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The shehzadi was steadied by her firm hold on his brawny forearms, her svelte fingers gripping the resplendent silk of his kurta sleeves. The Sultan's chest was nothing more than a baghi drum, his heartbeat unsteady under her hands; hands that held onto him hard enough for her nails to dig in, the nails sharp enough for him to raise both brows and inch his head lower.
Arzam brought his face closer to hers and murmured, "This fond of me already?"
She could feel a stifling pressure on her temples from where his breath had warmed her hairline.
A taunting grin stretched at his feral mouth for he knew the aggravating nature of his question. Whilst a quartet of crinkles formed between and above Zaratsha's brows, the lines dipped in red shades of her anger at his insinuating words. She wanted to cut off his tongue.
The shehzadi was seething at the idea that she may have naively led herself right into the clutches of a man. And she knew this man was a threat; a vicious storm for every blowing wind, a volcano for every mountain, a talwar for every neck.
Her naïveté would not last, she affirmed internally. The soon-to-be-Malka would do what she had sat inside her palanquin with the intention of doing.
But before fate would show its next hand, Zartasha was aware that she needed to finish what he had started, "How dare you keep me here against my will?"
"How dare I? Your answer lies within your question, I dare to do whatever pleases me."
When all he got, in turn, was a blistering glare, the ruler of Kalthura continued speaking his sporadic words, fragments of phrases which would dance in the shehzadi's ears even after she was alone in the shadowed corners of his florid mehal, "Riddle me this, Malka, why would I not dare? Especially when you are the next ruler of your mulk."
His voice dropped lower so the terror-stricken ears of the dozen others surrounding them couldn't discern the direction the conversation was heading in. "And when you being here, to do with as I wish, pleases me greatly."
He repeated his question in a coarse whisper, "Tell me then, why would I not dare?" The Sultan's amber eyes wavered to her bow-shaped lips while asking the shehzadi to evaluate his audacity once more.
As if only now noting the rigid pulse on the side of his neck, the taut manner of his spine, and the wide-eyed ghulaams plastering themselves to the closest wall around their pair, Zartasha took that and the sharpness in Arzam's eyes as her cue to raise her voice, "For all I care, you could dare to poison yourself but I demand some respect if you plan on keeping me here."
She took her hands off of his arms, wanting to pull herself away from the brunt of him but before any measure of distance could come between the two unforgiving entities, Sultan Hyderi leaned forward and grabbed her upper arms in an ostentatious hold.
"And what have I done so far to disrespect you? Know that my reputation has never preceded me, none of what you've heard is rumoured."
A cruel tilt of his lips lifted the right side of his mouth at his next sentence. "For now, you are my mehman and my mehman nawazi is nothing if not shahi."
The Sultan's smirking visage and the clothes she had laid eyes upon moments ago rose to the forefronts of her mind, making her jolt and pull against his limbs with renewed vigour.
Thrashing in his arms, Zartasha screamed, "Let go of me! Then I'll tell you how you've debased me!"
Arzam was not one to criticize rousing or conspicuous gestures and he was also well aware of how the clothes must have looked in the eyes of the vain woman in front of him. His intentions were to get a rise out of the Fahim heir and bring her to agree with what he envisioned for their future - an anomalously civil idea of his - but he was coming to realize that she was a dramatic soul who wouldn't silence herself any time soon. And so the supreme ruler of Kalthura couldn't stand to hold their conversation in front of others any longer, regardless of them being his own tongueless puppets.
Not responding to the woman that was becoming visibly angrier with every passing moment his lips wouldn't form an answer to soothe her vexations, the Sultan turned around and roared at the workers to get out of his sight. Arzam couldn't tolerate another pair of eyes looking upon his shehzadi's ardour, even if her fervour was aggressive and negative, it was his to regard and feast upon.
There was a hush draped over the mehal's jagged corners after the scampering departure of the servants. The late afternoon sun that was peeking through the large mosaic of glass in the hallway warmed her skin, skin that was no less heated when Arzam's intent eyes were upon her.
Zartasha noted that the sun's rays in Qalmazar were spears rather than the guiding beams of light she would find in Gulzaan.
It was as if the honed edges of the stained glass windows, the gleaming gems embedded within the wall's trimming, and the slopping diorite ceilings came to form Zartasha's own occluded inferno. Her surroundings were no longer her most plausible concern, but it was rather the volatile king of kings in front of her because one jhalak of his made her other worries fade into the back of her corrupt mind. His stare felt like a smothering cut of velour laying sharp beading to rest.
