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Zartasha had her answer.
She leaned forward, aware of the sweet incense on her skin and the impotent poison in her breath. The shehzadi's lips twisted into a saccharine smile after she enunciated, "I refuse."
She moved her jutting neck back as soon as her refusal had left the home it made on her tongue. And she shifted her slanting legs away when her refusal had finished running the length of the space between her and the Sultan.
The Malka-to-be realized Sultan Arzam Hyderi's wrath was not like the subtle steam her hair lamp left in its wake, fading and quiet after the warmth of the coal had touched it. No, Arzam's ghussa was alive. It more closely resembled an avalanche spawning from two broken-off mountains, tumultuous and cutting. It appeared the Sultan had always carried intemperate anger inside him, anger that she was now witnessing.
Zartasha spotted the flare of his nostrils and the tightening of his jaw, the veins threaded together around his jugular seemingly close to snapping. The subtle rise and fall of his chest added to the blaring quiet that had befallen them but the Sultan's hushed heaving was not without a repercussion of its own: his burning eyes were fixated and narrowed, watching her face.
Unsettled by the supreme ruler of Kalthura, notably for the third time since he had barged into her life, the shehzadi twisted her body intending to distance herself from him.
She took a hesitant step backwards as if a dream drifting away but when she continued to stare at the Sultan head-on while reversing her tread, he was sure that he was chasing a nightmare instead.
However, this nightmare was one without which his nights would not pass: his clouds would be stationary, his moon a crinkled silver sheet, and his sky lacking stars.
The chime of Zartasha's anklet was a telling sign that she would not stop moving away from him and the sound rang loud in his ears. Louder than the wails of his captives, louder than the pleading he often heard at his feet, even louder than the horns his warriors blew before a war of his choosing took place. Her separation was a screaming declaration to Arzam and so, he began moving towards her with a different motive in mind.
The elaborate feast laid out on his table had stopped letting off steam, the night sky outside his domed mehal a bruising shade of ink. His surroundings were enervated and black, like their Sultan. It became apparent to Arzam that it now fell upon him to take the reins of her fate and steer the brittle gold threads onto a path where they would entwine with his own.
Sultan Hyderi's stride towards her grew jaunty, the steps large and full of vigour; Zartasha's feet moved backwards with the same haste.
The pair continued their dance but the shehzadi knew that soon she would have to stop, soon the ground wouldn't have inches left to give her, and soon their oscillating duet would lead to her being cornered. With that threat wrapping itself around her mind, the Malka-to-be decided to sharply turn to the side and resume walking away from the Sultan in a different direction.
The pivot gave her a chance at getting away before her time ran out but Zartasha did not anticipate crashing into a piece of furniture behind her. When the side of her hip was against the ebony table, she realized that fate was against her too.
Zartasha found herself standing above the chair placed at the head of the table, at Arzam's previous seat, with the ruler of Kalthura himself rapidly approaching. He was three paces away when she grasped that the back of her thighs had hit something. He was two paces away when she barely curtailed her trip over the skirts of her lehenga. And he was only one pace away when she had finished blinking.
Almost chest to chest, they were staring at one another but her ribs could not hold onto her apprehensiveness any longer; she was exhaling and inhaling sharply, again and again. As Sultan, Arzam knew the world and so he knew woe. As a conqueror, Arzam knew the battlefield and so he knew fear.
The Sultan reached for Zartasha's shoulder when he saw how persistently her pulse quivered against the skin of her neck but the ever-proud girl recoiled and as a result, she fell into Arzam's abandoned chair.
Her graceful tumble led the ruler of Kalthura to grin wide and lean down till his face was near hers again. She was sitting on the Sultan's seat.
His head then tilted upwards and it was as if Arzam had received what he had always longed for, what he had asked of the skies at birth, "You are truly a woman made to rule."
The Sultan's whisper perplexed the soon-to-be Malka because praise was not usually the response any sane man had towards bearing their lover's rejection. Maybe that was it: she wasn't his lover, however much he wanted her to be - and he was surely nothing short of insane, to begin with.
