“Yeah, the prince explained some of it to me, but...why didn’t Prince Fahd marry one of his daughters then?” I wondered. If it was so important like Mona, and the prince before her, had explained to me, why wouldn’t the younger prince marry his cousin from that uncle, at least?
“Oh, he did. She’s younger than Princess Talia. It’s frowned upon here for a younger sister to marry before her older one, but with Prince Mazen having to delay his marriage for college and so on, Prince Fahd had to marry earlier than him, and their uncle didn’t mind at all.”
“Princess Rosanna is Princess Talia’s sister?” I asked with shock.
“Yes, Princess.”
“That means that Princess Talia is...”
“The queen’s niece,” Mona said, nodding.
“Wow! I had no idea.” No wonder the queen hated me so much.
“And she’s still waiting,” Mona said, I assumed speaking of Talia. “And since she told you that, I guess she’s still hoping.”
“Oh, you can’t imagine.”
“Did she say anything else?” Mona asked, but didn’t wait for a reply. “Because whatever she said, she’s a liar–just like her brother.”
“Brother?”
“Prince Jasem, God rest his soul.”
“Oh, God! When did he die?” I gasped.
“He didn’t, just wishful thinking, Princess,” Mona grinned, and I smiled, shaking my head.
“So, Jasem and Talia are Rosanna’s siblings,” I thought out loud.
“Yes, but Princess Rosanna is their half-sister, and you’d think she came from a different father as well, given how pure and tender she is.”
“It’s good to hear she’s different. Prince Fahd seems like a great guy; he doesn’t deserve an unkind wife,” I said.
“He is, and he’s loved her since they were little kids, but it’s a given that those kids grow up with the idea of loving each other, as they are promised to each other from birth by the unspoken rule.”
Did that mean that the prince is also… No, I won’t think that way. It hurt.
“There must be huge pressure on Princess Rosanna to carry on with this pregnancy,” I said.
“True, but the queen is not pressuring Prince Fahd to marry another. If the king passes away with only Prince Fahd having an heir, and Prince Mazen not, he’d be the one who would take the title.”
Oh! God! Too much to think about!
Mona frowned and tilted her head to the side, as if she was listening to something.
“What?” I asked her.
“I think I heard the bell ringing.” Her frown deepened. “It’s too early for lunch.”
“I didn’t hear anything,” I told her.
“I’ll go check, Princess. Excuse me.”
I nodded and then went to the bedroom. It was only a minute after, that I heard knocking on the door, but before I could reply, Mona entered, which was unlike her, to just come inside without asking permission first when she wasn’t expected.
“Forgive me, Princess, but–” She was interrupted by the door opening further, and when I looked, wheels were pushing the door open.
I smiled broadly when I realized that it was the Queen Mother in her wheelchair making her way inside the room, blushing slightly at the fact that I was in a tank top and sweatpants–no elegant dress or twenty pounds of diamonds on me–and I wondered how indecent I looked in her eyes, with the way I was dressed.
My smile dropped when I saw that the one wheeling her inside was the queen, her face as hard as ever and her eyes looking at me as if I was something disgusting, like rotten rubbish.
Tailing the queen was a line of women I didn’t know, two of them carrying white cloths in their hands.
I swallowed thickly, fear consuming me all of a sudden.
“Hello, Princess Marie,” the queen said, “How was your night?”
Seriously? She was asking about my night?
I tried to smile, but I couldn’t. “I-it was fine, thank you,” I replied, watching as she pointed with her index finger to the women and then to the bed.
“Well, that’s good to hear,” she said. I was too confused to dwell on the sarcasm in her voice, as I watched the women go to change the lavender sheets and replace them with white ones.
“Uh, w-what’s going on?” Fear laced my voice.
Mona had just changed those sheets.
“Don’t worry, you just have something to prove, is all,” the queen replied.