Still writhing in Arzam's hold, the Malka-to-be was reminded of the disrespect she faced at his hands.
"Let go of me, Sultan!"
The words were a malicious hiss on his tawny throat and instantaneously, her arms were her own to move again so the shehzadi placed her palm on the Sultan's burly chest, pushing against him with force. She continued to huff out her questions which he hadn't answered but instead only uttered absurd rhetorics of his in response to.
"That ordinary garb you gave me when I asked for day clothes was not meant to be anything other than degrading. It was worse than what I allow my maids to wear!"
Her complaints weren't audible to him; all he could pay attention to was the way her hair fell to frame her angular face, dark eyes wild and glittering as she fought a one-sided battle with the merciless Sultan.
Zartasha quietened when he suddenly clasped his large fist around her forearm, the same wrists connected to the hand spreading heat in his chest; the fire in his heart growing. Arzam tilted his head to the left, the crack of his neck predatory in nature. "It wasn't half bad but I won't fool myself by thinking that it matched your meyaar."
While looking upon her irritated and confused features, he could feel her ghussa on his tongue which is what he would blame the next words on his as a slip of, "Have dinner with me. Tonight."
The Malka-to-be was thunderstruck by his request. Then her anger became a live thing, emboldened fury visible in her furrowed brows and narrowed eyes but before her parted lips could raise hell in his home, Sultan Arzam Hyderi shut down her argument before she could form it.
"You'll have a lehenga delivered to your chambers in the next hour and it'll befit not only yours but my meyaar too, I promise."
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Heavy indigo velvet fell to the floor in ripples, an ocean of fabric pooling around Zartasha's feet. True to his word, the Sultan had delivered a magnificent lehenga to the soon-to-be Malka's suite. The zardozi on the blouse was like plucked constellations, silver argent dripping into blooming motifs on her chest. The lehenga was an inky canvas with beading that alternated from turquoise to jade to navy, the ends of the skirt were inspired by a peacock's feathers. Preening for its master's attention by dancing, beautiful and vivid.
Zartasha felt treasured while wrapped in the jewel-toned garment, adorned with bird-like illustrations but she knew she was no different than the peacock her baroque lehenga displayed, ready to sway in a tempestuous and tempting dance with the supreme ruler of Kalthura.
It was going to be a political game, this dinner.
And so she carried herself towards the large mirror in the corner of her effervescent chambers. She saw eyes heavily lined with kajal, lips stained a dark shade of surkh, hair perfumed and twisted away from her trenchant face. The shehzadi looked over herself with finality, ending her perusal with a signature curl of her lips; achingly sweet in appearance and achingly virulent in soul.
Pausing to make sure the time had gotten away, that the cerulean sky had melted into the black of twilight, Zartasha Fahim called for a maid to take her to the Sultan's dining room after she heard the Isha azan echo throughout the mehal's stone carcass.
And across the enormous structure, there was a hungry Sultan impatiently sitting in the dining room. Ill-tempered and aggravated by the wait, Arzam was famished for a feast. He was looking forward to tasting both the food as well his shehzadi's anger.
Sultan Hyderi's sharp sense of hearing placed a rustling sound coming from behind the gemstone gates that led to his lavish dining chambers, then he recognized it as Zartasha's lehenga trailing across the floors of his mehal.
Arzam heard a meek knock - which most definitely had to be the doing of a maid because Zartasha Fahim didn't strike him as the kind to seek permission for much. She was the same as him in that regard.
His belief was reaffirmed after he heard a questioning voice mumble, "Hukum?"
When another moment passed without the soon-to-be Malka's face gracing his, Arzam realized he had forgotten to allow them in.
His roaring voice rang loud beyond the walls of the room as he called out, "Ijazat hai."
The Sultan had fought in treacherous wars before; ones he'd had to cause and ones he'd had to finish. The hot sun bearing on his back, metal weapons slashing in his peripheral, blood on his hands, and another's head under his feet. That was what he had known, the bloodshed and the greed. It was ravishing but no more than the vision he was currently faced with.
Zartasha Fahim appeared too beautiful of a phantasm to be true; Sultan Hyderi saw a lithe body with golden skin painted in shades of precious treasure, bright colours reflecting off of the doorway's gemstones onto the richly coloured attire covering her frame. Under the hazy blend of jewel tones, the Malka-to-be stood stoic and sedulous.
