by Lucy Tempest
All doors were closed but mine.
Lungs constricting, I peeked through the crack.
On my bed was Cherine, sleeping with her head in our direction and a thick book open on her face.
Cora pushed me in, throwing open the door and yelling, “You left me!”
Cherine flipped over, hurling the book to the floor, fluffy dark blonde hair a mess. “Oh, there you two are.”
Cora pounced. Cherine flew back with a scream, dodging her clawing hands, hopping off and running around the chamber.
Cora chased her with one of those itchy throw pillows yelling, “You were supposed to do all the talking! It’s all your good for after all! You left me there and I had to eat that tasteless mush they served us!”
Cherine stopped trying to evade her, looking indignant. “Is food all you think about?”
“YES! Especially when I’m hungry!”
“Can you two stop yelling?” I begged. “This room echoes and I have a headache.”
“She started it!” Cherine yelled, pointing at Cora.
Cora shoved against me, reaching for Cherine. “You started it when you bolted off!”
Cherine hid behind me. “I didn’t know it would take so long!”
“It was two hours! I ran out of things to say after two minutes! Where did you even go all that time?”
“I can explain—eek!” Cherine ducked as the pillow came flying towards her head and hit me in the chest instead, knocking the air out of me in a dry cough.
“Enough!” I shoved Cora back and bumped Cherine to widen the gap between them. “What did I say about the yelling?”
They mercifully stopped, but I stayed between them, arms out to hold them apart. “And speaking of food, why don’t you order some here while I go freshen up? ”
I left them to sort themselves out and headed for the bathroom, stayed there until I got myself firmly under control. I came out to find three servants entering with five trays of food.
I rushed to take one and set it on my table. Once everything was arranged, we settled around it. Cora dug into her large river fish with bare hands and I took the entire bowl of nutty fried rice. Cherine picked at her kebabs unenthusiastically.
“So what was it?” I asked, spraying rice. “What sent you running off like that?”
Cherine distaste with our eating habits fled as excitement filled her eyes. “Remember when I told you about my dreams?”
“Which ones?” was what I assumed Cora said through her mouthful of fish.
“About the prince with the silver hair, the one who rescued me from the ghoul and carried me around.”
I almost inhaled the rice down the wrong pipe. I hadn’t expected her to bring up Ayman. It was still weird to have her refer to him with both shaking terror and dreamy wistfulness. Now he was a silver prince.
“Uh-huh?” I prompted.
“I found him.”
“Sure you did,” Cora snorted, picking fish bones out of her mouth.
“I did!” Cherine wiggled excitedly. “I saw him passing by when I was offering Rhodion tea. He was looking at me!” She leaned over to me, her elated eyes filling my vision. “He was watching me and rushed away when I noticed him.”
“That couldn’t have been him,” Cora argued. “He exists only in your dream.”
“It was him! He’s real!” she exclaimed in agitated delight.
So…she’d spotted Ayman spying on her and chased him for hours?
Cora rolled her eyes. “It must have been an outdoor guard. Those wear white headdresses.”
“It wasn’t a guard! He was fair, that much I could see, fairer than Ariane.”
“No one’s fairer than Ariane,” Cora brushed off, reaching for the plate of couscous-stuffed zucchinis. “If he was, then he must be a ghost.”
“He was not!” Cherine protested. “He’s real and he knew me. He was looking for me!”
“Then why did he run away?”
Cherine’s eyes grew rounder, her cheeks blazing with color. “Maybe he had somewhere to be. If he’s foreign and visiting for work then he must have had an appointment. But he’ll find me again, I’m certain of it.”
“Why do you care so much about him?” I asked her. “Aren’t you here for Cyrus?”
“Who?”
Oh. I’d forgotten only those close to him referred to him by that name.
Cherine waved. “Oh, Cyaxares. I kind of forgot about him.”
She’d forgotten the man she’d come here to win? Ayman carrying her and doting on her while she’d been barely conscious that night in the vault had really done a number on her psyche.