I looked at Mona with questioning eyes, but hers were as confused as mine. Even the Queen Mother had the same look we did, though I wasn’t sure if it was because we were speaking in a language that was foreign to her, or because, just like us, she didn’t know what was going on.
“What t-thing?” My lips started to tremble as a disgusting thought came to my mind, terror filling me just thinking about the possibility of it being what the queen was talking about.
The queen didn’t reply. She offered her hand to a woman who was still standing beside her and that woman gave her a small piece of white cloth, and my eyes widened. She gave it to the Queen Mother, who frowned at the material in her hand, asking the queen a question which she replied to with an answer that made Mona gasp, the Queen Mother’s mouth drop, and a tear fall from my eyes even before hearing her response.
“Your virginity.”
My heart dropped to my feet.
“My w-what?” Another tear left my eyes.
The queen looked at me with a raised eyebrow. “Do you have any idea how much your brother and that slut’s mistake has cost us?” she asked, not really looking for an answer, but rather informing me. “Do you have any idea how much my son had to go through to take care of it?”
My eyes welled up with more tears as I listened to her, scared and feeling so helpless, not knowing what was to come for me in a few minutes when she would finish her speech.
“A lot,” she answered her own questions, and I felt my throat tightening. “The very least thing he should get in return is a pure wife, not a skank who only God knows whom she’s been with before.”
My tears flowed, and my legs started to shake. “I’ve never been with anyone. I swear,” I tried with a quiet voice.
“Hmph!” the queen smiled snidely. “We’ll see about that,” she said, and then looked at the women behind me, apparently to see if they had finished. She spoke to the Queen Mother who, from her tone and disapproving frown, I knew didn’t like what was happening.
They exchanged words back and forth and the Queen Mother’s voice started to rise. A slight ray of hope found its way to my heart as I thought that maybe the Queen Mother would prevent what the queen wanted to do to me from happening.
“My Queen,” Mona spoke, getting the queen’s attention. “If you’d allow me to speak. Prince Mazen bedded Princess Marie last night; I saw the evidence on the sheets this morning.”
I sucked my trembling lips into my mouth as I heard Mona lying for my sake. My knees were about to give up on carrying my weight and my heart was about to stop beating out of fear.
“Is that true, Mona?” the queen asked her, folding her hands in front of her chest. “Because the way my son looked earlier didn’t look like someone who’d just enjoyed a first night, but rather like a miserable person whose marriage has cost him a lot.”
God!
“Or maybe the look on his face was because he found out she wasn’t what she’d claimed to be all along,” she said, then sighed. “One way or the other, we will see about that.”
“The prince wouldn’t allow this to happen,” I said confidently, but with a shaky voice.
“The prince and the king do what I say,” she said with a loud voice. “If you think this kingdom has ever been ruled by a man then you are highly mistaken. Any king is forever a figurehead, nothing more. Queens rule!” Her voice filled the room and her last two words were louder than the rest, causing me to flinch.
“You have to keep in mind that the prince’s heart will alw
ays love any beautiful woman,” she said sternly, “but his loyalty and devotion will only be for two: his kingdom and his mother,” and then she emphasized, “Me!”
I started having a hard time controlling my breaths. My head was spinning and my chest was heaving, my chin quivering and my heart beating faster than ever.
A woman spoke behind me, and I figured she was saying they were finished spreading the white sheets on the bed, because the queen started to speak to the Queen Mother again. It was easy to figure out that she was completely against the idea of doing this disgusting thing to me. Janna had told me that they’d stopped doing it in the royal family long ago–of course the Queen Mother wouldn’t agree.
The time they took arguing felt like hours. I just stood there helplessly, watching with terrified eyes, waiting for them to determine my destiny with tears rolling down my cheeks, wondering if I could run and use a secret door to a secret tunnel–but the queen knew them even better than me.
Eventually, the queen looked at me, pissed as ever. “The old hag won’t do it,” she said through clenched teeth. “Fine, I’ll do it myself.”
