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Her lips didn't part to respond.
With his neck caught against her blade, Arzam's form loomed over the shehzadi's while his fervent gaze loomed over her face.
This man of unbending iron and unending terror seemed to turn malleable and warm under her stare. It was a farce, she was sure of it. Seething from how his welcoming words made a silent show of his advantage over her, Zartasha made a rash decision. A decision that would seal her fate; she pressed the singeing metal harder into his throat.
A hiss. The Malka-to-be had drawn blood.
Zartasha's journey to Kalthura's landmark of scintillating gemstones, ripe sands, and grating granite was inspired by the beginnings of a ploy in her mind but the panic she felt in the moment he surrounded her senses, the anger she felt in the moment he smiled at her induced a frenzied response where she pushed her khanjar against him and her discontent bled into his blood. The shehzadi's nerves were tangled, forming a knot, and choking her throat. Her apprehensiveness was new, it came from a timid girl which was not her.
She loosened her hold on the ruler of Kalthura and closed her eyes, reminding herself that this was not her. Not her. Not her.
This was him.
This was what he did. Sultan Arzam Hyderi brought the violent storm sitting under her skin overhead, a match to the barely contained chafing aggression within him.
And now, Zartasha could see the flare of agitation in this moon-cut jaw and seven centuries worth of heat in his eyes. The sooty walls were witness to his show of teeth, a manic look painting his face the darkest shade of ferocity she had seen. The soon-to-be Malka eyed the lightning running through his body under the cover of veins. She saw a rivulet of crimson on his neck. She saw a strong palm curl into a fist. She knew what would follow her incautious maneuver.
Suddenly, swiftly, but oh so carefully, her spine of steel was across the cratered grey wall of the tall minaret and the hilt of her khanjar, adorned with wooden petals folding in on themselves and leather vines wrapping themselves around the handle, was in Arzam's hand. The blade was a kiss at the corner of her jaw, the Sultan was only hovering it by her throat.
Zartasha suspected her khanjar had sharpened in his hold, for it felt infinitely more minacious against her neck than it did in her hand.
This was the shift of power that women mentioned on their wistful tongues. A man turning the tables on them; dolls with broken necks, girls with harmed flesh.
But Arzam was not harming her skin, he was harming her arrogant spirit.
Staring at her through a tiger's indelible eye, as if she was his newest treasure to keep. The difference was that he had not brought her home, she willingly came to him and now the Sultan had her where he wanted.
The tip of the blade dipped lower to trace her jutting collarbones, skimming the golden skin peeking out of her blouse's neckline. The ruler of Kalthura then leaned forward and whispered against the slab of grey wall to the right of her head, "What a pretty visitor I have gotten."
Zartasha's neck turned and it was as if the moment that was taking place was written in their aasmaan's ink and set in their zameen's stone. The Sultan's eyes shifted to his left, hers moved to find his in turn, and that was when burning coals met parched embers. Both dirty shades of the earth, scorching and destructive. One feeding the other its rage and the other feasting on it as its duty.
Arzam knew what was to be done before she hissed out her coarse words, "Your mediocre flattery won't get you what you desire and your false shows of power won't get you where you want to be."
He tipped his head back and let out a gritty chuckle. It was without rhyme or reason, but he could not hold onto the anger that flared up at Zartasha's disrespect because he was finding it easier to let the adoration that blossomed in his chest at her ire overpower it instead.
The shehzadi felt the Sultan's rough-tipped fingers clasp around her wrist in a manner that was strong enough to let her know that her attempts at an escape were futile but gentle enough for her to be able to rotate her wrist in his hold. The wide smile that preceded his next statement left her alarmed for the second time since she had met this man.
"No, but you will get me both."
With those low words hanging between them and a tug on her arm, Arzam was leading Zartasha down a yawning staircase in the minaret.
✸ ✸ ✸
Zartasha had always favoured using metaphors in her speech as often as she could because the phrases had a talent for transforming into either something lyrical, something carrying ancestral superstitions, or something that aided nauseating declarations. The latter was why the Malka-to-be appreciated them the most, she knew from a young age that as a woman, words were her most powerful weapon against the world.