At their master's silent dismissal, the workers deserted the room and the pair inside it. After hearing the gates creak to a close, a knot formed between Zartasha's shoulder blades whilst a predatory gleam formed between Arzam's teeth.
The Sultan gestured to the velour dining chair positioned on the other side of the table, "Take a seat."
Zartasha crept forward and sat down with her head held high, dispassion etched onto her angular face. Oh, how Sultan Arzam Hyderi loved the blend of her haughty features coming together to form an arrogant veneer.
Only the shehzadi knew the shiddat of the trepidation lining her palms as she held onto the chair's armrests, only she could feel the remnants of her wounded pride woven into the very threads of her spread out lehenga.
She sharply criticized him with an impassive raise of her brow, "What is it that you wanted to meet with me for?"
Her formidable opponent in the form of the Sultan didn't respond and began serving himself out of a silver handi instead. His silence was not boding well with Zartasha so finally, she uttered what had been eating away at her with no pause to think her question through, "What is it that you've kept me here for?"
A clanging noise sounded after he heard her, the ladle crashing against the metal of the pot.
His rough string of syllables asked her, "Why must you act less than your intelligence permits?" Arzam let out a pretentious sigh. "You know well as to why you are sitting in front of me right now."
The Malka-to-be harped onto the obvious, "If this is about Sherqul then you should know better than any other that taking an unmarried woman hostage won't help you conquer the damn mulk!"
The supreme ruler of Kalthura laid back in his chair, relaxing his back and spreading his legs. He followed with a move that appeared even more peculiar to Zartasha; Arzam turned his head sideways and rested it on the inside of his hand. Staring at her with that maniacal glint in his cinnamon eyes and a maddening grin to match.
His voice was a lilting rasp now, words digging her grave a little deeper, "Who says getting you married won't?"
Appalled by what she had just heard, angered by his refusal to give her a straight answer yet again, and wanting to make her point en masse made the shehzadi drop the shards of calm her bloody hands were clutching and rise to her feet, "Don't you ever suggest anything of the sort around me and don't answer my questions with foolish questions of your own!"
The Sultan, too, got up as a response. "Then don't ask questions I won't give answers to. This dinner, that you arrived late to, was so we could get to know one another-"
"I come and go whenever I please! And I am not letting you in on my mulk's secrets nor am I going to let you claim what is mine." Zartasha cut him off haughtily.
The temperature was rising in the dining room whilst the food was getting cold, forgotten in the midst of their vacillating conversation.
"Conquering and claiming Sherqul isn't my greatest interest anymore, it's you."
The silence that followed was chilling, a cutting phantom of their future in front of her.
Shaking her head, pieces of her intricate adornments chimed and caught his attention for a few moments before the soon-to-be Malka broke the spell, "I won't agree to what you're proposing-"
He broke her sentence in pieces instead by letting out a dark chuckle, shades of suffocating black pouring out of his mouth and a ringing left in her ears after she realized the brutish man standing across from her was far more cunning than the world gave him credit for, "You will come to know this better than any other that Sultan Arzam Hyderi doesn't propose but why don't you start by telling me the reason behind you deliberately coming here, leaving your guards and maid stranded on purpose?"
And suddenly the rose petals scattered on the edges of the ebony table between them started perfuming the air with the scent of blood. Zartasha just realized what she may have subjected Nusrat to.
It had been hard to find a soft corner in her jagged heart but the older woman wasn't an intolerable soul to the shehzadi. Zartasha was overcome by a rare moment of regret, saddened and on the verge of having wet eyes, she swiftly turned around.
Looking up at the varicoloured dome ceiling, the Malka-to-be was willing her strength back and forcing her tears away. She heard heavy footsteps treading towards her and she knew that his powerful body would soon stand behind her own, imposing and large.
She couldn't turn to face him while she was visibly weakened by her fleeting emotions but the shehzadi inhaled a sharp breath when she felt the Sultan grab her hand in a firm hold, when she felt his warm breath grab her neck in its unfamiliar grasp, "Daughter of Sherqul, I invite you to become the wife of Kalthura."
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This is the longest chapter I've written up until now so I'm a little proud. What was your favourite part?
Thank you for reading, vote and comment <3