Cherine picked up my copy of The Anthology of the Dunes, the book she’d had over her face when we’d entered.
She flipped to an illustration, held the book out to us. “He looked just like this!”
It was a sideways depiction of the White Shadow of Avesta, an albino like Ayman, his long white hair flying in the wind as he raised his arm up to a giant simurgh.
Could I tell her about Ayman? He hid for a reason. Cherine herself had insisted he was a ghoul the first time she’d seen him sneaking around our room at night.
That question belonged on the list I had for Cyrus after the final test.
For now, I could only listen to her ramble on delightedly about her silver prince, and wonder what my prince would tell me when we met. I couldn’t even dare imagine.
Chapter Fifteen
Loujaïne had found out exactly who I was.
She burst into my new room to drag me out by my hair, yelling at me as I desperately clawed at her fingers, trying to loosen her grip on my scalp.
Though she claimed that she’d throw me in the dungeons, the door she threw me through was not that of a cell but a brightly lit ballroom. With my wrists and ankles shackled, I hobbled down the carpeted aisle to witness the joyless wedding of Cyrus and Fairuza. The seats were empty save for piles of gold and jewels.
Up on the altar Cyrus stood, a bronze statue, while Fairuza was an ice sculpture, melting slowly on the carpeted floor.
Cyrus’ bejeweled eyes carried the same quiet misery as the sculpture of Jumana Morvarid in the vault, but Fairuza’s dwindling ice sculpture had its mouth gaping wider on a silent scream as her features melted and a crack crept through her frozen stalk of a neck.
Warring emotions stormed within me. I couldn’t help either of them. Or understand if it was sorrow, despair or full-blown horror that cemented me to the encroaching darkness until it swallowed me.
I was back in the room we had taken our first exam in, at the back of the line waiting to be tested by Master Farouk. The light coming through the high windows before me was bright yet soft, washing out my surroundings and rendering the people around us into shades, faint remnants of what they used to be.
I tried to speak but my voice was a muted hum, like the echoing vibration of a plucked harp-string. Shocked, I looked down, expecting to see myself a faded echo, but I still retained my color. Only my outlines were fuzzy, like the edges of a rough yarn sweater.
The young women before me all wore summery clothes in a similar style. All from this region and its related cultures. The girl who left the line appeared very short, but once my eyes adjusted to the encompassing whiteness blaring from the windows I realized she had my proportions—only she carried her head under her arm, the stump of her neck still glistening with dark blood.
My lungs emptied in one shuddering gasp as my horrified eyes followed her fading trail.
Thoughts frozen with the scarring sight of the beheaded woman, I barely noticed the young woman moving past me. Her dark hair parted down the middle and fell in waves to frame her sad, wide face. Her big drooping eyes glimmered like peridots as she faded, disappearing among the sea of featureless ghosts, leaving a trail of melancholy in her wake like smoke.
What came after siphoned all my morbid fascination with the headless witch and the sad princess. Nariman, her amber eyes void of emotion, her red-tinted, da
rk hair appearing burgundy in the glare.
The most vivid thing in the room was no longer the light but the anger that sparked within me as I tried to grab her. But my hands went through her as if she was fog, and my movements were heavy and slow, like I was wading in quicksand.
Anger burned into frustration as I struggled to run after her, my yells for her to answer my questions leaving my mouth as smothered, incoherent noise.
The penultimate examinee put her hand on my shoulder as she left her spot. I jerked around to see how she was touching me, to ask if we could communicate.
All questions died when I recognized her.
My mother.
Different as she appeared, I knew it was her. Felt it was her.
Anguish seared through me as I tried lifting my arms, my frigid fingers aching to touch her face, grab onto her dress and pull myself closer. All I wanted was to cling to her, close my eyes and forget myself and the world in the safety of her arms.
“I miss you,” I tried to say, the sound that vibrated past my lips a lamenting minor-key note released off the swipe of a rough bow on the strings of my soul.
