VI.

It has been a while since I entered the Palace, and since I have written in you. I did not know what I was expecting, but this place is truly colder than I had imagined it would be. It feels like the walls suck the energy out of your bones and the essence from your soul; I have been here for two weeks, and I feel like death.

The work in the Palace cannot be considered difficult, but I feel that each day is more draining than the last. Perhaps it is because there is no confidant for me here, but at the same time, I believe it must be better for me to stay here than to come back home. I must believe this, or I feel that whatever strength I have mustered to flee will disappear, and I will simply lose all courage.

Losing all courage is a dangerous thing. Without courage, I do not believe I can continue to hope.

***

IX.

The library within the Palace is beautiful. It is the largest thing I have seen, and it is very much a shame that I am not as literate as I wish to be. Perhaps my biggest regret in life would be that I cannot give my daughter the foundation she needs to be above me. Perhaps she will find that herself. Perhaps daughters are meant to be better than their mothers, but a selfish part of me refuses to give her what I did not have.

It doesnt matter. She will not have the chance to enter this library in this lifetime, nor this Palace. In my heart, I hope she never encounters my circumstances.

The longer I stay here, the more I feel that there is something strange in this Palace...

***

XIII.

That third prince is odd. He is the same age as my child, but when I look at him, there are no maternal feelings; I only feel cold. Perhaps it is   because the bearing of a prince cannot compare to my daughter's, a poor family's child from Babylon.

Compared to the other royal children, he is very polite, almost too polite. But he is a concubine-borne prince, so it is inevitable for him to be slighted by some servants. Everytime they do so, his smile does not falter, but I feel that his eyes grow cold...

It is almost like a demon, but his face also looks like it holds much sympathy.

I wonder if I am simply used to being observant, and have started putting in too many thoughts into what I see.

It is not good for a maid to think too much, and it is a capital crime to gossip of one's royal family. However, I have no human confidant to whisper to, and no one will know what I write in you. As long as I hide you well, no one will ever know.
It has been a while since I entered the Palace, and since I have written in you. I did not know what I was expecting, but this place is truly colder than I had imagined it would be. It feels like the walls suck the energy out of your bones and the essence from your soul; I have been here for two weeks, and I feel like death.

The work in the Palace cannot be considered difficult, but I feel that each day is more draining than the last. Perhaps it is because there is no confidant for me here, but at the same time, I believe it must be better for me to stay here than to come back home. I must believe this, or I feel that whatever strength I have mustered to flee will disappear, and I will simply lose all courage.

Losing all courage is a dangerous thing. Without courage, I do not believe I can continue to hope.

***

IX.

The library within the Palace is beautiful. It is the largest thing I have seen, and it is very much a shame that I am not as literate as I wish to be. Perhaps my biggest regret in life would be that I cannot give my daughter the foundation she needs to be above me. Perhaps she will find that herself. Perhaps daughters are meant to be better than their mothers, but a selfish part of me refuses to give her what I did not have.

It doesnt matter. She will not have the chance to enter this library in this lifetime, nor this Palace. In my heart, I hope she never encounters my circumstances.

The longer I stay here, the more I feel that there is something strange in this Palace...

***

The night passed like this; sleepless, and filled with stories of the owner of this journal.

I knew Maria was curious, and at the same time worried; she had opened her mouth several times after the first round of questioning why I looked so pale, why my eyebags were so dark, and why my hair was a mess, but I did not deign to respond, and eventually she knew not to ask.

It was hard on her, but I didn't have the energy or the mind to.

As Maria brushed my hair, my fingers tapped on the red-bound journal. In one night, I felt like I had become extremely close with her, as if we had met one night and she had spilled her secrets out to me.

The owner of this book, whoever it had been, must have been working here at least a decade ago, back when Cairo was a child. I could not tell whether she was close to him, but she described him in the pages vividly, much more than she described the other royal princes; that he was a jade-faced child, that he was incredibly polite, that he was quieter than the other princes. The woman seemed to be a passerby in her life, and enjoyed making observations and analysis about the maids and royal family, but they almost looked too exaggerated and unreal.

