Chapter 3

“How did I know I would find you here?” A voice asks from behind me.

I know who is it before I even turn my head to look at her. Maryam. The light from the candle flame shimmers against her ebony skin as she approaches me, her lean frame and tall stature giving her grace that few can ever learn. The way they usually are when she walks, her hands are behind her back. Her tan tunic makes her brown eyes stand out more. Just like every other time I see her, happiness fills me.

She is one of my father’s advisors, but even more than that, she is the woman who has raised me. Before I was named his heir, and my father had no concern for me being educated in the ways of our people, she was the one to teach me politics and our kingdom’s history. And when my brother died and my father started sending me for lessons, she began teaching me other things he would never have me learn.

She was the one to take the time to show and tell me what good character looked like. Even if she was teaching me that my father was the very opposite of that. She taught me what it will take for me to be a just and fair queen. Even how to use what weakness people think I have simply because I was a woman to my advantage.

And when I grew older, she taught me how to fight and defend myself. To use a sword, knife, and bow. To control myself so my emotions didn’t get the better of me, so my feelings didn’t dictate my mind. She taught me to think for myself, to question what doesn’t sound or feel right. She taught me to be fierce.

And beyond lessons, she was the one the guards brought to my room when I was younger and wept from a bad dream. She nursed me herself when I was sick, intent on making me healthy and then making me strong. My mother was taken from me, but Maryam was the one to fill that void when no one else would.

“Were you looking for me?” I ask her as she reaches me.

Her locks, styled to come to the left side of her head and over her shoulder, swing as she sits down across from me.

“Yes. I wanted to know if you’d eat lunch with me, but since it’s now night, I’ll amend that to dinner.”

My eyes widen. Night? Sure enough I look out the windows behind Maryam, and somehow the sun has begun to set without me ever noticing. And although I really just want to go to my room and think of how I’ll be able to summon Hamza, I wouldn’t turn Maryam’s invitation down. Not after all she’s risked for me before, and even more so lately.

“I would love to. Where are we eating?”

“My office, if you don’t mind. I don’t have much patience for seeing your father in the hall tonight.”

“You and me both,” I say through clenched teeth.

We begin to walk towards her office, approaching one of the few remaining portraits of my mother in the palace. I can already hear Maryam’s words before she says them.

“You look more and more like her with each day.”

I smile to myself at the statement Maryam has made more times than I can count. She’s the only one who’s taught me anything about my mother, what she was like, the mother she would have been to me had she not passed away. Even knowing every detail of the portrait, I still look at it when we reach it. At the woman I resemble in almost every way. Her curly hair, high cheekbones, lips, nose, and eyes. Especially her eyes. The gray color that no one else in the kingdom has except the women in my mother’s family. The witches in my mother’s family. They were what kept my father watching me for any signs of magic throughout my childhood, until he finally gave up. I often wondered if his disappointment was renewed each time he looked into my eyes, at the reminder that, as far as he knew, I had the eyes of a witch without the magic to match.

I looked so little like my father that when I was younger, I used to pretend he could treat me with so little regard or kindness because I was not truly his. That my mother had loved and been loved by someone else, and I was the product of it. The only thing I’d inherited from my father was his dark brown skin color joining with my mother’s light color, giving me my reddish brown complexion. Still, as a child I clung to the idea that that small part of me that wasn’t from my mother, also wasn’t from him. But I could no longer hold onto that belief when he named me this heir. I knew then that I had to be his because there was no way he would pass his kingdom on to me unless he had no other choice to keep it in his bloodline.

No, then I knew for sure I was the product of my father marrying a witch in the hopes that she would provide him with a powerful daughter, but alas, he got me instead. Witches are bound to serve Nur, as my mother was bound to serve my grandmother and then my father when he became king. She’d grown up in the palace, using her magic even before she had been commanded to, healing my father of the sickness that marred his face. When her mother died and she became bound to Nur, my father asked her to marry him. He wanted to end the kingdom’s reliance on witches, and the way he sought to do that was to have a daughter who would be bound to him more than Nur, loyal to the king beyond duty.

