A Guide to Charming Royals

Chapter Thirty-Two: ARIAH

We venture through the hallways, wondering whether the past matters, if we should look further into this business concerning Uncle Rami and Sohail. Perhaps, Ardam is right, we shouldn't concern ourself with someone else's life, rather our focus should be on the future.

To free our mind of these thoughts, we search the palace for a library, certain that there are at least two in the west side of the palace where we are residing. Eventually, we climb a steep set of stairs to wooden doors, and before we can reach for the doorknob ourself, a guard pulls it open.

The door opens into thousands and thousands of colourful spines of books on wooden shelves. A spiral staircase leads to the second floor, with more books, all of them sorted by colour. We love a good book, and even better, a beautiful location.

Our fingers run over the spines, opening some of the books to take in the scent of paper, before we find our way to the backside, where shelves are lined with photo albums.

We flip through the ones from the recent ones, finding many photos of Resha, and her parents, but barely any of Madyan. So, I search through the years before, when Madyan would've been younger, taken by an urge to know the person he'd been–is–in the years we missed out on his life.

Most photos of him are at fencing competitions or practices, where he looks the happiest. We find a photo of a younger version of him sleeping, with a book splayed out on his chest, and lips parted. We don't quite know why, but we pull it out of its section, tucking it into our jacket pocket. It's too cute to not keep. There is one of him graduating university with an engineering degree, and we are sad to know we missed this part of his life.

Whilst looking for more photos of him, I find one of Auntie Omaiza with a baby. She's smiling, holding the newborn to her face, and I'm not entirely sure who the baby is, so I flip to the first page, where a name is scribbled with the date the photos range from.

Ariah Hoorain Ul-Medina

10-04-2000 to 05-01-2001

There are photos of us–from when we were born. We didn't think Auntie Omaiza would keep any reminders of us, or our family for that matter, and yet, here we are. While flipping through the photos, we come across one with Madyan and us. He must have been two and a half, or older, where he is holding us in his arms, and kissing our cheek. Another one is of him laying next to us, the two of us asleep.

Nostalgia for a past we don't remember twists through our heart, and we snap the album close, and search even further back, looking for our parents and Madyan's parents. We flip through another one, this one dated six years before our birth. There's a photo of Auntie Omaiza wearing a fairy pin, just like the one Uncle Rami had given to us years ago. For a moment, we consider it as a coincidence, before a plausible explanation settles in. Uncle Rami gave us Auntie Omaiza's pin.

In the same album, there's a photo of a party. We're not sure what the celebration was for, not at first until we notice a sign behind a young Uncle Rami, that reads Prince Harris weds Lady Omaiza. It's from one of Auntie Omaiza and Uncle Harris's wedding ceremonies. But in the photo, it's who Uncle Rami stands with that makes us frown. The longer we look at the stranger, the more we think he resembles Madyan. How would that be possible?

We grab the photo and decide we'd like to ask Uncle Rami of who the boy with him is. So, we head toward his chambers, hoping to catch him before he retires for the night.

"Uncle Rami," we greet, walking into his chambers. He sits on the couch, writing into a notebook, before he tucks it under his pillow. He offers us a smile.

"Şehzadi," he answers. "What brings you to us?"

"We wanted to ask you something." We extend the photograph toward him. He climbs out of bed and toward us. "We found this. Doesn't the boy next to you look a lot like Madyan?"