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Like the drying petals of a rose, the sly smile previously budding on Zartasha's lips withered into a tight frown at Arzam's proximity and she jerked her head upwards to evade the warmth of the Sultan's voice.
Refusing to let him invade her senses more than he already had, the Malka braced her hands on the floor next to his face.
Her next move was to escape the glittering confines of her chamber. One where the mirror in the corner called out her name, where the lush bedding smelt of the amorous night ahead, where the hardness of the Kalthuran ruler's body below promised her a tantalizing cage for the rest of her life. Zartasha dipped her chin, gifting Arzam the scent of her skin for a moment so she could rip the rest of her body away from his strength.
The Sultan's sharp eyes, proving to be equally adroit in love and war, caught the evanescent intention in her bobbing throat and feral stare.
He clicked his tongue and before she could get her jewellery-adorned feet planted on the ground and not lying atop the king of king's hardened calves, he wrapped his arms around her waist.
"What in God's name is your problem?" A shrill voice was Zartasha's response to the Sultan's ever-tightening hold.
"You." A simple answer came out of his curving mouth. Her being the sole possessor of his words made the Malka realize the night she was in for her. She quieted into a stupor.
However, Arzam knew he was only offering the truth because, to him, his Zar was a troubling puzzle - one which he wanted none to piece together except for himself. It seemed her sharp and brittle edges were made to meld with the blazing ferocity and strength running through the Sultan's blood. At the thought that their fates were written in tandem with one another, he pressed her frame to himself.
Not enough.
There was not enough. Arzam could see his Zar's anger and feel her shock. Her body locked with his movements but the Kalthuran ruler was too far gone in his perusal of her.
He could see her coal-like eyes leaving angry trails of steam across his throat, he was touching the rivulets of crimson silk bunching up at her waist, he could smell the jasmine smoke threaded through the strands of her hair, and he was on the verge of speaking his truths at the deliriousness of her at his mercy when he realized something was amiss.
Sultan Hyderi had four of her insani senses in his control but alas, he could not hear her smokey yet resonant voice resound in his periphery.
With a maddening urge to see her call out for him, the supreme ruler decided to startle his stone-like bride. All in the hopes of a warm embrace where her hands would cover the heated skin over his beating heart, where the curtain of her inky locks would befall upon his face. And so his fingers strained around the surkh fabric bleeding into a pool of roses around them and he pulled.
Up and up and up.
Zartasha lost her balance and clutched his kurta, clinging to him akin to a vine entwining around black stone. She was unknowingly strengthening her roots within Arzam's heart. A wild need for her had already bloomed the moment her fingers grasped him. However, the Sultan understood her base reaction was due to the swiftness of his hands and not because she wished to share breaths and whispers and aches come morning but he'd be damned if he didn't allow himself the pleasure of her in the moments his God gifted him.
At least his soul was getting its fill as he got to feast upon her with his gaze.
Feeling a twisting sensation across the length of her, the Sherquli shehzadi lifted her head from the home it had found in the strong juncture between the base of his neck and shoulders. She caught Arzam's stare and witnessed the warm brown flaring at their eye contact. Zartasha had been an unshakable girl for the entirety of her life but the rumours were true, there was something about the amber glint in the Sultan's eyes which was unnerving. His intent gaze was not letting up and so, she lost her composure and spoke in a hard voice.
"Stop staring at me like that."
Spellbound, Arzam's guttural voice came out breathless, "Like what?"
His bride flattened her expression and looked downward, raising her eyebrows to gesture at his hold.
"Like an animal." She dragged out the last word, raising her volume when enunciating it before she continued ordering the terrifying Sultan around, "And let go of me."
The king of kings groaned when he saw her blackened gaze land upon him, her biting glare an unbearable form of pleasure to him and an indescribable form of agony for anyone else wanting to know. Henceforth, the only response he could produce after her haughty words was a gravelly noise from deep within his chest as if he truly was an animal. Indeed, Zartasha had reduced him to base instinct. And what was man if not the worst of predators yet the best of God's creation?
Arzam wanted to chide Zartasha at the silent torture she was putting him through but his mind was lost in the sensation of her. The feel of her attire's coarse beading rubbing against the cotton of his kurta added fire to the flickering flame of the black night. He whispered, dazedly looking into her obsidian-shaded eyes, "Why?"
Seeing the ever-present ghussa spilling onto the mapping of her features, he knew he had to contain himself or he would fail at keeping his Zar within arm's reach. And in order to not let the flames of fervour between them die when the night was in its naivety, Arzam was forced to pull himself out of his dulhan's trance and instead bring the daughter of Sherqul to life again.
She'd be reborn in Kalthura; for the remnants of an arrogant shehzadi would give birth to a Malka who would be eminent in two lands.
And so, like a sharpened blade cutting through thick blood-soaked winds on the battlefield, Arzam moved with precision and speed.
His agility was present in the way he twisted his hold on Zartasha's waist and then he became one with the air. Breathing devastation over her pulse and leaving goosebumps in his wake, Arzam now spoke from behind her. She felt a jagged whisper hit the back of her ear, "Scared?"
His voice was daunting in the hour of nightfall they were within, the moment called for their tongues to let loose and so, under the lull of the Sultan's gravelly probe, Zartasha let it.
Jerking her head from where it was, astute on a proud neck of gold, she twisted her jaw to look at her husband - the supreme ruler of a land that knew no rules, no bounds, and no losses. It only knew the name of their Lord in the skies and their Sultan in the dunya. The fierceness that was in the sands of Qalmazar seemed to always be a part of the Malka. Only now, the risqué nature of Kalthura thrummed within her pulse and she answered with a shallow laugh and a sly tilt of her lips.
