Threads of Gold

Fifteen | پندرہ

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The Sultan often lit a fire underneath Zartasha's skin when she thought about his words, his mannerisms, his maqaam but she hadn't expected his touch on the edge of her jaw to burn the way it did. Maybe it was the heat of his large hands or maybe it was the way his fervid gaze was roaming over her disastrous face and form.

For her belief in her beauty being a thing of calamity was reaffirmed ever since it invited the worst of their time into her life; Sultan Arzam Hyderi.

Whose eyes of umber were now running across the length of her, pausing for a few moments at every curve, slope, and angle. It seemed her husband was memorizing the way their Rab had made her; from stubborn clay and a rebellious soul. A slave to her own greed and hatred.

And with that flicker of malice in her heart growing, she stood quiet and let Arzam learn her with his hands. Pressing against her skin and feeling the heavy fabric of her clothes in wonderment. Only when his rough hand came back to cup her face with his thumb itching to trace over her lips did she wrap her nimble fingers around his wrist. The Malka closed her eyes and tucked her secrets back into her bosom so they wouldn't spill out of her mouth in the heat of her anger. She exhaled sharply and let a simpering smile onto her lips before lowering her gaze to the floor.

Arzam knew it was a false facade of coyness, for Zartasha was a bold woman at heart. She was a woman of colour and trickery, it was what made him want her. It was what made her his. Still, the supreme ruler of Kalthura decided to go along with what his Malka had intended to do and say to him in the solitude of the Hyderi mehal's throne room.

In that moment, in his arms, in those chambers of harnessed rage and boastful victory; Zartasha was divine. While she was staring at him in saccharine disdain, all he could see was her and despite the Sultan's timeworn eye for detail, his bride blurred into the shades of his junoon in front of him. The red of her lehenga bleeding into the deep stain of her hand's mehendi was nothing but a reflection of his own red eyes as he drank her in. 

Noting Arzam's enthralled state, she moved his hand away from her face and closed the distance between them. The Malka then placed an agitated hand on his shoulder making him raise his head in question. She answered his tacit demand to explain herself with one of her scarlet-dipped fingers fluttering towards his jaw. "You called me beautiful, you called me cruel."

Sherqul's shehzadi made a show of voicing her simple musings into Sultan Arzam Hyderi's ear when they both knew that it was going to lead to something entirely else.

He only hummed in response for he looked forward to whatever his bride would grace him with.

Zartasha sighed and her jewellery moved with her chest as she stepped forward to drag her hand across the ends of his cropped beard. She had a feeling that the ghussa inside of her would eat her whole if she didn't let some of it out and the sting of her words could only be soothed by her touch if she were to deliver it to him.

So she twisted her fingers around his course jaw and turned the Sultan's indomitable neck away from his view of her face. The warm-blooded king stood malleable for his wife, he would let her finish what he had started.

The Malka pointed out, "You also called me your dulhan."

Arzam nodded his head slowly, finding nothing wrong with her statement but his restraint snapped when she retracted her hand before opening her mouth to tell him what she was foolishly seeking, "I've heard of cruel, beautiful dulhans before but have you ever heard of a runaway dulhan?"

Raising one brow, her lips tilted up to her right as she planted a seed of caution into the triumphant ruler's heart.

"What if I turn out to be a dulhan of that sort too?"