Prince of Cahraman: A Retelling of Aladdin (Fairytales of Folkshore Book 2)

by Lucy Tempest

  “This is your way out of Cahraman.”

  I grabbed his arm, choking up again. “Thank you, really, you have no idea how much your help means to me.”

  He drew his cowl further down, so all I could see was his mouth twitching in a fake smile. “No problem.”

  “No, really. You didn’t need to do all of this, especially after things went bad with Cherine.”

  “I didn’t agree to help you because you could introduce me to her.” He crossed his arms under his cloak, looking offended.

  “Then why did you?”

  “You made Cyrus happy, even if it was just for a while,” he admitted, further crushing my heart. “And you were nice to me when you had no reason to be.”

  I jumped up on my tiptoes and hugged him. He stumbled back, not knowing what to do with his arms until he steadied them by his sides, stiff and uncertain.

  “Tell him I’m sorry,” I sobbed against his chest. “And that I—that I loved him. With all I am. Please.”

  “You should tell him yourself.” One of his hand rose to my back, hovered there before patting me hesitantly. “But I suppose you have your reasons.”

  I hugged him tighter, squeezing my eyes shut to hold back tears. I failed.

  “Here a day early, I see,” said a cold, amused voice.

  Nariman.

  My breath hitched in my chest as I met her eyes from over Ayman’s shoulder. Reflected in them was every harrowing moment of the past weeks.

  Everything I’d been through, everything I’d done, had all been to reach this moment.

  I’d started out as her prey. Then I’d become her instrument. Now—now I’d be her downfall.

  Stepping away from Ayman, I faced her, blood burning, at what she’d done and with anticipation of what I would do.

  “I have to say I’m impressed you made it out intact,” Nariman said as she advanced. She wore a wine-red velvet cloak, her dark hair held up in a chignon by a sparkling set of hair-sticks, her gold snake staff clutched in her ringed hand.

  Ayman staggered back, scattering the sand of the firm dunes beneath us. “Lady Rostam?”

  If she was surprised to see him, she didn’t show it.

  She stopped a foot away from him and examined his face from different angles. “I feel like I haven’t seen you in ages, Ayman. You were always hiding in the shadows and under that ugly armor.”

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded, shock jostling his normally expressionless tone.

  “I should be asking you the same question. Can’t remember the last time you went this far out without being Cyrus’s shadow,” she said casually, circling us in long strides. “But now that you’re out, you don’t have to go back in. I could use someone like you for when everything is finally set right.”

  He gaped at her. “What are you talking about?”

  She ignored his question as she circled back to her spot before him, leaning in to squint at his features. “Don’t scowl, dear, it makes you look like your mother. You don’t know how much restraint it took for me not to bash her royal skull in every time she made that sour face at me.”

  Royal…? Sour face…?

  Loujaïne.

  Loujaïne was Ayman’s mother.

  More pieces of the puzzle suddenly crashed in place.

  Ayman being from Almaskham. Loujaïne having been married and divorced by Azal, a prince of that nation. Her hostility towards Ayman.

  It seemed, like everyone else, she saw his birth as a curse, his appearance grounds for her divorce and destruction of her marital life and future prospects.

  I was still reeling with the realizations when Nariman came before me and took my chin between her fingers, tilting my face up to hers. “Adelaide, it’s so good to see you again.”

  After so long of being afraid of her, now I was no longer powerless, defiance flared within me fueling my angry sarcasm. “With you holding my friends hostage, I hope you don’t expect me to reciprocate that statement.”

  She sighed dramatically. “I guess I shouldn’t. But we did have a deal, the lamp in exchange for Bonnie and her father’s lives.”

  I thumbed my ring as I stepped away from her. I put a dozen feet between us, before showing her the inside of my bag. “I want them back now.”

  Nariman let out a soft gasp at the sight of the lamp as it gleamed in the last rays of sunset.

  I clenched my fist, feeling the metal band on my finger bite into my skin. I wanted to strike, to throw her into the ocean, to banish her to Faerie. But I had to wait. I couldn’t jeopardize my rescue now that it was so close.

  “This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” I said through gritted teeth.

  Excitement shook her features and voice as she gazed at it with reverent fascination. “It certainly is.”

  “You got what you wanted. Congratulations. Now uphold your end of the deal. Hand them over and you get this.”

  She raised one hand and snapped her fingers. A circle of red light blasted out from around her and into the unseen distance. “There we go.”

  I held my breath, waiting for the Fairborns to appear.

  They didn’t.

  I rounded on her, yelling, “Where are they? We had a deal!”

  “And it has been fulfilled. Bonnie is not at risk of being eaten by the beast anymore.”

  She wasn’t going to give them back. She was never going to give them back.

  “Nariman, give them back and send us home!”

  She paid my shouts no mind, striding towards me, hands outstretched.

