It had been so long since I’d seen Hala that my chest ached at the mere thought of her. I hadn’t the time, consumed with meetings and trivial matters that needed tending to should Shahin’s arrival result in the precipice of war. I was more than prepared to set foot onto the battlefield, need be. As were Namir and Asad, and the rest of our military. We spent countless days, discussing possible coups and ways to launch assaults. It was a chore, making sure we held the meetings at odd hours of the night to ensure the safety of our plans. I’d come to my room after each of them, and the last thing my mind thought of as I drifted off to sleep was her. The way she smiled, the way her shoulders trembled as she laughed. I was concerned that my time without seeing her had been detrimental, that she’d be in a state similar to when I’d left her after bringing her back to her room that evening on the roof: sleepless and haunted. I’d finalized the last assault strategy we needed to be fully prepared that night when I walked to my room, and lingered by Hala’s door. There was something attracting me to her chambers, a magnetic force that pulled me towards it as if I were a fish being reeled in on a hook. My breath hitched as I found myself standing there, hand already knocking on the wood.

“Abyad…” Hala said as she opened the door. One look at her almost sent me to the floor.

Whoever had dressed her, they were possessed. Absolutely insane. She wasn’t just looking better—she was breathtaking. A long, tight gown hugged her curves; black as that moonless night. For a moment, I’d wondered if Bròn put her in such an outfit. Surely, he’d have found it entertaining to see my reaction to her like that from the shadows. The style was something similar to what women in Mahsul wore two winters ago, a high slit going up the leg, her bare thigh poking through when she leaned to her right. She’d been playing with that damned makeup again, but she wore it nicely. Grey, silver, black, I couldn’t begin to describe the way her eyes looked. Coal lined her lash line, bringing out the piercing amber-green as the lamplight illuminated her face.

“I was hoping you’d come see me…” she said shyly, tucking a piece of her perfectly crimped waves behind her ears. She moved to the side, letting me in.

“You were?” I asked with feline amusement, putting on my false confidence.

“Yes, Themaz.” She said the word so quietly, I almost hadn’t caught it. Her shy demeanor was almost jarring.

“Nice to see you picking up some Mahsulah when you’re not spending time changing your wardrobe…” I japed, eyeing her figure again.

Hala retuned my jest with a small smile. She had gotten back to a healthy weight—she was full-figured. I thought she would remain petite, with hardly more than a bump of emphasis—but this, this was something that woke something deep within me. Nearly four months without seeing her, and this was the woman who greeted me?

It took so much self-restraint not to test her. To see if I could rile that temper that I knew sat just beneath the surface. To see the amber in her eyes burn like the lamps that lit the room. I loosed a breath, forcing myself to walk to the armchair I usually sat at. She watched me with an unusual expression—as if she had something weighing heavily on her mind.

“Abyad…” she said my name again, a Mahsulian accent poking through now—no longer plagued with that harsh Otlank accent. The drawl pulled my heart up, strumming its strings fervently. Hope and arousal stirred within me.

“I wondered if you even…” she stopped herself, fixing what she was going to say. “Have you been avoiding me?” She asked sheepishly as she pulled the stool of her vanity close to the chair.

She almost sat between my lap, looking at me with large and innocent eyes. How I wished to be that stool.

“No…why would you think such a thing?” I asked, leaning in on instinct.

“You never came to visit. It’s been months, Themaz.” She said, using the same term of endearment. Was she seeing me as her childhood friend, or something more in that moment?

“I’ve been terribly busy, Hala. I’m sorry…” I said, unable to keep my usual facade in tact. I was used to being on the other end of this, beguiling women with a charm that came across as effortless. What Hala was doing wasn’t a charade, though. She merely worked a magic on me that no other woman could.

“Ana mort fitne kazah?” She asked shyly.

I don’t look like death anymore to you?

My jaw almost dropped. When had she…?

She continued in Mahsulah, her eyes still wide with innocence.

“You not coming…it made me think so many things. I got scared, Idris. I was scared you’d abandoned me. That I was too much for you to bear…”

My heart lurched, my mouth not working to deliver the words I wanted to tell her. She was so wrong, so entirely amiss as to why I’d been absent. A short moment of silence lingered between us before she spoke again.

“I’ve been thinking about you, you know.” A bit of an edge to her voice—the edge I was used to from those years ago. It was different, in Mahsulah. It allowed the vulnerability she felt to poke through.

“I had to come back to how I feel about you for four nights in a row, how I felt seeing you with those children; how I felt seeing you with Jamila in the courtyard…I felt jealous.”

I pinched my thigh hard. This was no dream.

“Ne kazeh wa ana Themaz, ne ana Themaz mintinakh…” She said, barely above a whisper.

You are my dearest friend, my dearest beloved.

I almost thought she was going to say each word I’d uttered the night she slept verbatim, but what she was saying wasn’t an uncommon way to address a loved one. My jaw had nearly gone slack.

“I know how you spoke to me, that night we last sat on the roof. How you called me your beloved, how you called me beautiful—how…how many other women are you doing this with?”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

The question hit me like an arrow to the chest. My eyebrows raised, then furrowed as my face contorted with bemusement.

“There is no other woman I’d speak so fondly to.” I replied a bit too desperately. It was a half-truth. There was no other woman I’d speak to so fondly and mean it.

“Are you sure?” She asked. “When you’d mentioned not kissing and telling…what was that about?”

There it was. The comment I’d been waiting for, dreading, for the last several months.

“Hala, that wasn’t—“

“Don’t.” She interjected, cold resentment in her voice. “Don’t try to say it was meaningless.”

“There was meaning behind it—but not like you think. I had to make sure you’d be safe, Hala.”

Her eyes filled with a bitter upset. “My safety was guaranteed by sleeping with another woman?” She asked.