It felt as if she thought everybody was living a double life, and while reading, I could not help but feel pity for her.

There must have been no comfort to be found in her own, so she sought and grappled and fantasized about others.

She was a pitiful woman, and there was a greater sense of closeness after knowing that she had left behind a daughter in Babylon, the same way my mother had left me behind, for the Palace.

I couldn't help but wonder if perhaps they had known each other. 

When my hair had been oiled, combed and braided tight, Maria set the brush down.

I raised my eyes. "Put a flower in my hair, Maria," I said. "Something red."

Maria blinked, discombobulated by the request. I wouldn't be surprised. "Miss, we still cannot go out of the chambers," she said, even as she picked the hairbrush up once more.

"I know," I said, meeting her gaze through the copper mirror. Our reflections were scattered, but the black of her pupils were clear. "We'll have a guest later today."

That was enough to send Maria into a tizzy. "Oh, will Shahzadeh Cairo be visiting you, Miss?" she asked, unable to hide the excitement in her voice.

I nodded, and something akin to a squeak left her mouth.

"How romantic!" Maria cried out, giggling as she hurried away to find a faux flower pin.

As she ran to the wardrobe, I met my own reflection. Blue eyes were not as strong as black ones, and they turned misty in the hazy shine of bronze metal.

My reflection had felt clearer when I first looked into this mirror, back when I first arrived. My perception and standing had been, as well. But somewhere in my time in the Palace, what I'd thought of myself, what I'd thought of the Palace, and what I'd thought of Cairo had shifted.

Good or bad, right or wrong, truth or flawed. These aspects, I was not clear.

When the Palace eats, even my bones would not be spit out.

"Yes," I whispered to myself. "He will come."

When Maria inserted that red rose pin into the end of my braid, I purposefully straightened out my shoulders. It was impossible to look intimidating knowing how I felt on the inside, but I damn well tried.

He would come.

I would ask.

***

Once the dinner bell rang, that meant all the food had been placed in front of the bedchamber doors, or was ready to take from the kitchens. As a potential concubine's serving maid, Maria's job was to go down to the kitchens to take my meal; we did not have the luxury of having it hand delivered to us by a group of fawning kitchen hands. That right was reserved only for the King, and to satisfy the occasional request from Prince Finn.

Tonight, when the dinner bell rang, it was accompanied by a few knocks at the door.

I had been sitting in bed all day, leafing through the journal, mind half present and half flying away. That series of knocks were all I needed to straighten up and put the book away.

After all, he had been whom I was waiting for all day.

As Maria reached out to open the door, she cast a glance at me over her shoulder, big, black eyes glittering with excitement. I felt my back grow numb from the tension I was holding my shoulders with.

This was a long, overdue conversation, with an elusive mystery of a man.

When Cairo stepped into the room, brown eyes meeting mine, I struggled to match his face and small, quirked smile to the man I had met yesterday night.

But, of course, they didn't match. At the end, they were not the same person. I highly doubted they were even the same kind.

But how...?

"Shahzadeh," Maria said, "I will go get Miss' dinner now."

Cairo nodded. His eyes did not leave mine, even as he dismissed Maria's curtsey and said, "Tell the kitchens to prepare a serving of fresh fruit."

Both Maria and I caught the words in between that line: Give us time alone.

Briefly, as Maria grew into a giddy tizzy and ran out the door, shutting it with a heavy thump behind her in the process, I wondered whether Cairo already knew what I was going to ask him.

The idea made my shoulders grow tense, once again, and as he drew closer to the bed, I fisted my hands in an effort to calm myself down.

"Hi," Cairo finally said, sitting in front of me. "You seem like you've been waiting for me, but I don't know if that's just a delusion on my part."

"Delusion?" I asked. "Or hallucination?"

A fleeting smile made its way onto his mouth. "The first," he muttered, leaning closer.

His eyes were distracting, dark and deep, distracting enough that I didn't realize what he was doing until I felt his lips touch the corner of mine.

Automatically, my hands reached up to press against his shoulders. "Talk to me first."

Cairo paused. Slowly, he pulled away, hands reaching up to lay over mine, big and warm like the air by the dock on a summer night. "I don't mind talking," he said, meeting my gaze, "but I don't believe you'll just be asking about my day."