  Anger exploded within me as I whispered to the ring, wishing for it to trap her.

  Fire blasted across the sand around us. The flames met in a circle that trapped Nariman in a ring of blazing blue so hot it turned the sand to glass.

  “What is this?” she gasped, her cool composure for the first time overrun by a genuine emotion; shock. “Whose magic is this?”

  “Be quiet!” I raised the ring to my mouth, trembling with fury. “I wish Nariman would do as I say.”

  She stared at me through the flickering flames, amber eyes wide, caught in a processing silence like Cherine and Cyrus when I’d influenced their thoughts.

  This was it. There would be no more of her tricks and everything would go back to the way it was.

  Blood pumping with the thrill of the magic, and the power I held over her, I made my demand. “I wish for Nariman to send the Fairborns and I back to where she found us and for her to return to Almaskham and never leave it again.”

  Unblinking, Nariman raised her cane, pointing it ahead.

  My excitement began to churn as a portal yawned into existence, a spiral of wind and light.

  But this one was different from either her first portal or Marzeya’s. It was ever-shifting, showing glimpses of two scenes. The first was of the Hornswoods, where Nariman had first snatched us, the trees pale and washed out in a wet twilight.

  In the second I saw—Bonnie!

  And she wasn’t in a dank, dark dungeon as I’d feared.

  She was in a sunlit green-marble room with a mezzanine that encircled its walls. Between its high windows were massive bookshelves, with ladders propped against them, and colorful books crowding them from top to bottom.

  Chattering excitedly, Bonnie stood on tiptoes in a blush-pink dress, her hair rolled in a bun, reaching for a book. The sound of clopping hooves echoed, drowning her words.

  A man entered the scene, but not on horseback. This bespectacled, bearded man was half-goat from the waist-down, with horns protruding from his auburn curls!

  The satyr brought the book down for her and said something that made her laugh.

  As they turned to leave, Bonnie stopped dead, her wide-eyed stare pinned towards me.

  She saw me!

  Dropping the book on a piercing cry, she ran towards the growing portal.

  Wracked with disbelief, I rushed to the portal, calling her name and panting with relieved laughter.

  It was all over, it was
all—

  Cold, hard metal struck the back of my head.

  An explosion of pain and vertigo sent me crashing to the ground.

  I clawed at the sand, trying to steady the world, to drag myself up. Pain and panic scattered whatever lucid thoughts remained as I saw Ayman and Cora fly off the ground, only to crash in opposite directions, impacting the hard dunes with nauseating thuds and agonized shouts. My scream came out a chafing whimper as I watched the portal shut down, dwindling as Bonnie rushed towards me, hand outstretched.

  Then it was gone.

  My worst nightmare only escalated as the flames entrapping Narmian were snuffed and she stepped over the hot glass left in their wake, shattering it as she howled with laughter.

  She gestured, and her staff flew back into her hand. “You almost had me for a minute there!”

  No. How could she have denied me? The wish had worked! She’d done as I said!

  Why had it stopped working?

  “It was a passable attempt, Adelaide, but I thought you were smarter than this. I am the most powerful witch of my generation. I am the one who commands minds and fates. You cannot control me!”

  With a flick of her wrist, my bag tore from beneath me to her.

  I watched her helplessly as she took out the lamp, held it in delicate hands by the handle and spout, gazed at it in awe.

  She turned in her hands, eyeing the lid, then she pulled her sleeve over her hand to polish its side.

  Rubbing faster, Nariman stepped over me, saying the same strange words, over and over again. On the last chant, I understood their meaning, even when they themselves remained foreign.

  “Come forth at my command and fulfill my every demand!”

  Sparking purple and indigo smoke flowed out of the lamp’s spout in thick, curling clouds, turning red as they settled in the air around us.

  “You were supposed to give them back!” I coughed, heavy smoke rushing into my lungs, the clouds now thick enough to block most of my sight.

  Only Nariman remained clear in the middle of the billowing of noxious fumes, holding the smoking lamp overhead as it glowed and shook with a crackling noise that rose until it rivaled thunder.

  “I never said you would get her back, I just promised she wouldn’t be sacrificed to Rosemead’s beast,” Narimane shouted over the din, smug with power. “And you saw she won’t. If you want her, you’ll have to go get her yourself.”

  I whispered desperate wishes to the ring again, but this time nothing happened. Rage accumulated like steam within me as I staggered up, escaping me in a scream as I rushed at her.

  Red flames shot out of the spout, burning through the smoke, singeing me as they knocked me back. The barrier of the terrible crackling broke, revealing it to be unbridled, manic laughter.

  The lamp jumped from her hands levitating in the air as flames poured out of it, spiraling up in the air in an ever-widening tornado, taking the form of a fiery, humanoid creature.

  It was the genie I had failed to summon.

  The scene was straight out of my anthology’s illustrations. A gigantic being of living fire rising from a blazing cyclone that poured out of a bottle. The only difference was that it now did out of a solid gold lamp.

