[ WATTYS '18 LONG-LISTED ]
❝ I have slit throats far more beautiful than yours.❞
In which a thousand brides have fallen, and she is the last, so she spins a tale as old as time to live the dawn.
| an arabian nights x beauty and the beast crossover...
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SHAHRAZAD REALISES why she was brought into the King's chambers when she enters hers, stepping forward on careful feet.
It is littered with broken vases, damaged shutters, and blood spills across the rugs like a casually flowing river of crimson.
Laleh wrinkles her nose. "This is absolutely disgusting."
So it is, a jarring reminder of a rebellion tearing through the streets. And it isn't close to the end, no, it is nearing towards them, threatening to destroy an empire created on ruins.
Perhaps it will.
"And," the handmaiden says then, "The King said that you're welcome to reside in his room until this is taken care of."
She nervously fiddles with the band on her finger. It's best that she stays in another place, away from him, but she sighs in agreement anyway. Striding gingerly, her fingers barely skim the railing, when the curtains fall in a thud. "They damaged almost everything."
"I'm sorry, Malika," Laleh breathes, picking the shattered remnants on the floor. "We were told that only a handful of rebels were coming, not an entire troop."
Shahrazad lowers her hesitant glare. "I'm starting to doubt the intentions behind the rebellion."
"As am I," she agrees, pulling herself onto her feet. "They were willing to kill anyone."
She frowns, recalling the strange tale sprawling overhead, across Shahryar's ceiling, and his placid demeanour. "If you all hate him so much, why don't you stop serving him?"
"Uh, we can't," Laleh answers, fast and abrupt, drawing her veils. "We're kind of bound to this palace, in a sense."
That is when something begins to make sense, as though the darkness has shielded everything that remains twisted. It's not merely Shahryar who is cursed. It's all of them.
Perhaps the palace is a labyrinth of madness, and anyone stepping inside is trapped under an unfathomable insanity themselves, one that they can't escape. "Bound?"
The handmaiden blinks several times, brought back into the frame of reality. "I didn't say that."
"You did," Shahrazad points heatedly, stumbling across revelations nobody is willing to disclose each day. "What did you mean by that?"
"Nothing. Pretend that I said nothing."
"I won't. And if you don't tell me, I'll find someone who will," she says confidently, crossing her arms to appear composed.
Laleh eyes her. "Who exactly?"
"Farha," she blurts, unmoving.
If there's anything she knows, it's that the eunuch is a larger part of this madness than she is letting on. And that makes her all the more an important alibi.