A mull of silence, and then he continued, "You never do small talk with me."

"What's the point?" I asked. "There are bigger things."

"Yes. But what bigger things you're referring to, I'm not clear."

"You must be," I said. "How could you not be?"

Cairo's eyebrows drew together, and his hands grasped mine with a force much tighter than they had been earlier. "What do you mean?"

Dark eyes, I discovered, bore a heavy weight, especially when they gazed into you with the intensity that Cairo had. Like a coward, I shifted my face to look down at our hands.

His thumb brushed over the back of my palm, and, without reason, I found myself curling my fingers into fists at his shirt.

Inhale, exhale.

"Cairo, what secrets are you not telling me?"

With my hands at his shoulders, I could clearly feel him tense.

"Is that not what I should be asking you?" he replied. "After all, we've established this. You don't trust me, Aliya."

"I don't," I said, finally looking up. "Of course, I can't."

"I've done nothing to make you doubt me."

"No. You haven't. But someone, or something, whatever he is, has."

There was a but a few inches of distance between our faces, but when the words finally left my head and out my mouth, I could clearly feel the space between us crackle.

With apprehension, yes. With fear, most definitely. From me, I felt some form of tension that had been coiling inside of me for months finally give way.

After months of secrecy, I'd finally aired out the truth.

Cairo's lips pursed into a thin, sharp line. Slowly, he pulled his hands away from mine.

"I don't--" he began, "I don't know what you mean."

I would've felt hurt, and empty, and perhaps a little heartbroken at this lie if Cairo had just been a little bit better at seeing it through. But as he spoke, his voice turned hoarse, and by the end of his sentence, he collapsed into a coughing fit, the tips of his ears and cheeks turning blood red.

I watched as he bent over, hand over his mouth, my hands rubbing circles into his shoulders. When his coughs died down, I whispered, "Do you think I would ask you this if I didn't know it for sure?"

Through the last of his coughs, Cairo looked up at me. His eyes had turned red and watery, and suddenly, I was transported back to the first night I'd met Jafar, when he had chased me down the gargoyle-decorated hallways and became a permanent protagonist in faceless, unending nightmares.

Then, I remembered looking over my shoulder and meeting sinister, bloodshot eyes. Now, as Cairo's hair fell over his forehead and I resisted the urge to push them back, I couldn't help but think to myself that, truly, it did not matter whether Jafar lived in Cairo or not.

They were not the same.

Once again, another tight, tense coil within me unfurled.

For a long moment, I continued rubbing circled onto Cairo's shoulders, and neither of us spoke.

Then--

"When?" Cairo whispered, reaching up to hold my hand. "When did you meet him?"

"A few times now," I said, "but we never had a formal introduction until last night."

Cairo sucked in a breath through gritted teeth. "Last night, he called you? Or you came to him?"

I paused. That pause was enough to indicate an answer; one that had Cairo's grip on me tightening.

"What happened?" he asked, eyes dyeing an even darker red. "What did he ask? What did he do? What promises did he make? Or you? What promises did you make?"

"Nothing," I said. "Nothing happened."

"Impossible," Cairo spat out, his tone carrying such great loathing that for a moment, it took me aback. "There can not be nothing when it comes to Kamak."

"Kamak?" I whispered. "Is his name not Jafar?"

Cairo's lips twisted into a sneer. "Kamak, Jafar," he repeated, "one and the same. Jafar is only his vain attempt at retaining an old, lost part of whatever humanity he might have had in the past."

I didn't reply. In silence, I watched as Cairo ground his teeth together, jaw going tight and hands alternating between relaxing and clutching mine so hard, I saw them turn white.

Hatred.

At last, I whispered out: "What did he take from you?"

Cairo's hands stopped moving.

"Everything," he said, eyes meeting mine. "Everything, and more."

"Such as?"

His lips parted, and for a long moment, no sound came out of his mouth.

"First, it was my mother," he whispered.

after a long, long, long wait... i present to you chapter 42. i'm so sorry and i really hope you will enjoy this <3

KAY, 2022.