In the winding streets of the Persian Empire, a poor girl is chosen to become the third prince's concubine.
Aliya Farhad has no interest in the lofty ideas of the palace, the staff, or her lover. Prince Cairo has all the interest in his blue-eyed A...
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WE ARRIVED AT MARYAM'S ROOM much later than I would have liked.
"Thank you for escorting me, Prince," I murmured. "My apologies for bothering you."
"It's no trouble," he said, smiling. The noon light filtered through the window and as it hit his hair, I almost mistook the devil for a halo.
Slowly, I nodded, walking forward to reach out to the door knob.
Halfway through, though, I paused.
Through the thick, dense door, I could just make out a little bit of giggling.
Who...?
Turning back, I glanced towards the window.
Prince Cairo was still there, still waiting; waiting for what, though, I couldn't be sure. The only thing I could truly tell was that Prince Cairo's head was turned away, and this was just enough privacy for me to lower my head and press my ears closer to the gap.
"Stop." The voice was unmistakably Maryam's. "Anyone could walk in now... No, what are you doing? That's not fair! What are you--"
Another wave of giggling.
Suddenly, that bad feeling I'd had earlier rushed back in.
"Stop it," Maryam laughed again. Her voice had gotten louder, and as the panic set in, I whipped my head back to see Prince Cairo's face.
His head was still turned away.
"What are you doing? You really--"
"Maryam?" I wondered if anyone could hear the way my voice shook.
Abruptly, the laughter inside her room stopped.
"Maryam? It's Aliya," I said. "I've come to visit you. Could you open the door for me?"
My voice had come up a few pitches in tone, had become far sharper and louder than I had ever intended for it to sound. Perhaps it was a symptom of panic, or perhaps it was the underlying dread, the anxiety of hoping things not to be true — but understanding that, at this point, they entirely were — that pitched my voice into the kind that I hated on everybody else.
The silence that followed my words was vicious.
"Maryam?"
"Uh, one moment! I'm changing my clothes!"
But Maryam had never been a good liar.
I could hear the rustle of clothes behind the door, the panicked sounds of footsteps running, the sound of a curtain swishing, the sharp thud of a wardrobe side door being pushed closed.
People liked to say that the coming of intolerable news makes the heart drop one foot at a time, folding and falling and crushable under the heel of a woman's shoe, but I felt the opposite.
