Imperial

7. Soraya

Soraya knelt before a small altar to Mithra, the skirt of her dress tucked beneath her and her lips moving in forming the prayers. The small alcove that housed this particular altar was not one of the more popular ones in the temple. It was a minor sanctum, located in a quiet corner of the temple complex. The Azar-Atash temple complex was the largest of its kind in all of Sazia, and its magnificence equaled its size. Each of the four great temples towered like mountains over hundreds of smaller shrines and innumerable tiny altars such as this one. Soraya preferred the smaller altars, the ones so unassuming and decrepit that they had fallen into disuse. Inside the sanctum, it seemed peaceful no matter how horrifying the world outside was.

The squat, stone structure couldn't have fit more than three worshippers lined up in a row, and the heat inside was somehow even worse than standing directly under the burning sun's gaze. Soraya ignored the sweat running down the back of her neck and continued to recite the old words.

She had never been devout, nor had she ever truly believed in the gods. If there was one thing that Soraya had learned growing up in the palace, it was that the gods were beings who existed for the sole purpose of being useful to the Sazian emperor. The al-Hassan family was descended from Fereydun, chosen warrior of Mithra and conqueror of the daevas. In the nearly eight-hundred-year history of her family's rule, the magis and the priests had never betrayed or abandoned the emperor.

Until now, at least.

Technically, she supposed, they were still loyal to the al-Hassan dynasty; only, they wished for her to be empress in Roshani's place. Still, it was unprecedented, the priests turning against Nishapur and rebuking the woman who was, for all intents and purposes, empress of Sazia.

Soraya picked up the small bronze bowl set on the ground beside her. She reached inside it and her hand closed around a handful of Jasmine. The sweet, heady scent of the flower filled the small space as Soraya flung the small white petals over Mithra's statue.

It was a beautiful sculpture, intricately carved from shining bronze and copper. The god stood in a pose of confidence, his feet firmly planted and his chin jutting outwards. In his left hand, he raised a burning torch, his invincible weapon against all darkness. According to the legends, he'd been born holding that same torch held aloft. Soraya had always been appalled by that story when she'd been younger, thinking of the young god's poor mother. That was before she'd understood that gods weren't born, not in the same way that mortals were.

Soraya took two more handfuls of jasmine and let the petals fall to the ground around the statue.

Her mother would have liked it here; the wide open spaces, the art and beauty everywhere you looked. Soraya desperately tried to push the thoughts away, but they came anyway. Her heart ached, physically ached, inside her chest. She had abandoned her mother in that place, in that palace which she'd once called home but was now a prison. The last moments of that night kept replaying in her head over and over. The night the shah had been killed and everything had been turned upside-down.

"The magis will protect you," her mother had said, pushing Soraya into the arms of two anxious-looking priests. The priests pressed against a brick and the wall had opened up, revealing a hidden passage.

"Come with me," Soraya had begged. She remembered the screams from outside the chamber slowly growing louder, and footsteps, violent footsteps, pounding against the floor.

Her mother had shaken her head. She held Kasra, Soraya's new brother, in her arms, rocking him slowly even as she spoke.

"I have to stay with Kasra," she'd said. "He'll give us away if he wakes up, and I can't-" Her mother paused, took a long, deep breath. "I won't leave him." Soraya had felt an inexplicable burst of hurt at those words, however little sense it made. An ugly urge inside her had wished for them to abandon Kasra and escape together, to safety.