There was one thing that I was sure of – if I surrendered to my fears, I would completely lose my mind.
The Snake – as my best friend called her – toyed with my mind very well. I was more frightened than ever. To think Mazen might not make it in time was really messing with my head.
The thought of what Qamar could do to my baby had me shaking. I couldn’t even pray anymore; I couldn’t come up with what exactly I need to ask God the most. The bad thoughts possessed every space in my mind.
While I was busy with my thoughts, The Snake made her way inside my cell. My anger rose again at the sight of her, followed by Etab. I was yet to discover how the latter had gotten involved in all of this or what her motivation was.
I could still feel the fever as it hadn’t left my body entirely, but it wasn’t horrible. I was able to open my eyes and concentrate; I was not wholly out of it.
“Did you think about our deal?” she demanded.
“I have nothing to do in here other than to think.”
“Good. Hope that means you made the right choice?” She tipped her head to the side.
“I’m not sure how you believe either of your choices is good for my baby or me,” I stated. “It’s all about you.”
“It is. But I’m giving you five minutes with your baby. Isn’t that better than never getting to touch it?” Her calmness was making me even madder.
“I’ll take the third option,” I told her with a lop-sided smile.
“And what’s that?”
“My husband finding us and making you wish you were never born.”
“You really do believe that he was telling the truth? It was all bullshit.” A hint of annoyance appeared on her face. My words were affecting her.
“King Mazen never breaks his promise.”
The Snake sneered, pausing for a second as if she didn’t know how to respond to that, and all I could think of was—good!
“I have the papers here,” she said, pointing to a file in Etab’s hands. “You can still make the right choice.”
“You’re still going to call it ‘the right choice’?” I asked, even though I wasn’t seeking an answer. “I’ve already told you what I choose.”
“What you choose is not even an option,” she said, raising her voice. She was losing her cool.
“What are you going to do with a map? You say you’ll kill my son and me. Is it so you can kill Mazen, too?” I asked because I couldn’t think of any other reason why she might want to know how to get access to the palace or how to escape from it.
“It’s none of your business. Your part ends after you draw the map for me.”
“How do I even know if you’re going to stick to what you said and give me my son after I give you what you want?”
“You have my word,” she said, all too seriously.
Not caring about how unladylike it was, I snorted, “Your word? How amusing. You want me to believe the word of a person who betrayed her king and queen? That’s a whole new level of delusion.”
The Snake’s jaw clenched, and her face started to redden. I was glad to realize I was truly getting under her skin; it was the least that she deserved.
“You’re not my queen. You will never be.”
“Oh, yes, I am. Like it or not. You know who’s never going to be your queen, though? Your daughter.” A cold smile played on my lips. I knew I was pushing my luck with her, but it was worth it.
The Snake looked as if she was about to combust; her face was all red, and her hands were forming fists.
“I’m trying my best to save your punishment for when you start labor, however you’re encouraging me to change my mind. I never do that,” she said through her teeth, “however, I might start doing it, for you.”
“I mean, bringing me here and wanting to kill me is one thing,” I shrugged, completely ignoring her last words, “but to want easy access to the palace is something that I can’t understand. Maybe if you explain it further, I’ll think about what you want me to do.”
“I told you, it’s none of your business.”
“What do you have to lose? You say you’re going to kill me anyway,” I told her. “Unless you have your doubts and do believe that Mazen and the army will be here soon.”
“Mazen and the army will be here soon,” she mocked. “Yes. Right.”
“I don’t know; it looks as if you do believe that will happen, and I’ll give away your plans.”
“My plans? Which ones exactly? I have a plan for everything, things you haven’t even considered, things you’d never know about. I’ve been making plans since before you were born.”
She said the words with pride, which was pathetic, but that wasn’t what caught my attention. It was what she said.
This woman may have been the one behind every single trouble the first royal family had gone through. I was willing to find out how true that was.
“You can satisfy my curiosity. I need to know. So if you need the drawings to get in the palace and maybe kill Mazen, I’ll give them to you.” The words pained my heart as I spoke them, but I had a plan.
