Chapter 33

My eyes snap open and I strain to listen to his exchange with Zaynah.

“Move out of the way now.” My father seethes.

“Please Your Majesty. I have not been in her room yet to dress her. It would not be appropriate for the guards to see her in her state of dress.” Zaynah pleads, trying to buy me time.

I dash out of bed, knowing my father all too well. He doesn’t care for my modesty or privacy. He would consider it another of his punishments for the guards with him to walk in and see me uncovered, especially my hair.

“You will step out of the way or I will have you removed…permanently.”

I have stepped into the purple gown that was left hanging in my armoire and am wrapping the not at all matching head wrap from yesterday when my father bursts into the room. His eyes go around my bedroom, stopping on the armoire for a moment before coming to me, narrowing when they do.

“You still found a way to wear that ridiculous thing on your head, even when I’ve had them all taken away.” He snarls.

I remain silent. Surely he doesn’t want a response to that.

“Someone from our envoy summoned The Unspoken one,” he says, making my blood run cold. “Today we will find out who. And you will watch. Let’s go,” he snaps, walking from the room, simply expecting me to obey.

The guards file out of my room, and I begin to walk as well, but Zaynah stops me, hands going to my headwrap. I look at her in confusion until I see what’s in her hands. What she was working on yesterday, and I now see is a black head wrap for me. She hurries to lay it over my hair, tying it to the left side of my neck and letting the pieces hang over my shoulder. For the second time, in such a short time, tears come to my eyes, this time in gratefulness.

“Thank you,” I croak.

“I promised I would not leave you, didn’t I?” She smiles.

Then we walk out of my bedroom, down the hallway, and to the throne room. On the right side of the room are the advisors, sitting in chairs with grim looks on their faces. On the other side, all the guards who accompanied us on our trip are standing in rows, looking nervous and afraid. I’m sure none of them wants the punishment they would receive should my father find them guilty of summoning Hamza.

Batil grabs Zaynah by her upper arm and pushes her towards where all the servants who accompanied us to Sameer are lined up behind the guards. Hud glares at Batil for a moment before quickly turning his eyes to stare ahead again. I know it isn’t any mistake that Hud is front and center.

Too many thoughts run through my mind until it finally settles on a resounding question. Can I bear to let another suffer this punishment for me, not if but when my father chooses to lay the blame on someone to make an example of them? This is what makes my eyes tear up for the third time as I sit in my chair beside my father. That I know I cannot and that means I will have to confess myself. I know it means I will lose Hamza. My father will make sure of it.

“Whoever the guilty party is can make this easy on everyone else gathered here and confess now. The punishment will be no less painful, but the others will not thank you for what they endure should you make me find out the traitor for myself.”

My father’s words make it hard to breathe, hard to swallow, hard to think. I cannot let this happen. My eyes dart from guard to guard, from servant to servant, hoping none of them gets the idea to spare the others and confess to something they didn’t do. When I look at Maryam, her eyes narrow at me, maybe sensing my anxiety, my fear. I have to avert my eyes not to give too much away.

“No one?” my father arches a brow, rising from his throne. “Okay then. We’ll begin with you.”

He points to a guard in the first row, who must be fairly new because I’ve not seen him before our trip. Only during, and very rarely, sometimes setting up tents or packing things up when we got back into the carriages. The man, barely more than a boy from his looks, steps forward, and I don’t think I imagine the tremor in his body.

“Did you summon the Unspoken One?” my father asks.

“No, Your Majesty.” The man’s voice rings out, sterner than I thought it would.

“Do you know who did?”

“No, Your Majesty.”

“If I went and brought your family here from the village, would your answer be the same?”

The man’s eyes snap to my father’s for a second before lowering again.

“It would.”

“Even if I brought that pretty sister of yours. What’s her name? Ah yes, Samia. Even then?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” Now his voice quacks with fear.

“You.” My father moves on to the next man in line.

He proceeds like this, asking the men the same questions, threatening them with intimate names and details when they hold to their truth, that none of them summoned Hamza. When he reaches Hud, my father looks at me over his shoulder, his lips turned up in an evil smirk. Fear and worry grip me so tightly I have to grab the arms of my chair to keep from vaulting from it.

“And you, you will claim not to have summoned The Unspoken One as well?” he questions.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” Hud answers.

“Do you know who did?”

“I do not.”

“What about if it were your beloved Princess?” my father continues, making every single ounce of blood in my veins freeze. “Would you tell me if it were she who summoned him?”

Why would he ask him that? Is he trying to bait Hud, or trying to bait me? I mentally beg Hud to say that, yes he would tell my father if it were me. When I see him start to shake his head, my heart feels like it falls to my stomach.

“I would not,” Hud states.

“So you would let her betray your king?”

“I would protect her highness.”

“Is that not the duty you have given him?” I speak out. “To protect me? If I cannot count on my guard to be trusted, then what is the point of having one at all?”

The advisors nod their heads in agreement, and my father clenches his jaw so hard, I see a muscle tick.

“I”—he bangs his fist against his chest like an angry child—“Am his king! His loyalty is to me, first and foremost, and it seems he does not understand that. So to make him, to make all of you, learn your place and just who your allegiance should be to, none of you will receive wages until someone confesses or someone comes forth telling who has committed this act of betrayal.”