Her hand moved from my shoulder to cup my cheek, a comforting touch I could barely feel. She appeared younger, with a fuller face and longer hair, soft light pulsing within her rather than bouncing off her, her blue-grey eyes the most precise color in the room.
Her lips moved but no sound emerged. I tried to read them. I only made out a few words.
Sorry. Left. Lead. Away. Find.
After “Find” she said one last word, and despite her slowly enunciating it, it didn’t register with me. Like it was a foreign term beyond my grasp.
Before I could ask her to speak louder, clearer, beg her to stay, my mother began to fade before me. Panic surged like bile, burning my insides and melting my eyes as I reached harder for her. But she still disappeared, like mist in the midday sun.
Overwhelmed with helplessness, I curled in on myself and broke down in tearless sobs that shook me until I started coming apart.
I couldn’t bear being like this anymore. Helpless in my situation, fragile in my mind, and desperate for solutions that kept eluding my grasp.
As my breakdown ran its course, a low, piercing whistle penetrated the muted state of the room, startling me back into focus.
Where my mother had stood was now a clear view of the table. It had many things on it, but there were no judges along its entire length.
Ada, a distant voice called.
I searched for its source, found no one left around as I waded towards the table.
In place of the cane, book, tea set and metal boxes from the first test were a folded, golden wedding dress, a ring with a glowing stone--and a gold lamp!
The voice called again, more urgent. Ada!
I ignored it. I couldn’t bear to look away from what lay before me.
There it was, the thing I’d been risking my life to find the whole month.
I needed to grab the lamp and run out of the room, out of Cahraman. I had to give it to Nariman and end all this madness before it consumed us all.
But…a part of me hesitated, kept my hand stuck hovering above the table.
The wedding dress beckoned, toying with my priorities, appealing to my basest, most selfish yearnings for a secure life, forever bound with the man I wanted. And the ring, possibly the one Cyrus mentioned could grant wishes, was pulling on my desires like a magnet.
Did my situation need to go the way I dreaded it would? That I’d remain completely at Nariman’s mercy, whether I found what I was sent here for or not? Or could I find a way around this mess, a way to outwit her?
ADA!
The voice blew through the room, a piercing shockwave shattering it to a million pieces as the table and its offerings fell into the darkness.
My scream splintered in my chest as I spiraled into nothingness. “NO!”
“ADA, WAKE UP!”
With a startled gasp, my eyes flew open to be met with searing brightness. Recognition of my surroundings seeped in from the edges, focusing my blurry view.
Cherine was leaning over me, her hair loose and messy, her slim brows almost meeting in a worried squint.
I struggled up on my elbows, in my new bed, found Cora on my left, hugging the bedpost, hand still on my shoulder.
“What happened?”
Cherine slumped down on the bed, lips quivering, voice unsteady. “You wouldn’t wake up!”
Cora sat on my other side. “You gave us quite a scare.”
Touched, I reached out my arms, pulling them both into a hug. “I’m alright.”
Cora pressed her rough palm on my forehead, checking for a fever. “You sure?”
No, I wasn’t. But by now I knew lying to Cora was pointless. Still, until I figured out some plan, I’d keep my strange dreams, that didn’t feel like dreams, and the feelings they inspired to myself.
A knock on my open door turned our heads.
“Is everyone decent?”
Cyrus, in a fitted cream shirt and grey pants stuffed in dark brown leather boots, stood in my doorway. His hair, while not messy, wasn’t immaculately styled like before, had a rakish look to it, like he’d run his fingers through it. He looked different today, less refined but not at ease. His good-natured tone was at odds with the apprehension in his eyes.
“Good morning, ladies.” He remained in the doorway, Ayman’s armored figure hovering behind him, his purple eyes fixed on my right, on Cherine. “Breakfast will be a bit early this morning.”
I sat up, my arms still around the girls. “Why? Did something happen?”
“You could say that circumstances have changed the nature of today’s test,” he said, checking behind him as Fairuza’s door opened across the hall.