  The ring had misled me. When I’d asked it what it was, it had shown me a genie in a bottle, the one that had appeared to Esfandiar. It had me believe that with or without the one in the lamp, the one in my ring, with its unlimited wishes, would be superior.

  But whatever lived in my ring was nothing like that.

  The genie’s blazing form settled before us as the lamp hit the ground, burning the dunes into glass. Its laughter turned the wind into a gale that spun its smoke and turned the dusky landscape into a moonless night.

  Too bright to fully discern, its only clear features its pointed ears and the golden shackles binding it to its lamp, the genie bowed to Nariman.

  “Mistress, one who has set me free, wishes I shall grant thee but no more than three.”

  My hands flew to my ears as its rumbling voice shook apart the desert around us, and almost uprooted my heart and every bone in my body.

  Nariman stepped up on the highest dune around us and raised her hands to the genie in silent praise, her hair falling out of its roll and flying in the hot wind, her eyes tearing up from the smoke but her mouth spreading in an ecstatic smile.

  “Genie, I wish to be what I should have been all those years ago.” Her voice rose with glee and command. “I wish to be the Queen of Cahraman!”

  I fell to my knees as the genie’s laughter exploded, quaking the whole world around us. The vortex of fire and smoke swatted me around as it reached hurricane strength.

  Suddenly, everything died down.

  I rose on trembling arms, mouth and eyes full of burning sand, looked around, desperately searching for Cora and Ayman. And what I saw froze every drop of blood in my veins.

  In the background, the city walls were crumbling to the desert like a house of cards, their demolition shaking the earth and tearing rifts in it that radiated like tentacles in every direction. The mushrooming cloud of destruction rose and hung in the air before it started settling, making way for a swarm of thundering clouds that further darkened the land as lightning struck towers and temples, setting them aflame, as her wish distorted everything.

  In place of all the luminous, gleaming structures that made Cahraman a jewel of beauty and magic, towered dark, ominous structures that reeked of hatred and fear and evil.

  Nariman had remade Cahraman in her image

  I remained on my knees, paralyzed, watching everything I’d failed to imagine coming true.

  I’d been forced to come here to save my friends from a horrible fate. I’d left for good to save Cyrus from the decisions that would have thrown his life and kingdom in chaos. I’d come to face Nariman in a bid to fix everything.

  But there’d been no point to any of it.

  Bonnie was still thousands of miles away and Cyrus’s kingdom was being irreversibly warped before my very eyes.

  It hadn’t mattered what choice I made, whether I left or stayed.

  From my first step past the city gates, my arrival had spelled doom for Cahraman.

  Note from the Author

  I hope you've enjoyed the second installment in the Cahraman Trilogy. Reviews are the life-blood of Indie Authors, so please take the time to leave one on Amazon and/or Goodreads.

  If you haven’t read it yet, read where it all began in #1 Amazon Bestseller, THIEF OF CAHRAMAN.

  COMING SOON—Ada’s adventures comes to a climactic conclusion in QUEEN OF CAHRAMAN.

  For news and updates and special offers, please sign up to my VIP mailing list at Here!

  I love to hear from my readers, so please contact me at lucytempestauthor@gmail.com

  Thank you for reading!

  Lucy

  Pronunciation Guide

  — People

  Ariane: Aa-ree-ann

  Cherine: Sheh-reen

  Cyaxares: Sigh-ak-sa-reez

  Esfandiar: Ess-fun-dee-yuhr

  Etheline: Eth-ell-leen

  Fairuza: Fey-roo-zah

  Farouk: Fah-rooq

  Jumana: Zhoo-mah-nah

  Loujaïne: Loo-zhaiy-enn

  Marzeya: Mar-zey-yuh

  Nariman: Nah-ree-mann

  Ornella: Ore-nell-ah

  — Places:

  Almaskham: Ul-maz-kham

  Cahraman: Quh-rah-maahn

  Campania: Kaam-pahn-yuh

  Ericura: Air-ree-cue-ruh

  Orestia: Au-ress-tee-ya

  Tritonia: Try-tone-yaa

  Zhadugar: Ja-doo-gaar

  About the Author

  With one foot in reality and the other one lodged firmly in fantasy, Lucy Tempest has been spinning tales since she learned how to speak. Now, as an author, people can experience the worlds she creates for themselves.

  Lucy lives in Southern California with her family and two spoiled cats, who would make terrible famil
iars.

  Her young adult fantasy series FAIRYTALES OF FOLKSHORE is a collection of interconnected fairytale retellings, each with a unique twist on a beloved, timeless tale.

  Visit her and sign up to her VIP mailing list HERE!

  And follow her on BOOKBUB, AMAZON and GOODREADS

  Also By Lucy Tempest

  THIEF OF CAHRAMAN