When Sultan Hyderi's arms latched onto the armrests of the velour-lined chair, Zartasha froze. Arzam's body leaned over hers and the shehzadi realized she hadn't known true distress before.
A cloud of heady rose invaded his senses, the fragrance greeting him as he grew close. And her air was only spiced sandalwood, the fumes burning her throat as she inhaled. After breathing in the other's phantom scent, one wanted more and one wanted none.
While waiting to see what the Malka-to-be would do, the Sultan traced the metal edges of the chair with his fingers. His thumb rubbed against a tooth hanging from the shair's open mouth carved at the crown of Zartasha's current seat.
Her eyes followed his movements and his eyes followed hers. The supreme ruler of Kalthura was only concerned with watching the flutter of his shehzadi's lashes, the deepening line between her brows, and the downward curl of her lips.
The Fahim heir remained quiet and the temperamental Sultan realized her silence would grate on his fraying nerves far more than anything she had said to him.
Thinking about their past altercations, Arzam knew it was time to broach the other thing eating away at him. It could not be smothered by their distractions anymore so he voiced his question, knowing it would lead to a difficult conversation. "I asked you before and I'm asking you once again, why did you come here?"
Perhaps it was her sense of self-preservation wrapping itself around her vocal cords or a sense of doom seeping into her bones, but the shehzadi did not utter a thing.
And the Sultan would not stop until he had made sense of her arrival in his shehr.
Consequently, he brought his mouth to her ear and said, "Until I get an answer, you are not leaving this chair let alone this room."
Zartasha could not find it in herself to reveal the truth, she would let Arzam make his own assumptions.
The soon-to-be Malka's stubborn insistence on remaining silent made the Sultan then seize the ends of her hair and pull her closer with his soft grip on the dark strands. The ravening look on his face contrasted well with the blanching horror on hers.
Zartasha knew if Sultan Arzam Hyderi was a terrifying tale then anger, passion, and bloodthirst were the three whispers who had breathed him into existence.
She also knew whispers were cut from the same fabric questions were. The former was more vicious, aiding the latter's simple inquiry.
What she was forgetting was that sometimes a question was searching for the truth in place of an answer, sometimes it already knew what was to be stated. The matter was the same with Arzam. During her deliberate hush, new details and age-old notions came to his mind. Her thought process began piecing itself together in his head, the manipulative nature of her intentions becoming vivid.
The Sultan finally understood why she had travelled to Kalthura with no more than a handful of maids and guards, only to later ditch them too.
Zartasha saw his eager inquiry slowly disappear from the mapping of his face and so she knew the Sultan's curiosity had been doused. He seemed sated and ready to play with her once more.
Arzam began telling his shehzadi about her own tenacity after tugging on her dark waves to ensure he had her rapt attention. He started with a rhetorical question, "You came here to sodden your reputation, did you not?"
His hold on her hair made the shehzadi speak, "I can't say."
The Malka-to-be was appalled at the shameful truth laced within his words, the Sultan was proving to be far more observant than the world gave him credit for. She realized Arzam would not let up until he was done divulging her dirty secrets to her own ears.
"You must be aware that you are a young woman, especially one that does not lack in physical appeal."
Her contempt at being caged under his hulking form only increased after she heard his statement; of course, Zartasha was well aware of the face she had blessed with and if all a woman was reduced to was her appearance, then she would certainly not be one to shy away from honing her sharp features. The shehzadi had made a promise to herself in her youth that her face would lead many to their deaths.
The soon-to-be Malka's eyes were cutting arrows and her malice was tangible, even while trapped underneath him. Sultan Arzam Hyderi knew that she would not give now, not if she hadn't before.
And so, he continued, "Such ripe beauty only makes the world want a taste and coming here, alone and unannounced, was a dangerous gamble."
His adorned fingers were now nearing the curve of Zartasha's jaw. Arzam wanted to run his thumb along the edges of her face, similar to how he had caressed the ersatz shair sitting atop his shehzadi's head.
