that he will be kept busy long enough to get you home.”
Though I was dying to know what could keep the prince busy enough to not stop someone from doing something he didn’t like or without his permission, I didn’t ask what that could be. I was so scared that Janna wouldn’t be convincing enough, and that would make my doubts about her plan ever working fill me even more than they already were. I just wanted to believe, just wanted to leave.
“Okay,” I let out a long breath then nodded.
“Hide those blue eyes, please,” Janna told me, and said blue eyes widened. I didn’t even think about that! Not to mention I didn’t even know how to hide them! But when I told Janna that, she brought another layer from above my head that was much thinner and see-through, pulling it down to cover the niqap entirely.
Great, I couldn’t breathe properly and now I couldn’t see either. Just brilliant!
“Are you ready?” she asked, and I gazed for a long time into those miserable eyes of hers before I nodded once again with a “Yes,” to confirm my approval.
Janna reached for the door and opened it just the slightest bit before I pushed it back closed, breathing harder than before as the feeling of an approaching panic attack started to make its way to my heart.
“What?” Janna’s shocked voice asked, her eyes widening at my act.
My hand reached for my clothes-covered cross and I gripped it. “Guards,” I gasped out, “Guards everywhere, lots of them.”
I heard Janna huffing, “Seriously, Marie? Guards? Of course there are guards out there–this is the king’s palace we are standing in!”
God! Oh, God!
“B-but how will we leave? They are right outside!” I whisper-yelled.
“They won’t even glance our way, Marie; they’ve been ordered to lower their gazes in the presence of women. It’s the female guards I’m worried about, to be honest.”
“There are female guards, too?” I almost yelled the question.
“Of course, there are! But I have a plan for them, don’t worry,” she reassured me, but I needed to ask, “What plan?”
Janna sighed again. “We’ve had several of my cousins sleeping over since the wedding. I’ll talk to the female guards so they know it’s me going to the airport, and they’ll think you’re one of my cousins who will come back once I’m–you’re–in the car safely. I’ll use another door to go inside again. They, too, will think I’m one of the princesses in the palace since the first ones will report to them that one princess will go back inside the palace in a few minutes.”
The heck if I knew what she was mumbling about! I was even more confused, and I guess my eyes that were still staring at her, unmoving, told her so.
“It’ll be okay,” she assured me again. “Just act bored when I speak to them.”
“But, won’t you have anyone escorting you to the airport?” I asked, because I couldn’t understand how they would let a princess who was about to leave the country do so by herself–all alone.
“Listen, there was a ceremony last night in honor of Yoseph and myself departing to the States. Nora–my maid–was there instead of me, as I’d requested of my family since I wasn’t feeling well. The queen was okay with it as long as, to the public, our image was the same–the new bride leaving with her husband–and it went well, no one doubted anything. Very few people in the palace know the truth that I will be leaving tonight instead; since it’s secretive, they won’t question why I’m leaving an hour earlier, and they’ll think the rest of my bags will be sent later.”
My head was spinning – God knows that half of what she was saying I couldn’t understand, but it sounded like she had everything under control. Still – I only stared, no words.
“Speaking of early, we are running out of time. The ride to the airport will take fifteen minutes maximum, so we need to move it now.” Janna reached for the door to open it again, but she paused for a second. The next thing I knew, Janna was hugging me tightly and telling me that I would be fine–maybe she felt how much I was shaking. Then she opened the door and looked at me. “Head held high, Ameera,” she told me, and for some reason, what I wanted the most in that moment was to see her expression, or maybe take a final look at her face: the girl that had brought me here, and to all of this, the same one who was helping me out of it.
I took a deep breath and did as I was told, despite everything in me that wanted to just curl into a ball and cry over how scared I was. I walked out of the wing and to the stairs right under the guards’ noses, the same guards that, true to Janna’s word, looked down at the floor once they saw us come out of the wing, keeping their gazes down until we’d passed through.
The minute that we spent in the female guards’ presence was the hardest. They looked friendly with Janna, their voices had a smiling tone, but I couldn’t tell if they were really smiling or not, since they were completely covered from head to toe in black, aside from the bandage on their left arms. It was green with some kind of logo on it, something that declared their status as female guards, I assumed. For a moment, I wondered how on earth they would be able to do anything with those clothes on, but I didn’t find it in me to question it in my head any further.
I breathed a sigh of half-relief when we were finally away from them. A limousine was waiting just outside the door. I was even surprised that one of the guards was standing there beside the car and holding the door open. I wondered if the female guards had reported that Janna was coming out of the palace, or if he was just standing there an hour early–I really had no idea.
Janna said her goodbye to me with just another tight hug and a long shadowed look, only breaking her gaze when the car moved away, with the same guard that had held the door open now driving.