“Hmm … you think you can trick me, kid? You want me to think that you don’t care about Mazen’s death?”
“Not exactly. I love Mazen more than you will ever love yourself, and I know that you love yourself a lot,” I said. “But if he dies, it means that he’ll be with me again, given that I would be dead and all. We can have our family in heaven.” I gave my best smile, my eyes looked dreamy, and my voice didn’t tremble once. I was too focused on making her believe me.
She paused and took a long look at me. I knew then that she must be considering my offer. She was studying my face to know if I was playing her. I gave away nothing away.
“I don’t believe you,” she said, her eyes watching me closely.
I shrugged. “Or you don’t believe you’ll be able to kill me as you claim,” I said flatly, watching as she clenched her jaw then tightened her eyes. I was getting there.
“Oh, I will. I’m getting myself justice.”
“Yourself? I thought it was for your children!” I pressed
“And for my children, too.”
“I’m not sure. I suspect all of this hatred isn’t new,” I said. “I wondered what planted it in your heart. Was it jealousy of your sister?” I wondered, studying her features carefully to see which of my words got a reaction from her, “Or was it that His Royal Highness Qasem Alfaidy – God rest his soul – had promised you marriage and kids, but married your sister when he needed a second wife?”
Her nostrils flared, and her breathing changed. I hit a sensitive spot.
“Etab, get out,” she ordered sternly.
Although I looked very calm, I truly wasn’t. My headache was severe and I was too warm. But I stayed focused, ignoring the pain in my lower back. I was too close to making her talk about everything that she’d done.
“Nobody gets to speak to me this way, do you hear me?” she said through clenched teeth the minute Etab left the room.
“What way? I asked a simple question. Mazen’s father preferred your sister over you, didn’t he?”
“I was already married when he married my sister, you idiot. You know nothing.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I meant that he preferred your cousin over you, wasn’t that it?”
“He’d never promised me anything,” she admitted. “He didn’t choose wisely, that’s all.”
“And choosing you would have been wise?”
“I was older than Sarah. He broke the tradition, just like his stupid son,” she said bitterly. I tried my best to remain calm, even though I was boiling from the inside as I listened to her insult my husband.
“That’s why you’re taking your revenge now? On me and my husband?”
The Snake let out a devilish laugh. “No, no. I’ve already had my revenge on Sarah. I didn’t let her be the queen.”
“Wow! All those years it was you who prevented her from getting pregnant,” I thought with a loud voice, not showing my anger and disgust towards her. I chuckled as if I was impressed by how ‘good’ she was at making her enemies pay.
“Yes. It was me, and I would’ve done it for the rest of my life if that …” she stopped herself mid-sentence and gave me a careful look, as if she was asking herself whether she should tell me or not.
I decided to prod her. “Dead meat, remember?”
The Snake chuckled lightly. “That’s true. Dead meat. Well, I paid a witch to do black magic on Sarah. And it worked very well for three years. Until the witch died and the spell broke.”
Muslims – especially Arabs – believed in black magic, which they believed was stronger and more effective than gypsies’ spells. I respected the culture even if I didn’t believe in such things myself, but to hear that now … I didn’t know how genuine that could be.
I swallowed thickly, starting to feel nauseated at the thought of how much Prince Fahd’s mother had suffered before she died giving birth to Janna.
Wait …
“I bet you were happy that Princess Sarah died, weren’t you?”
“No. More relieved that the money I paid didn’t go to waste like it did with Mazen’s birth,” she shrugged.
I felt my throat closing up and tried to suppress a gag. Was she really this evil?
“Ah! I paid the doctor to kill Mazen the minute he was born, and my sister as well. But she was only able to mess up Shams’ womb well enough to keep her from having another child,” she said ever so simply. “As for Mazen, stupid Mona took him to his father so quickly, the doctor had no opportunity to kill him.”
I was dumbfounded. How could anyone be this evil? Where were her limits? She had none.
“But the same doctor did well with Sarah, she finished her off right away. I didn’t tell her to kill the girl, though. She was worthless.”
I started breathing irregularly to the point I felt dizzy. It was a wonder I didn’t faint right then and there.
