DARK DAYS AND A NIGHT OF LIGHT
ALAS, ALL DESPINA’S WAITING PROVED FUTILE, FOR the calipha never called on her again. Several months passed in relative obscurity. But Despina continued to hope for a word from the queen. To wait—
For a tragedy that shook their world at its very center.
The palace had been shrouded in shadow for the last two days and nights.
Everywhere Despina walked, servants tiptoed about the corridors, their shoulders hunched and their whispers low.
Every face she encountered was agonized, every pair of eyes bloodshot.
There were no more tears left to shed.
The young Calipha of Khorasan—Ava, the girl who studied calligraphy and spoke with the gentleness of a passing breeze—had perished.
Two mornings ago, the caliph himself had found her on that very same balcony, cold and motionless and alone.
Thankfully, Despina had not witnessed what had happened that fateful morning.
She’d heard the wails as the news spread through the marbled hallways. She’d heard the queen’s servants cry to the heavens.
Very briefly, she’d seen the caliph’s face.
Haunted. Horrifying.
The one face Despina had yet to see belonged to Jalal al-Khoury.
Ever since that evening when she’d brought the sprig of jessamine inside her chamber, not a day had gone by that Despina had failed to see the captain of the guard. It was almost as though he’d planned to be exactly where she was at the most opportune moment of the day.
Words were often exchanged. Teasing words. Cajoling words. Brief kisses were stolen at odd hours. At times they were sure to avoid any errant gazes.
After several weeks of this, he began making another request. For the last month, not a single day passed that Jalal failed to ask her to stay the night with him.
Despina never did.
Losing herself in a few kisses was one thing. Being as foolish as her mother was quite another. She refused to be the mistress of a rich man, to be discarded at his earliest whim. And she would most definitely not be the plaything of a notorious scoundrel like Jalal al-Khoury.
No matter how much her heart begged her to see otherwise.
No matter how much his absence these last few days troubled her.
Despina did not know if she should seek him out. It was possible he might find it improper for her to wander the halls in search of him. After all, in this palace she was but a servant.
But she had to know if Jalal was well. Recent events demanded that she know.
Earlier this evening an even darker shadow had fallen across the palace. Though the young queen had been laid to rest in the afternoon, and all should have been on its way to mending, something sinister had taken root instead. Despina heard that the Royal Guard had been sent to accompany the king on a visit to see his late wife’s father.
Despina had not been present when they’d returned. But she felt the gathering shadow. The cold hand of evil seemed to grip tightly the palace itself.
And now she could no longer deny the yearnings of her heart.
Despina had to see Jalal.
Late that night, she moved into the corridors, a single scented taper clutched in one hand. She’d thrown a loose robe over her linen nightclothes. Her hair was unbound and flowing down her back. Her reflection in a passing mirror appeared quite ghoulish—a creature of nightmares, her eyes hollow and her face pale.
Despina tried to rearrange the tangles of her hair, but her efforts were halfhearted at best. Anyway, she did not think anyone at the palace cared much for appearances or propriety at this moment. The current state of things was one of churning turmoil.
A servant girl wandering the halls at night in her simplest of garments and disastrous hair was certainly the least of anyone’s problems.
Despina made her way down a corridor toward the wing of the palace that housed the highest-ranking members of the Royal Guard. Since Jalal also happened to be a member of the royal family, she knew he’d been afforded the option of having his own, far grander chamber in the east wing with the rest of his kin. His father, the shahrban, had an elegant chamber of his own there.
But Jalal had opted to take a room near the men in his charge.
It was an easy room to find. The only one with a guard posted outside the door.
Despina halted. Took quick stock of her surroundings. Wrapped her loose-fitting robe more tightly about her.
She cleared her throat and stood tall. “I have a message for the captain.”
The guard at the chamber appeared weary, but he still waited for her to offer him a better explanation than that.
“I—I was handmaiden to the . . . queen,” she whispered.
Immediately the guard glanced both ways. Then he stepped back, his expression just as harrowed as hers.
Without hesitation, Despina raised her fist to the heavy wooden door and rapped on it twice.
No answer.
She lifted her hand again. Three hard knocks.
No answer.
“Captain al-Khoury?” she said. “I have a message for you.”
Another moment passed in stilted silence.
Sighing, Despina turned away.
“Come in,” a gruff voice said from beyond the doors.
This time, Despina did hesitate. The voice within sounded nothing like the one she knew. When Despina tried the handle she found it unlocked. It scraped open, the sound cracking through the ominous silence.
It was pitch-dark inside the chamber, save for the light from her single taper.
Jalal was seated on the stone floor, his back against the wall.
He said nothing. He did not even glance in her direction.
Despina wavered only a moment more before she moved toward him.
“Jalal?”
His head turned toward hers. Agonizingly slow.
Even in the low light, his haunted expression brought her to his side in an instant.
“You’re here,” he said in a barely audible voice. “You’re here.”
She crouched beside him and lifted the taper to his face, soothing phrases collecting on her tongue and her free hand raised to—
His cloak was stained red at its center.
Despina gasped, placing the taper on the stone floor before reaching for him once more. “You’re hurt.”
“No.”
“Don’t play the hero,” Despina insisted as she began searching for the source of his wound. “You’re bleeding.”
“It isn’t my blood.”
“Then whose blood is it?”
He did not respond immediately.
“Jalal?”
“It’s—Ava’s father’s.”
Another gasp. “You killed Ava’s father?”
“No.” Jalal bent his head. Without a word, his face fell into his red-stained hands.
Despina sat with him. She brought a bowl of water to his side and removed the bloodied cloak in silence.
With great care, she washed the blood from his hands.
Jalal pulled her close. “Don’t leave. Please don’t leave.”
“I won’t.”