As a result, she pushed her face further into the plush lining of the chair and the Sultan's outstretched arm froze. He pulled his right hand back and used her reaction to define her faulty intentions, "Your councilmen are most likely throwing a fit as we speak, concerned with how unsafe your honour is in my presence."
Before Zartasha could respond, the supreme ruler of Kalthura carried on with his tangent, "The way you turned your face away from me proves that what you wanted to give them the illusion of was not something your heart wanted to truly occur."
The Malka-to-be would consider herself a relatively unshakable woman. Always standing strong, with a spine of steel and a venomous tongue, but she could not bear to hear him reiterate the workings of her mind.
In their world, women were attached to their bloodlines and then blood made way for marriage. The giggling whispers, lovesick letters, and romantic reminiscence were lost in between for them. Even if their love was a product of fondness that came from the heart and not from the flesh, it was seen as sin all the same by their dunya. Maybe things would change for the women to come or maybe they would suffer the same suffocating fate.
The string of Zartasha's honour was tied to the length of her interactions with men. It would be frowned upon for her, as a shahi woman, to spend time with a man that wasn't her husband. Whether that was time spent in simple conversation or communion, it did not matter.
His reminder about her supposed honour made her let out a coarse whisper, "Stop."
The Sultan pretended as if she hadn't called for him to cease his berating of her. "Who better to let them assume took you as his with no shame if not a man such as me?"
A heavy breath left him, "It was a naive risk you took, trusting me to not have my fill of you."
Some of Zartasha's lost composure came back at that and she raised her chin impetuously, "I am not trusting of you, for that I'd have to be my own enemy."
After Sultan Arzam Hyderi gave her a sardonic once-over in response, her voice turned pragmatic, "And I reckoned if you hadn't killed me that day in my own home, then my life would most likely not end here either."
Arzam was momentarily taken aback by the shehzadi's faith in herself but soon found himself leaning into her with a splitting grin, "It was a foolish idea regardless but I cannot find it in myself to complain. Not when you're right in front of me, in my domain."
The Sultan's face changed after a moment and he pulled on the ebony locks his hands were clutching until her face was level with his. "What baffles me though is how foolish your refusal is."
The shehzadi's face was pinched in annoyance and her biting tone was making her irritation known, "I came here for political reasons, not matrimonial ones."
"We'll see about that."
Zartasha bristled at his low murmur, "Pardon?"
Arzam brushed off her denial to segue back into their initial conversation, "Not pardoned. Now, what could you have possibly enticed me with to keep you here if not yourself?"
She attempted to exhale her budding frustrations and answered swiftly. "I would have proposed a land division on the outskirts of Sherqul so I would get more time while you went over the details." The Malka-to-be waved her hand through the air as if dismissing his presence.
He caught that hand and asked her what he saw as an earnest question, "Tell me, why would I agree to that? What is stopping me from taking over all of Sherqul and making it mine instead?"
Zartasha's anger flared up, her stare no less minacious than a teer aiming straight for his chest as she professed, "Me!"
Drawing away from his shehzadi, the supreme ruler of Kalthura placed both of his hands on his heart to make a theatrical statement, "You indeed."
Rolling her eyes, the soon-to-be Malka decided she was done with his unhinged self. And as soon as the threat of him had pulled away, she rose from the chair that seemed to have grown chains.
With pride laced into her steps, Zartasha was heading for the doors when Arzam blocked her path. "Ponder on your answer a bit longer. You have some mohlat because the truth is that you aren't leaving this mehal unmarried, Malka."
She would have responded to him if it was not for the quaking noise that followed his words. The pair of them were taken away from their heated moment when they heard the thundering sound of hooves hitting Qalmazar's sands. Instantaneously, Sultan Arzam Hyderi knew his mares had brought betrayal weaved into their manes as a message for their master, racing against the dark cloak of the night sky to reach him.
Arzam turned to leave but before his maids could accompany Zartasha once more, the Sultan pointedly told her, "It would be in your favour to make this a union of your choosing and not force my hand."
âââââ
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