A few minutes and too many guards later, the palace was finally out of sight. A small smile wanted to creep to my lips and make itself comfortable there, but that ache in my heart prevented it from emerging. I just relaxed my back against the seat, though every single inch of my body was as tense as ever.
Minutes passed, and I could see through the glass that kind-of-familiar road I’d come from just five days ago, only one day before the wedding: the road to the airport.
Relief started to make its way to my heart, for I knew the hardest part was almost over. I just had to get to that jet and get on it, and then I wouldn’t speak until later, when we would be in the air already and as far away as I could get from the kingdom. But sadly, my dreams simply crashed when our car was stopped by another car. A BMW kept cutting us off to make the limousine stop, until finally the driver had to pull over so as not to cause us to crash.
For a moment, I thought that the person who would step out of the BMW would be the prince coming to drag me back to the palace, but I was mistaken. It was not the prince, but a guy in his late thirties or early forties with pitch black hair, a thick black beard and light-colored eyes. I couldn’t tell if they were blue or green since the glass was making most of the things outside of the limousine appear gray.
The guy barked something at the driver and a small conversation went back and forth between them. All I could understand from it was that the guy was angry and the driver was scared.
I gripped my cross and prayed silently, because it didn’t seem like it was going to go well from that point on.
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
The driver hopped out of the car, and fear made a home in my heart, growing even bigger when the door to my right was opened by the very same guy who’d stopped the car.
I gripped my cross with both of my hands from above my clothes, holding it even tighter than just a moment ago, my prayers ringing in the back of my head, and panic throbbing inside of my heart. My tears were choking me and burning my eyes, but the fright that was consuming me was too massive to allow them to really fall to my cheeks. The anxiety of not knowing what would happen was almost enough to knock me out cold. Almost enough. But not really.
My first thought, after seeing that he wasn’t the prince, was imagining that Janna had set me up. I couldn’t think of any other way someone could follow me or know of my escape so fast, but the smile I saw on his devilish features, followed by ‘Janna’ while he looked at my frightened and hidden form told me that that wasn’t the case.
He thought I was Janna.
The fact that he didn’t use her ‘Ameera’ title before her name added to the fact that he’d ordered the driver, who was also a guard, to stop then leave the limousine told me that he was royal. My thoughts turned to thinking that he might be her other brother, wanting to say a final goodbye to his sister before she left the kingdom for God only knows how long. Just because I was the luckiest girl on earth.
Oh, God! What do I do?
But then I remembered that her other brother was just a few months younger than the prince, which made him only twenty-three, and the bearded guy looked much older than thirty–it couldn’t be him.
Wondering who this guy was drove me so crazy that I wanted to scream. I was so scared, confused and plain terrified.
He spoke to me. A lot. I knew that if he paid just the tiniest bit of attention, he’d know I was shaking with fear. His words sounded like questions, but I didn’t understand more than that, and of course I couldn’t speak, couldn’t utter a word. And that made the situation even worse.
It was only when he stuck a foot inside the car that I couldn’t take it anymore. I knew there was no way out of this for me, but I wasn’t going down without a fight. I opened the door to my left and hopped out of the car.
He restoreth my soul: He guideth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
I thought that maybe I’d find a car passing by that I could get into, or maybe even find the BMW with the keys inside. Maybe I could drive it and flee, or maybe the stupid driver might even take me away from this guy. I didn’t know. I just wanted to be away from him and that was it.
Four steps. Four steps were all I managed to take with my unhelpful heels before I felt a hand gripping my arm tightly and pulling me to a stop. More words in Arabic, some yelled, some questioning, and when I saw his eyes narrowing, I knew he’d gotten the idea of me not being Janna.
The bearded guy’s head tilted to the side, his hand still gripping my arm and his eyes still narrowed, looking at me closely as if trying to figure out the mystery of who I was. I watched in terror as his eyes wandered over my body, from my head to my hand that was still pressed tightly to my chest and over my cross, and down to my feet. There, his eyes lit up, the frown on his forehead cleared, and the devilish smile returned to his lips when his eyes found mine. I wondered for a moment if the blue of them was showing through the material that was hiding them.
His grip on my arm grew tighter and I almost winced in pain. Though I knew there was a huge chance that I was already busted, I still wouldn’t dare to utter a thing, not even a loud breath; my gasps, though, were out of my hands, I couldn’t control those.
He mumbled a few more words in Arabic, and I could’ve sworn that my blood not only ran cold, but froze when he came even closer to me, so that our faces were almost touching–despite my efforts to move mine away from him–and then voiced the word “Speak!” in the most terrifying voice I’ve ever heard.
My tears chose that moment to come loose. I cried, scared and horrified, now knowing that I was truly busted, because that guy had just spoken in English–meaning he knew who I was, though I had no idea how he was able to tell it was me.