Cherine wiggled off the mattress, holding my arm across her collarbones, dragging me with her, and by extension, Cora. “Oooh! What’s the theme today?”
His lips quirked at her enthusiasm. “You’re going to like this.”
“Like what?” I mumbled, numb legs dangling off the bed, sagging against Cora as she rested her cheek on my head.
“Arguing.” He flashed us a teasing grin as he turned away from the door. “Today, you’re going to bargain.”
Chapter Sixteen
Our train trip was longer than any of us had anticipated. Somehow, going that far away from Sunstone unsettled me more with every passing mile.
Cora, Cherine and I were thankfully without royal company, and free to juggle as many topics and jokes as we liked without awkward pauses or glares of disapproval. But whenever they snagged on a disagreement and bickered, my focus drifted back to the nightmares that had held me in their chokehold until the girls had forcibly woken me.
They hadn’t felt like my usual nebulous dreams or my fear-fueled nightmares. They’d had an—otherworldly quality to them. Remembering them still made my guts twist with the horror and helplessness I’d felt at Cyrus and Fairuza’s gruesome wedding, and the impossible choice of the table of temptations.
But it was the part where I’d seen the younger version of my mother and the other three women that still gripped me by the throat.
My mind could have been trying to reconstruct Nariman’s story about her princess, fellow witches, and their tragic fates. It now swirled in my head like incense, something hard to breathe in, but not repulsive enough to reject.
At least some of her story had to be true. Cyrus had proved as much. That meant the girls being tested had to be the late princess and her ladies-in-waiting. The headless woman, the first to leave the line, must have been Hessa, the weakest witch who’d been blamed for the infertility of King Darius’s wife and executed. The sad ghost of the princess had looked too much like the sculpture of Jumana Morvarid...
The realization formed at once, solid and undeniable.
Jumana was Cyrus’s mother.
I didn’t even know how I hadn’t realized this before. But once that conclusion lodged into my mind, mo
re pieces of the puzzle I was trapped in crashed into place.
The first time I’d laid eyes on Cyrus, he’d been fleeing the vault. I’d never gotten a clear answer as to what he’d been doing there, but now it all made sense.
When he’d taken me down there again, he’d lit Jumana an incense bowl, set a rose at her sculpture's feet, and spoken about her with conflicted emotions. He’d intimated that she’d taken her own life, but had still empathized with her enough to visit her and honor her as one would a goddess. He’d been shocked to find her likeness gracing the sculpture of Anaïta, the Goddess of Love in the temple we’d visited before the third test. It all pointed to him mourning the mother he never knew.
Though that realization was momentous, I could only care about one fact now. That Jumana had been closely connected to Nariman.
To know more about Nariman I had to know more about the last girl to become the Princess of Cahraman, and why her story had ended so tragically.
I also needed to know if my mother had truly been involved in this situation, if she was from Almaskham like I suspected. Or if I was reconciling two separate Dorreyas based on circumstantial evidence.
My mother. I’d been trying to avoid focusing on the part where she’d appeared to try to talk to me. Whenever the memory touched my mind, pain choked me and threatened to pour down my face. And I wouldn’t be able to justify my condition to anyone.
It’s just that since she’d died, I hadn’t once dreamed of her.
It had been one of the reasons I had been so bereft, had felt so alone, not even having comforting dreams of her.
Then my mind had finally let me see her, and it was far from comforting.
“I don’t think so!” Cherine’s squeak jerked me out of my melancholy. Grateful for the distraction, I turned to the girls.
Cora and Cherine were trading guesses about what issue we were going to settle today. As I listened, I realized that Cherine’s suggestions were, for once, more realistic while Cora’s got more outlandish by the suggestion.
The highlights included Cherine’s “What if they found a new gold mine at our border with Gemisht and now we’re facing claim issues?” and Cora’s dry, mocking “What if a giant crab crawled out of your seashore and tap-danced over the villagers?”