She cherished the intimidating silence that followed whenever she would allude to something that left others horrified at the possibility but she was slowly understanding the aversion that came for open ended sentences involving metaphors ever since she realized what Sultan Arzam Hyderi had said to her was not him overplaying his taaqat. His phrase was simply telling her what he was going to do with her. To her.
She didn't have a measure of time in the chamber she had been locked into. The plafond that looked over her sprawled out figure was a vast cage that housed the effervescent gleam and winking edges of imposing pieces of furniture. From the rot iron bed canopied in a waterfall of scarlet, azure, and plum fabrics to the monstrous glass structure that resembled something close to a mirror, she was surrounded by the boastful luxury that Arzam's empire was renowned for.
And Zartasha was often a shallow girl, she wouldn't shy away from that admittance but even she couldn't appreciate the twinkling vigour of the chamber she had been sitting in, settling in, shaking in for the past few hours because she could tell that daylight turned to dusk as her pride was turning to dust with every moment she spent cooped up in the Hyderi mehal as a fugitive, as if she was the Sultan's very own saughat, decorated to suit his whims. She saw her future self from her mind's eye while staring at the smooth walls. She was the gains of war but the most terrifying part to her was that the war in question hadn't even begun. The most saddening part was that if she hadn't barged into Qalmazar as if it were her own then Sherqul's shahi council would have decided on a fate much worse for her by now.
The stark realization was her sole friend in this desolate, foreign world she had subjected herself to; that if worse comes to worst, and by the grace of God it would, then at least it was what she had chosen for herself.
The shehzadi knew that her having reign over her own decisions was immeasurably more than what most women had in their lives.
Zartasha's haunted mind was coaxed into a stiff sleep by the Kalthuran moon which she would curse the following day when the sun would rise again in the pale sky and she would find herself keen on listening to Arzam's harsh breaths above her.
Her location may have changed and the Sultan's heart may have gotten wilder but the Fajr azan wouldn't cease its invitation to join prayer at dawn, it would always continue its tangent. The Malka-to-be then heard a pair of shuffling feet, the sound drawing away from her.
On the morning of her second day in Qalmazar, Zartasha Fahim began to understand that no matter how unbecoming her mannerisms may be, nothing of dire consequence would happen to her physical state as long as she was Kalthura's mehman. Arzam's mehman.
It would seem that the Sultan had miscalculated how her arrival in his mulk would treat him and as a result, he knew that all she would play to were his weaknesses whilst he played to her strengths.
✸ ✸ ✸
When her fear drifted away and her withstanding self settled in once more, the shehzadi discerned how bland it had been to see the same handful of bleak faced women in black circling her in hopes that she would eat the pakwaan brought into the chamber Arzam had deemed fit for her since that fateful Jummah afternoon. Or in hopes that she would agree to hold a meeting with their Sultan when he called for it.
On her third day in Qalmazar, Zartasha knew it was time to change the course of her undesirable stay in the vivacious shehr so she ordered the clamouring workers to fetch her a new garment to wear. She could sacrifice her Sherquli pride and borrow Kalthura's blue opulence to don but she could not sacrifice her appearance, or hygiene.
The horrified blend of her features when she laid eyes on what the maids had brought in for her wear perturbed them, they were worried for their lives when the soon-to-be Malka rose from the bed like a vengeful whirlwind and began banging on the gates of her room to be let out.
The cacophony of her yells were reverberating off of the granite stones along the entirety of the Hyderi mehal, the pulsating echoes had reached Arzam's throne room when he decided to soothe his uneasiness and go to her. She had been seething in quiet for longer than the animal of a man anticipated so she was bound to lash out but he was well aware of what had been done to her that made her snap worse than a mare with leather straps beating against its back.
"Either you let me out of this ridiculous room or face me when I'm awake, you insufferable brute!"
A choir of gasps escaped the workers that surrounded her inside the chambers and a subtle smile of amusement made its way onto the Sultan's face at her tangible fury. Upon crossing the last hallway lined with jarring gemstones and ebony flooring between them, the supreme ruler of Kalthura was standing in front of the door that she had still not shown mercy upon. It was shaking under the force of her hands slapping against it.
As per his thunderous command for the guard standing behind him to fetch the keys to the shehzadi's freedom, the gates flew open and the shehzadi herself fell into Arzam's arms.
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