The journey was long.
Time lost its meaning inside the suffocating stillness. The only sounds were the creaking wheels and the distant rhythm of hooves against the earth, no one spoke to me or check on me. It was as if I had already become something less than human. A prisoner, a suspect or worse a property.
My fingers curled tightly into my dress as the memories began creeping back in again… uninvited. Rashad. His touch. The weight of him. The way everything felt wrong even then the blood. I squeezed my eyes shut, my breathing turning uneven. "I didn't kill him…" I whispered to myself, over and over. "I didn't… I didn't…" But doubt is a cruel thing It slithers into your mind, planting questions where certainty once lived. If I didn't… Then who did? Why did he die after consummating our marriage? And why did I feel like the answer was something I should already know?
The carriage suddenly jolted to a halt. My body tensed instantly, voices murmured outside low, guarded. Then silence a moment later, the door creaked open. Light poured in and with it, a presence that made the air shift. I slowly lifted my gaze. The carriage door swung open with a heavy groan, letting in a blast of dry, scorching air that smelled of sand and distant incense. I blinked against the harsh sunlight, my eyes stinging after days of dim confinement. A man stood framed in the opening tall, gaunt, his face half-shadowed by the deep hood of a crimson robe trimmed in silver. High Vizier Sorvan. I recognized him from the throne hall back home, though his expression now was colder, sharper, like a blade freshly honed.
"Out," he said harshly.
Two guards hauled me from the carriage before I could move. My bare feet sank into hot sand that burned the soles, but I barely felt it. The palace of Al-Sahramir rose before me like a fortress carved from the desert itself towers of pale stone streaked with veins of black marble, domes capped in gold that blazed under the merciless sun. Crescent banners snapped in the wind. It was vast, imposing, and utterly alien. No jasmine-scented gardens here. Only stone and sky and the faint, metallic tang of distant forges.
They did not take me through the grand gates. Instead, the guards marched me along a narrow side passage, through a heavy iron door, and down a flight of stairs into cool shadow. The air grew thick with the scent of damp stone and old torches. A cell not the luxurious prison of a foreign princess, but a simple chamber with a narrow cot, a single high window barred with iron, and a pitcher of water on a low table. The door slammed shut behind me. The lock turned with a final, echoing click.
"Five days," Vizier Sorvan said through the small grate. "The Padishah has commanded it. The burial rites for Crown Prince Rashad must be completed without interference. You will remain here until then. Food and water will be brought and shall speak to no one." The grate slid shut and I was alone.
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The five days blurred into a haze of heat and silence.
I counted them by the slant of light through the barred window how it crept across the floor like a dying thing, then faded into night. The first day I paced until my feet bled, whispering the same words until my throat ached: *I didn't kill him. I didn't.* By the second day the words felt hollow. The third day I stopped speaking altogether and simply sat on the cot, knees drawn to my chest, listening to the distant call of desert birds and the occasional murmur of guards outside my door. They never spoke to me. No one did.
Livia's sedative still lingered in my blood like a fog, or perhaps it was only fear wearing me down. I dreamed of Rashad's grey eyes widening in surprise as blood spilled from his lips. I dreamed of my father's rigid back as the guards carried me away. I woke each time with my heart hammering and my shift damp with sweat.
On the fourth day they brought me a basin of water and a clean robe of plain grey linen. I washed the last traces of my wedding night from my skin dried blood, his scent, the faint stickiness of his seed that had lingered no matter how I scrubbed. The water turned pink. I stared at it until it grew cold.
On the fifth night the drums began. Low, rhythmic, echoing from somewhere deep in the palace. They did not stop. I pressed my hands over my ears, but the sound vibrated through the stone, through my bones, as the entire kingdom mourned a prince I had barely known. *He is gone*, the drums seemed to say. *And you remain.*
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On the sixth morning the door opened without warning.
Two guards in black-and-crimson uniforms stood outside, faces impassive. "The rites are complete," one said. "You are summoned."
They did not bind my wrists, but their hands on my arms were iron. I was led upward through winding corridors that grew wider, brighter, until we emerged into a vast hall of black marble veined with silver. Torches burned in sconces shaped like crescent moons. The air smelled of myrrh and smoldering charcoal. At the far end, elevated on a dais of polished obsidian, sat the Padishah Rashad's father. He was older than I expected, his olive skin lined with years, his long hair streaked with grey and bound by a circlet of gold and black diamonds. His eyes were the same steel grey as his son's, but harder, colder, as if grief had been hammered into something sharper.
Flanking him were the two dignitaries who had traveled with Rashad: High Vizier Sorvan and Captain Kavian. Behind them stood rows of nobles in dark robes, their faces unreadable. Every gaze turned toward me as I was marched forward. The marble floor was cool beneath my bare feet. My grey linen robe felt like rags among their finery.
I was brought to a stop before the dais. The guards released me but remained close enough that I could feel their breath on my neck.
The Padishah studied me for a long moment. The silence pressed down like the desert sun.
"Princess Lale of the eastern empire," he said at last. His voice was deep, measured, carrying the weight of a man who had buried a son. "You stand before us as widow to Crown Prince Rashad. The rites of passage have been observed. His body has been returned to the sands. Now we turn to the matter of his death."
My knees threatened to buckle, but I locked them. I kept my chin raised, the way my father had taught me when facing enemies.
The Padishah leaned forward slightly. Torchlight glinted off the silver in his hair.
"You were the last to see him alive. You alone shared his bed on the night he died." His grey eyes bored into mine. "Speak, widow. Tell this court exactly what happened in that chamber. Leave nothing out. For the peace between our kingdoms still hangs by a thread and that thread is now wrapped around your throat."
Every noble in the hall seemed to lean in. The drums outside had finally stopped. In the sudden, suffocating quiet I felt the weight of an entire empire pressing down on me.