She wasn’t the broken Princess I’d seen some months ago—she stood firmly in her words. She sat tall—regally—just like when she stood at the edges of the sparring grounds. I saw it for a brief second, the Queen she could become. Even though her sadness was apparent, there wasn’t a single tear brimming her eyes.

“As odd as it sounds: yes.” I stated.

“Was she beautiful?” She pressed, voice low and almost threatening. I needed to tread lightly, but I couldn’t lie. Not with those eyes searing into me. After all, Jamila’s beauty was the only thing that made it possible to sleep with her—but Hala’s beauty was much more than superficial.

“Her beauty was nothing compared to yours.” I said truthfully.

Hala scanned my face for any signs of deceit. Her gaze lingered for a long while on my eyes, before falling to my hands. She’d lost the threatening demeanor she’d had just seconds ago.

“You were disgusted by my body, weren’t you?” She asked quietly.

“No, Hala. Your body was as beautiful as it is, now.” I tried to reassure her.

“Don’t lie to me, Idris.” She scorned. I bristled.

We were arguing. I never wanted this. I wanted the admission of feelings she had for me to be wholesome, the kind that women read about in those sappy romance novels that lined our libraries.

“I’m not lying.” I strained, raising my voice. “I’d never lie to you. Do you think I wanted to resort to fucking some snot-nosed noblewoman who couldn’t do as she was asked?”

Her eyes softened, though she remained sitting tall.

“You never told me what it is you’re hiding.” She said, her voice a combination of sultry and somber. Her hand touched my knee as she leaned forward. I was so thankful she hadn’t followed in Jamila’s footsteps as far as fashion preferences go, or I’d have lost all control. She remained modest, in an alluring sense—making me wish I could tear that dress off of her.

“I’m hiding nothing of importance from you.” I said tightly.

“I don’t believe you.” She said, leaning further into my knee with her hand. She stood slowly, pinning me in place to the armchair as she bent over and looked me in the eyes. In that moment I knew that once she took the throne, she’d be nothing like Al’Namir or Al’Haya. She held a different air of authority, making me hold in the shudder that wanter to spider-walk down my spine.

“You’re hiding something to spare me, and I can’t handle any more lies.”

The emotion in her voice was genuine, almost grating as she spoke, even though her volume was quiet. It was her eyes, though. Her eyes looked into mine with such a chilling heat, I felt like I could implode. I realized then that there was sadness and grief in her eyes fueling the fire within them; it wasn’t fervor or passion, and being on the receiving end of it was more than horrifying. I couldn’t speak with her looking at me in that way.

“Abyad…I was told years ago…” she began, digging deep to muster the courage to speak as her expression softened, watching me with such reverence. “The man who brought me the same warmth as that of sleep, the same feeling of peace…the man who’d want to fight my battles in my stead…that was the man who truly loved me.”

My chest tightened at her words.

“Am I wrong to assume you’re that man?” Her voice shook as she asked such a question, the accent…she wore it so naturally as she used her mother tongue. It was a new level of intimacy I’d only been capable of dreaming of until this moment.

“I…” I stammered. “Ya, Hala…why would you hide being able to understand me?” I deflected as I looked down to the right. My hand met my mouth, cupping my top lip.

“Because I had to make sure I had it right, Idris.” She said, full of conviction. “There was something I couldn’t understand.”

“What couldn’t you understand?” I asked, my voice turning quiet and breathy as I looked at her again.

“Why you’d choose to love me.”

Such words made my eyes grow wide as they could go, and my breath hitched in my throat. My hands reached for her shoulders, gripping them lightly.

“Why you?!” I asked, my volume increasing as true distress flooded me. “Because, Hala, you’ve been my everything ever since I met you. I don’t even know if it’s okay for me to feel how I feel about you—I mean, look at you, Themaz.” My eyes raked her figure, the way her hair fell perfectly around her face as she looked me in the eyes was enough to make me go into a blind frenzy.

“I’m in no place to stake claim to your presence, whether it be for a fleeting moment, or for eternity.” I continued, my voice growing faint.

“Abyad…you’re entitled to my time. You’re more than welcome to spend as much of it as you’d like—” She said exasperatedly.

“No.” I said shortly. “I’m not.”

“Answer me this, then:” she asked as a ghost of a grimace lined her face. “Would you rather spend your time with a woman who is less of a burden?”

“A burden?” I scoffed, feeling more anger than sadness.

“Hala, you are no burden. No other woman could ever compare to you, or bring me the same desire to keep them happy. You’re the only one I want to make smile, Themaz.”

Her eyes became weary, and she nearly fell into me as her arms went around my neck. “Then just do that. Spend time with me. Make me smile, like back then…”

The way her voice was so raw with emotion, I wanted to show her how serious I was.

“It will be different, now.” I said, lifting her chin from my chest with my hand. “I want you to be smiling for other reasons. Let me get that dress off of you—”

Her cheeks flushed with pure crimson, her eyes meeting mine with hesitancy.

“I would be lying if I said that didn’t sound appealing, Abyad.” She said. “I’m just scared.”

“There’s nothing to be scared of.” I reassured her. “I plan on making you feel safe, making you enjoy it as much as I know I will.”

She was cautious, and for a moment I thought she’d completely shut the notion down until her face came close to mine. It was my cheeks growing hot then, feeling her in such proximity. My hands moved to her hips, feeling the supple skin beneath the thin fabric she wore.

“I want you, so badly. I have always wanted—“

Her lips met mine before I could finish my sentence, kissing me with such passion I almost lost myself entirely. When my hands met the dips of her hips, a shaky breath left her. I loosened my grip as my left hand began its way towards the slit of her dress. When I touched her bare skin, I felt her shiver.