“No, please don’t,” I cried.
“My Queen, please!” Mona ran to stand in front of me, somehow shielding me and facing the queen. “Just give them some time, please,” she begged.
“My son needs an heir! We don’t have ‘some time’! And some time for what? So the witch can try to flee again?” the queen yelled, then looked at me. “Don’t you think that the little lie you told my son got by me! What could you possibly find only at the airport and nowhere else? An ‘I heart NY’ T-shirt?” she said sarcastically. “And Mona, I thought you said you saw the evidence this morning? You lying whore!”
Merciful God!
The queen spoke to the women in what sounded like an order, but as she was about to move towards me, the Queen Mother stopped her by gripping the skirt of her dress, yelling at her with hard features that looked alien on her soft, loving face.
I was beyond shocked when the queen’s next move was to kick, then shove, the wheelchair that the Queen Mother was sitting on, causing her to fall out of it onto the floor, crying out in pain.
I gasped loudly, not believing the sight in front of me. My first reaction was to take a hurried step to help her into a sitting position at least, if not get her back into the chair. But before I could reach her, I felt hands gripping both of my arms behind me, pulling me backwards to the bed. I reached with my restrained hand for Mona, who was reaching for me as well, speaking to the women in Arabic, her tone harsh, but her features pleading.
The women ignored her and went on with pulling me back. They were practically carrying me because I wasn’t cooperating whatsoever. I was only crying and begging, “No, stop! Please, don’t,” but it was no use.
“Save it, honey,” the queen said, “They don’t speak English.” She took the small white cloth from the woman who’d retrieved it off the floor where the Queen Mother had dropped it. “And even if they did...only my orders are obeyed in this palace, not yours!”
I could see through my tear-blurred eyes as the queen took one step after another in my direction, while the women tried to pin me down on the bed I was now lying on, as I struggled and begged and screamed that I was a virgin. Mona got in her way and through her tone I could tell she was begging her just like I was doing with the women, only in a different language.
The moment Mona put her hand on the queen’s shoulder, the queen’s reaction was to strike Mona across the face really hard. The sound of the slap echoed loudly in the room, and caused Mona to lose her balance and almost fall, but she managed to catch herself.
“No, no, Mona, please, don’t leave me,” I screamed as I saw her running to the bedroom door that was wide open. When she glanced my way, she had tears in her eyes and a trail of blood down the corner of her mouth. She then hurried on her way, leaving me to face my horrible fate all by myself.
This was it, I was going to lose my virginity just like that. It wasn’t at all how I’d dreamed it would happen. I thought it’d be with someone I loved, I thought it’d be with my husband, I thought it would be on my wedding night, but no...it wasn’t going to be anything like that. I wasn’t even with a man.
When the queen reached my legs and started pulling my sweatpants down, I started kicking hard and harder. One of my kicks managed to hit her chest, but not as hard as I’d wished for it to be. However, it only earned me a curse and more pulling on my pants and hard pressure on my legs from the women to make me stay in place.
Once my pants were all the way down my legs, my tears and screams were uncontrollable. But despite how foggy my mind was, I remembered one thing that I was truly sure of: I remembered who could save me from all of this. I remembered how he would stop it all, how he was my safety, and how he was my comfort. So I cried out at the top of my lungs, wishing, hoping and praying that he would hear me.
“Mazen!” My call for him was a scream, my voice hoarse and my tone speaking of undying fear. “Mazen, please, help me! MAZEN!” A new round of tears found their way out of my eyes, as I remembered myself in a situation I’d been in before that’d had me calling the same way I was now. But that was to a man who I’d loved more than the whole world, a man who never replied to me nor came to my rescue because he was already dead, and the memory hurt just as much as the reality had.
“No, stop it!” I cried out. “Stop it, stop it!” The queen was now pulling on the side of my panties, but my arms and legs didn’t stop struggling against the five women that were holding me down. I was trying my hardest to press my legs together so my panties would stay in place.
