Threads of Gold

Ten | دس

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Zartasha had her answer.

She leaned forward, aware of the sweet incense on her skin and the impotent poison in her breath. The shehzadi's lips twisted into a saccharine smile after she enunciated, "I refuse."

She moved her jutting neck back as soon as her refusal had left the home it made on her tongue. And she shifted her slanting legs away when her refusal had finished running the length of the space between her and the Sultan.

The Malka-to-be realized Sultan Arzam Hyderi's wrath was not like the subtle steam her hair lamp left in its wake, fading and quiet after the warmth of the coal had touched it. No, Arzam's ghussa was alive. It more closely resembled an avalanche spawning from two broken-off mountains, tumultuous and cutting. It appeared the Sultan had always carried intemperate anger inside him, anger that she was now witnessing.

Zartasha spotted the flare of his nostrils and the tightening of his jaw, the veins threaded together around his jugular seemingly close to snapping. The subtle rise and fall of his chest added to the blaring quiet that had befallen them but the Sultan's hushed heaving was not without a repercussion of its own: his burning eyes were fixated and narrowed, watching her face.

Unsettled by the supreme ruler of Kalthura, notably for the third time since he had barged into her life, the shehzadi twisted her body intending to distance herself from him.

She took a hesitant step backwards as if a dream drifting away but when she continued to stare at the Sultan head-on while reversing her tread, he was sure that he was chasing a nightmare instead.

However, this nightmare was one without which his nights would not pass: his clouds would be stationary, his moon a crinkled silver sheet, and his sky lacking stars.

The chime of Zartasha's anklet was a telling sign that she would not stop moving away from him and the sound rang loud in his ears. Louder than the wails of his captives, louder than the pleading he often heard at his feet, even louder than the horns his warriors blew before a war of his choosing took place. Her separation was a screaming declaration to Arzam and so, he began moving towards her with a different motive in mind.

The elaborate feast laid out on his table had stopped letting off steam, the night sky outside his domed mehal a bruising shade of ink. His surroundings were enervated and black, like their Sultan. It became apparent to Arzam that it now fell upon him to take the reins of her fate and steer the brittle gold threads onto a path where they would entwine with his own.

Sultan Hyderi's stride towards her grew jaunty, the steps large and full of vigour; Zartasha's feet moved backwards with the same haste.

The pair continued their dance but the shehzadi knew that soon she would have to stop, soon the ground wouldn't have inches left to give her, and soon their oscillating duet would lead to her being cornered. With that threat wrapping itself around her mind, the Malka-to-be decided to sharply turn to the side and resume walking away from the Sultan in a different direction.

The pivot gave her a chance at getting away before her time ran out but Zartasha did not anticipate crashing into a piece of furniture behind her. When the side of her hip was against the ebony table, she realized that fate was against her too.

Zartasha found herself standing above the chair placed at the head of the table, at Arzam's previous seat, with the ruler of Kalthura himself rapidly approaching. He was three paces away when she grasped that the back of her thighs had hit something. He was two paces away when she barely curtailed her trip over the skirts of her lehenga. And he was only one pace away when she had finished blinking.