They had my brother first. Still a win for my father, a king to rule after him instead of a queen. Then they had me. The daughter he wanted. But I contained none of the magic he hoped for. Or so it seemed for many years to me, and still now to him.

Maryam sighs as we continue past the portrait, softly saying, “I wish she could have seen the woman you’ve become.”

There’s always a note of sadness when she speaks of my mother, her very dear friend that she had to watch die. Maryam was right at my mother’s side when she gave birth to me, smiled down at me, and breathed one word.

“Ameera.” Princess.

Then Maryam has told me how her eyes closed for the last time. She had to witness her friend’s arms fall to her body as the life drained out of her. My father burst into the room then, paying no mind to the nurses telling him his wife had just died. He picked up his daughter, expecting to feel some power emanating off of her as newborn witches do. Only to find a calm, cooing baby staring back at him. He handed me to Maryam and left the room, his howl of rage being heard and perceived as grief for his now dead wife, who was known to everyone as kind, giving, and always had a smile for whomever saw her. But everyone in the room knew the real reason for it.

“Are you going to stand there forever?” Maryam’s chuckle snaps me from my dark thoughts.

I look up to see her standing inside her office, holding the heavy door open for me. Then I notice the smell wafting out of it, and my smile grows. Maryam’s eyebrows wiggle as I pass her, and I giggle in delight when I see the layout of food spread across her desk. The pastries from the bakery I love in the village. The roasted meat from my favorite cook. On and on until I can no longer just look, my mouth salivating too much.

“I know you haven’t been able to have anything from the village in a long time, so I thought I would bring some to you.”

“Thank you,” I say softly.

“Well, what are you waiting for? The food won’t eat itself.”

At that, I rush to the desk and although I should go for the meat first, I go for the pastry. The strawberry leaking out the side of it calls to me, and I answer. When I’ve eaten something from each tray and am leaning back in my chair wishing there was room for the rest, Maryam clears her throat.

“Your father gathered us for a meeting today.”

And just like that, everything in my stomach sours. The food leaves a taste like ash in my mouth as my eyes meet Maryam’s. My father would only gather them together after seeing me for one reason. The council of advisors, Maryam, Hunayn, Zayd, Bilal, and Medinah, are meant to advise my father, but most of them just simply agree to whatever he wants. All but Maryam. She holds the most power, her family always has, as much as my father hates it. It gives her the ability to oppose my father where the other advisors are too fearful to do the same.

“I can guess for what,” I murmur.

She nods. “King Azar. Your father wants us to review the law saying he needs your consent for the marriage. To find any loophole in it.”

My hands tighten into fists in my lap. Of course he does, because if he cannot make me agree, he will try and find a way around me having to agree.

“And did you find anything?”

She grins. “You know as well as I do when that law was made and by whom. The moment your great grandmother was crowned queen, she made it so no one could ever be forced into a marriage and made to suffer like she had. There’s no way around that law.”

“I guess there’s some sick satisfaction in knowing her own horrible marriage is protecting me from one now.”

She nods, even as her mouth curves down into a frown. “But he will not stop. This just shows how desperate he’s getting. The wood and foods we send to the Sameer Kingdom aren’t enough to keep them from bringing war to us anymore. Azar sends a letter almost every week now asking why the marriage agreement has not been signed and returned to him. Your father grows more angry with each one.”

“When is Father ever not angry?” I roll my eyes.

“I’m trying to warn you, Ameera. I fear what he will do next if he thinks it would make you sign.”

“He threatened to have me lashed today,” I tell her.

A small gasp escapes her. “He wouldn’t dare.”

“You and I both know he would. Who could stop him?”

“The council.”

“He would have me lashed and in the dungeon before any of you even knew what happened. He plans much too far in the future. The only thing he didn’t plan for was having a stubborn daughter who wouldn’t follow his every command. And we all know what happens when people disobey him. He crushes them.”

“I have been speaking to the council…without the king present.”

My eyebrows raise at that. “Do go on.”