The next thing I knew, my face cover was being yanked away from my face and the air hit my flushed cheeks, where the tears had wet enough to tell exactly how terrified I was.
“Well, well, well!” he said, and my throat closed, making it harder to breathe. “What do we have here?” His accent was thicker than a drunken alien just visiting Earth for the first time. “Isn’t this the bride of Prince Mazen?” It wasn’t actually a question; he already knew the answer, there was no doubt of that.
I just stared at him with my frightened eyes. Even now, knowing my cover was blown and I could finally speak, I didn’t know what to say.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, and I still didn’t know what to say–because...seriously? What was there to say?
Apparently, my silence didn’t please him all that much because his grip on my arm tightened, and I did wince this time. With his mouth almost pressed to my ear he spoke aloud, “Speak, woman!” The disgusting stench of his breath was bad enough to make me gag, and that was met by him shoving my arm a bit so that I almost lost my balance and fell, but his grip on my arm prevented that from happening.
Why he was treating me this way was beyond me. I couldn’t understand his reasoning, even after he realized I was the prince’s bride. But I thought that he might have figured out that I was escaping; this was the way that led to the airport anyway, and it’d only been four days since the wedding–of course he could smell that something big was off. If he could smell anything through his nasty, stinking breath, that is.
I was brought back from my thoughts, to what was going on, by the guy gripping me as he walked me toward that BMW of his, saying, “You shouldn’t be here, don’t you think? I’m taking you back to the palace. I believe the king would like to know why you were here and not there.” It was only then that I found my voice and the courage to let it be heard, or maybe it was fear speaking–either way, I just spoke frantically.
“No, no, no! Please, don’t take me back to the palace. Please, don’t!” I tried pulling my arm away from the deathly grip he had on it, but it was no use. He was really strong and I had no power over him. However, my words made him stop dragging me and turn to look at me with questioning eyes.
“And why is that?”
I swallowed thickly. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him everything about how I’d come here and what had happened next, but something stopped me. I guess it was my fear that it might cause some harm to Janna. I didn’t know who this guy was yet, or if information like that could put Janna in danger, so I didn’t tell him. I just used the only tactic I could think of so fast.
“Listen, I have money. Lots of it. I’ll give you anything you wish for, any amount. Just please don’t take me there, please!”
It was the first time I ever got to hear what Satan’s laugh would sound like, because it couldn’t be any more evil-sounding than this guy’s laugh. His laugh, that sounded as if it came straight from his heart–if he had one–was the response to my offer.
“I’m not interested in your money, you witch,” he said, and my eyes widened. “I’m only interested in knowing what you are doing here with those last year’s Jimmy Choos of yours, and why you don’t want to go back!”
A new round of tears made it out of my eyes at the sound of his words, now knowing that money wouldn’t help, and that this guy would drag me back to the palace no matter what.
Lord, give me the strength.
The next minute, I was sitting in his car, knowing full well that trying to run again wouldn’t do me any good: I’d just get manhandled and shoved around some more.
The fear of the unknown, and my mind wondering what would happen to me now, or what would happen to Janna, were so heavy that all I wanted to do was to scre
am my head off. The idea of throwing myself out of the car sounded so nice, compared to the thoughts and the pictures I imagined of what was to come my way when I got there.
When I was able to see the palace again from the passenger seat, my knees started shaking and my lips started trembling–to the point I thought I wouldn’t be able to walk one step or voice one word if I had to.
I couldn’t believe that I was already back at the palace when the car stopped right outside one of the doors that lead inside. I had been gone no longer than half an hour, if not far less. I couldn’t believe I was brought back that easily. Very easily and too fast.
Yea, thou I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me; Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.
Arabic. Arabic. Arabic everywhere around me. I couldn’t understand anything. It wasn’t as frustrating as it was scary. The fact that I didn’t know what the guy was saying to the others was very scary. They were giving me strange looks, shocked and disbelieving ones. It was too scary– I was scared out of my skin.
Give me, give me the strength.
The familiar smell of the palace, the heavy scent of ambergris and sandalwood reminded me of all of the nice times I’d had inside this place rather than the terrifying moments, and I found myself regretting what had happened. My regret caused more confusion between me and myself; I couldn’t even understand what I was thinking now, or what I’d been thinking then. I just thought that maybe if I hadn’t gone along with Janna’s plan, things wouldn’t have been this way. I wouldn’t be this terrified, breaking into a cold sweat, shaking and being gripped, pulled and shoved constantly while getting odd looks from all of the guards around me–the same ones who were ordered not to look at women or whatever. But something in me told me they wanted to help, as if they wanted to stop him, but couldn’t. I felt as if they were scared of him, and to be honest, I didn’t blame them. He was pure evil to me, and I didn’t even know his name or know him longer than a few minutes.
Black Keys (The Colorblind Trilogy #1) Page 24