It seems the guards and servants’ chests all fall as one, defeat clear in their postures.

“Leave,” my father barks before sitting back on his throne.

The guards and servants begin to file out of the room, their shoulders hunched with the weight of what my father has taken from them. I stand to do the same, but my father’s growled words stop me.

“Not you.”

I turn and look at him in the throne he doesn’t deserve. His eyes glare at me, and I lift my head higher.

“King Azar has written to me,” he begins and weariness fills me. “He has offered one more time for this to be resolved with marriage.”

“Does it not puzzle you why he is so bent on marrying me? Why he is extending a kindness to you that he certainly did not for the other kingdoms he has conquered? He is prepared, and maybe even able, to take Nur by force, and yet he is offering marriage again. Why?”

“My only concern is keeping Nur safe.”

I almost believe him for a second. That maybe all this is his way of keeping war from our doorstep. And maybe that is the right thing to do as a king, but as a father, this excuse falls short.

“Azar will not stop until he has turned Nur into what we saw in Sameer.” I explain, even knowing my words mean nothing to him. “Poverty, inequality, the richer getting richer, and the poor suffering with no way out of the hole Azar has placed them in. It’s not right, and I won’t let it happen. Even if you refuse to stand up to him, I will not back down.”

“You dare speak to me as if you know how to run a kingdom. As if your selfishness has not brought all this upon us.”

“Your greed has brought this upon us,” I shout over him. “Your need to keep that crown upon your head no matter the cost to your people. The need to keep the money from the villages in your treasury has clouded your vision. Your own daughter does not matter to you. Your people, who would suffer tremendously under Azar, do not matter to you. The council’s advice falls on deaf ears and what is best for Nur does not matter to your dead heart.”

He gets out of his throne then, walking towards me with pure malice. I root myself to the floor, refusing to move back when he gets close enough for me to see the wild anger in his eyes.

“I know exactly why Azar seeks your hand again,” he hisses. “He wants to destroy you. He wants to watch as all the stubbornness and strength leech out of you at his hands. He wants to see you become a shell of the woman who embarrassed him in his own kingdom. And I am inclined to enjoy it as it happens. I might even invite him to Nur often, just to see you slowly, but surely, lose yourself. And by the time I die and you become queen, you will be nothing upon this throne. Just as you are nothing to me now.”

“I am everything you hate,” I say low. I am the one who leans in now. Although his words have struck a fear in me because I know they’re true, I will not let him see it. “I am the strength you could never possess. I am the rage you cannot seem to muster for what will become of your own people. I am the light that you fear others will gravitate towards once they see the darkness within you. I am the hope of Nur, when all you have ever done is make them taste defeat. I am the heir to the crown you wear, but the one everyone knows is better suited for it.” I lean in just a little more. “Even you.”

He strikes me, as I knew he would. My head whips to the side, and I hear the sound of a chair screech. I don’t have to look to know it’s Maryam who’s risen. I look instead at my father, blood filling my mouth, lip pounding with pain. And I smile. His eyes dart nervously back and forth between mine. I can imagine what he’s seeing. The crimson blood coating my teeth. The hatred in my eyes. The determination to see him fall somehow, someway. Ah, yes, it’s dawned on him.

He turns around, walking back to the throne and sitting on it.

“You will sign, or I will make it so you have no gowns at all. No candles to light your room at night. No food to fill your belly. You have no idea the ways I have imagined to make you suffer.”

“I will not. Do what you will,” I reply.

“Maybe I should have them peel the skin from your new lady-in-waiting?” he suggests.

I casually shrug. “If you must.”

The very idea of it makes me want to vomit, but I cannot let it show. It would damn Zaynah more than anything else.

“Maybe I should just cut your hand off, and sign the agreement with that?”

“I’m sure Azar wants a one-handed bride.”

“So bold now. I wonder…if it isn’t because someone has made you so. Given you some newfound confidence.”

There it is again. The insinuation that he knows about Hamza, about someone.

“Who could there be when you have taken everyone from me?” I ask.

He simply hums, falling back in his throne. “We shall see. You have a week to sign. If you do not then I will marry you to someone far worse than Azar. Sure, you’ll be able to dissolve the marriage when you become queen, but until then you will suffer at his hands. I have Batil in mind.”

I swallow and look to the side, at his personal guard who sneers at me. His eyes roam over my body, and I feel naked, even covered as I am.

“Leave. Now,” my father demands, and I do.

When I get back to my room, I find my door open. I hurry in and look around, trying to place what my father has had taken from me this time, but everything is the same. Until I close my door and find my bar is missing. The bars that were attached to my door to hold it are gone as well, holes where the nails used to be.

Grief overwhelms me as I drop to the end of my bed. The only thing I had left and he’s, even if it wasn’t his real purpose, taken it from me. I close my eyes, trying to keep the tears at bay. My stomach hurts from not having eaten breakfast yet, but I don’t have the will or want to leave this room, to go seek food when it feels like my heart has been ripped from my chest.

How will I see Hamza now? Where is it safe to summon him when I know I am being watched in the palace, and probably by Batil. To take the risk of summoning him to my room and someone bursting in, finding him here, is far too great. I will have to find a way, but right now the pain of not being able to see him is all I can think of, all I can feel.