Zartasha goaded him because she wanted to test how far the unpredictable man breathing down the edges of her trembling throat would let her behaviour go. "Of you, Junooni?"
A deep rumble rippled through her skin as she felt his rich and raucous laughter echo around them.
The bride's mouth twitched into a phantom smile but she caught herself before it stretched wide enough for Arzam to notice.
She froze and twisted away from him once again. Staring ahead, the Malka reprimanded herself silently.
She did not know what she was grinning for, certainly not when she was alone in dark chambers with a man who - by the scripture of their law - had all means to do with her as he pleased. To make her affairs worse, she had knowingly tied herself to a man such as Sultan Hyderi who did not seem to care about breaching the line of the forbidden if that was so what he truly wished. Surely, now that they had married, he would not be withheld by anything. The Sherquli shehzadi had her own avaricious reasons which called for her to play the game of marriage with him, but she was slowly becoming doubtful about whether the wehshi king at her back would ever let her go whole or not.
That scared her more than anything else. That her sacrifice of attaching her name to a man's would be in vain.
The Fahim heir swallowed thickly but her next breath lodged itself in her chest when she suddenly felt a gust of warm air hit the side of her bare neck.
Bare? No, Zartasha was sure her locks covered the expanse of her lithe body today, from the corners of her sharp clavicles to the beginnings of her tailbone, her hair was a well of darkness and immoral desires.
And she knew that must be what currently held the Sultan's attention. She felt thick fingers weave themselves through blackened strands. And when she shook her head to rid her hair of its devotee, she caught Arzam's eyes.
He had been watching her through a tiger's sight, acutely and hungrily from behind. Zartasha clenched her teeth together when she realized he must have caught the fear on her face earlier.
As if intuned to the alignment of her thoughts, the Sultan spoke, "Are you not?"
His words were low and harsh, it seemed as if he was desperate to hear otherwise from his Malka.
When Arzam didn't hear a word from her to combat his claim, he decided to let her know how quickly his unending need for her could consume him.
The king of kings shifted his body until he had them backed against the other side of the velvet bedding. A ragged murmur came out of him, "You should be."
Arzam forced her to sit and grabbed her hand to rest it upon the large expanse of his chest. "You should be scared of the junooni you created."
Indeed, he seemed crazed in the way he was looking at her, a fierce face framed with the dark contours of a beard and wild wisps of hair landing above broad shoulders. A strong nose and a predator's stare aimed at Zartasha but something about facing the Kalthuran ruler head-on served as a soothing reminder, that he was only human and one who was precariously enamoured with her at that.
After his loud voice was done echoing off the jewelled walls, she slowly trailed her hand down the fabric of his heavy attire before pulling it away after reaching mid-abdomen. The oddity and pleasure of her touch had rendered the Sultan momentarily languid, so he let go of her waist. The vain shehzadi then bent backwards, placing her hands behind her and resting the entirety of her weight on her arms.
"You're saying you were not," she paused and turned her head to give him a pointed once over before continuing, "Always this way?"
Being her chin forward, she taunted, "I've heard the stories. Unless you're claiming to have become worse now."
The dulhan faked a gasp before she heard him counter, "Have you truly heard about me?"
He slowly began bending downwards and inching towards her. "The stories about me at war, taking all I want, causing bloodshed?"
Since Zartasha was done showing her emotional turmoil for the night, she only stared at him - unimpressed.
Sultan Hyderi's sole response was a raised eyebrow and he did not know how much longer he could take her apathy.
Her face was a mirror to the reflection of him, he could see himself looming over her in the coal of her eyes when he spoke, "But tell me, have you ever heard about a man experiencing ishq?"
His jaw quivered when he saw the Malka remaining steadfast about her stone-like visage.
His tone of voice lowered an octave before he reminded her, "Sane men seem to turn mad because of it."
The supreme ruler of Kalthura stretched forward and the shadow of his immense body swallowed the Sherquli shehzadi's silhouette whole when he said, "Main toh phir bhi junooni Sultan hoon."
She felt her body lock but fought against the sensation and reached behind her. There was only one way she imagined Arzam wanted the night to end but she needed to get away before his hunger caged them within his arms in the solitude of the queen's chambers.
She grabbed ahold of the forgotten dupatta lying weightlessly at her rear and sang out her words to her husband to lull his senses before the Fahim heir did what she was about to do. "Don't you think you're being dramatic?"
She quickly stretched further into his corded hold, "Maybe you should reflect on these feelings of yours," came a whisper before she jerked her nimble fingers over the cut of blooming silk and brought it forward, "Away from me."
The Malka's arm then glided across the space between them and the king of kings was suddenly covered in a pool of red. She had thrown her veil onto him to blind him with the colour of her. To cease his ogling of her face. To seize his control.
Instantaneously, the Sherquli shehzadi bent her frame to escape through the opening between the Sultan's coiled arms and the heavy quilts of fur and makhmal she was previously perched upon. Then, Zartasha ran for the door.
And out the gates of familiar territory, she went further into the stirring creature known to Kalthurans as the Hyderi mehal.
A few steps away stood Sultan Hyderi, ripping the surkh garb away from his face, from the way it curtained his vision in a haze of red. He bunched it up in his left arm and the jagged veins underneath his tawny skin stirred at the way he flexed his forearm before bringing his dulhan's dupatta to his face and inhaling her scent - a vibrant mix of dark florals and charred incense.
He cracked his neck in two directions before twisting it and marching forward, letting out a rumble that echoed in the dreary night behind Zartasha.
"Don't let me catch you, Zar."
She hastened her pace and her lips twitched as she left a trail of tinkling bangles and a carillon of her anklet's bells in her wake.
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