I throw my dagger to the ground, and Zahra moves quickly to help me disrobe. A thin sheen of sweat clings to my skin, and the scent of flowers hover in a cloud round me. Seeing the stress on my face, she holds a damp cloth to my head, waiting for me to speak first.
My tongue moves slowly. "He asked me to marry him."
She stiffens, then continues to help me get ready for bed. "Did you say yes?" She asks me this as she rummages through fresh shirts and underthings, so I can't see her face.
"I held off."
When she turns around, her face darkens with an emotion I didn't expect. Anger.
"Why didn't you agree?"
I stand up. Even if she towers over me, she won't make me cower. "Because I'm not going to run away from my problems, Zahra." I rub my hands over my eyes, eyes stinging with sweat. Heart hurting with guilt. "Because I don't want to leave..." I look into her eyes, then look away, muttering, "I don't want to leave Rahasia."
She drops the clothes into my arms, and I pull a clean shirt over my head, discarding my dirty dinner finery. "Former General Soleil trained you too well as a soldier." She chuckles to herself, brushing her fingers and a wide-toothed comb through my cropped hair. "You always want to stand and fight. No running. No surrender."
"I want to wait. See my options."
Zahra pauses, and we make eye contact in the mirror's reflection. My eyes, the sun. Hers, the earth. "And I want you to sit on a throne." She swallows. "Even if I can't be there to see it."
"There's still a chance that I can discover his name. I have one more guess!"
She starts to extinguish the lamps. The night's unbearably hot, and I feel a trickle of new sweat bead down my brow. An unforgiving, equally hot breeze blows in through the open window. "I love you, Arnina." She whispers, rolling over to sleep. "What will it take to get you to love yourself back?"
***
Readers,
Oh, yeesh. The amount of angst I wrote in this one.
Full speed ahead.
-Sophia
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A Princess for the Witch Doctor (Legends of Rahasia Book 3)
פנטזיהRUMPELSTILTSKIN RETELLING. "I challenge you to find my name, princess. Three tries." Light flickers beneath the recesses of his mask, the wooden fangs and shadowed eyes. "Think you can beat me?" *** A witch doctor, user of dark magic, terrorizes a...