Being that nude in front of those strange women filled me with shame and embarrassment, and my tears rolled down even heavier.
When my body started to give out, and my throat hurt so bad because of all of the screaming, I knew there was no way out of this. I even started wishing that the queen would just see that I was a virgin and not put that cloth inside of me to see if I would bleed or not. I was that desperate, but because I’d been a fighter my whole life, I tried one more time. “Mazen, please, please, please!” I pleaded shrilly. “Mazen! Help me, Mazen, please!”
It was only when I heard his voice and saw him entering the room, followed by an out-of-breath and panting Mona, that my body stilled, and my breaths slowed down just a bit. His orders, that weren’t in a language I knew, caused the women to release my hands and legs immediately–including the queen, who let go of my underwear that she’d pulled from the side down my left thigh.
I saw his eyes which were filled with shock, disbelief and anger as they traveled from his grandmother, who was now sitting on the floor, to my shaking form on the bed, and then to his grandmother again. It only took less than a second before his decision was made to come to me first, especially after his grandmother pointed to me while telling him something, as if she was encouraging him to help me first.
His yelling didn’t stop, not even when the women hurried out of the room. I pulled my legs up to my body and curled into a ball, hugging my knees to my chest as I sat on the bed, not even finding the will to try and adjust my undies back in place.
The prince’s hands pulled his mother off of the bed by her shoulders, not forcibly, but with enough pressure to remove her from the bed, which pissed her off. She started yelling at the prince, who yelled back at her with an even louder voice that was almost deafening. I’d never seen him that mad, not even when he was hitting Jasem. His face was red, and I’d bet that was what he saw as well: red, his anger causing him to forget his promise to only speak in English in my presence.
Their foreign language was scaring me most of all, because I couldn’t understand what they were saying. I was shaking. “Mazen,” I gasped his name through trembling lips, needing him near, to get her out of here, to end all of this, to close our bedroom door and to let it all be peaceful again.
He only looked at me for a second, his hard eyes too angry to soften, before
he looked at Mona, who was now trying to help the Queen Mother into her wheelchair again, but failing. He told her to do something that made her leave the room, and the queen started yelling again–but now in shock more than anger.
The prince ignored her and bent down to pick up the lavender sheets that were on the floor. He put them over my body and even wrapped me with them, securing the sheets around me up to my chin. His eyes didn’t meet mine, but his scent was able to calm me just the slightest.
I saw four women entering the room, covered all in black, and the green badges on their right arms told me they were female guards. The prince ordered them to do something that had the queen putting her hands on her hips in challenge. When the guards looked at each other and didn’t move, he yelled at them. Two of them moved right away, and started taking the queen outside, guiding her with their hands, moving her as she yelled and constantly shouted at them like a mad woman.
The two other guards helped the Queen Mother get back into the wheelchair while Mona held the chair still. When she was seated, she gave me a sympathetic look with tears still wetting her face, before she said something to the prince, who was standing tall with his hands folded behind his back. He nodded without saying anything, then Mona wheeled her out of the room and closed the door behind her, her cheek swelling and her eyes crying with silent tears.
The door closed, then so did the distance between Mazen and me. He took me into his arms, hugged me tight, and I cried, only for him to hug me tighter. He rocked us gently, holding me as if I was going to disappear into thin air. He kissed my hair repeatedly, and I managed to get my hand out of the sheets to clutch at his clothes, pulling him even closer to me.
He didn’t speak at all. He didn’t say a word, letting his arms and his heart do all of the talking for a while. My gasps quieted, but my tears never dried. Once I was able to breathe evenly again, I found myself saying, “Sh–she wanted to…” It was all I said before I started crying the ugly sobs again, realizing that this was why Mazen hadn’t said anything and had let me be.
Black Keys (The Colorblind Trilogy #1) Page 34