“You …” I breathed out. “You were the one behind Prince Fahd’s homicide attempt. You were the one behind Mazen’s food being poisoned twice.” It was more like statements of things that I’d figured out but thought of with a loud voice.
“That’s right, kid.” She got closer to me and bent over. Her mouth was inches away from my ear when she whispered, “If there is something that I want, there’s simply nothing to stop me.”
Her voice was bone-chilling. Her whispering woke something inside me. I’d heard those kinds of whispers before. But I couldn’t tell when, but I knew how they made me feel - terrified.
“I can’t believe you paid a doctor!” I gasped. I had thought the palace doctors to be beyond reproach. Evidently, they could be bought. It was one of the scariest things that she’d said.
“Huh! If you dig deep, you’ll find a person’s weakness, kid. Twist the proper arm and they’ll do what you want the way you want it,” she said. “Here’s a lesson which you’ll never get the chance to practice.”
“Is that how you got Mo’taz to kidnap me? You blackmailed him?” I asked in a shaky voice, hating how scared I really was, and my inability to hide it.
The Snake backed away. “Mo’taz? Oh, no. I didn’t have to blackmail him. He was actually eager to do it. He wanted to do it long before the hospital bombing.”
The way she spoke about the terrorist attack made me positive that she’d been behind it. This woman’s evilness had no boundaries.
“Why?” My chin wobbled, but I genuinely wanted to know why he hated me.
“Oh, he’s hurt. He thinks Talia was pregnant with his child when she was executed,” she said with a shake of her head, and my eyes almost bulged out of their sockets. “But that wasn’t the case; we aborted that thing the day after we found out. Too many complications and all, to what we had planned. The plans that you ruined.”
At that point, I was no longer shocked by whatever she said. Everything she was saying was difficult to absorb. But everything she said explained everything that had happened. I couldn’t understand how someone could have so much hate, to make it their life’s goal to destroy others and everything in the way of reaching their destination – even if that destination wasn’t even meant for them.
I couldn’t believe how easy it was for her to get that involved in the first royal family’s life, to the point of killing and kidnapping.
I couldn’t believe that enemies surrounded us but we were too blind, too trusting to see them for what they truly were.
My only excuse was that this woman was a complete psychopath. Only death would be able to stop her. I wished I was strong enough to kill her myself and give the world a break from her insane, murderous mind.
I must have been completely lost in thought, for I didn’t notice the papers until she put them right in front of my face.
“Start drawing,” she said, looking absolutely positive that I would take the papers from her hand and do as she’d told, knowing that I was by now totally terrified to think of how she had yet to tell me what she wanted to do with it.
With shaky, cuffed hands, I took the papers from her. A devilish smile decorated her lips when she saw me clicking on the pen to start drawing – she even nodded in encouragement.
While everything she said kept repeating itself in my mind like a broken record – I doodled around on the paper. I was able to see the look of pride and victory in her eyes whenever I glanced at her while my hand danced with the pen on the paper.
I took my time finishing it; my tears splattered on the papers. I was petrified and hating myself every second for not being able to hide it. My fear pleased her.
When I was finished, I folded the paper once. She snatched it from me before I could fold it one more time.
“Good girl, you did the right thing.” She unfolded the paper eagerly.
The Snake’s smile dropped as she read what I’d written. There were only two words. I’d made them as bold as possible so she would know how much I meant them.
‘Bite Me’ the paper said.
Before I knew it, she was in front of me again. Both of her hands were on my throat in less than a second, strangling me.
“I knew you were a stupid bitch, but I didn’t know how stupid you really were until now,” she spat as she strangled me. “Didn’t you hear anything I said? Didn’t you learn anything at all? I had my cousin killed and my own twin would’ve followed suit if it wasn’t for her sheer luck. The bitch is still struggling and might survive for the second time! It seems like I have to do everything myself if I want it done right.”
I couldn’t breathe. I grabbed at her wrists, trying my best to get them off me, even for a second to breathe. It was like trying to pull a train with my teeth. She was too strong, fueled by hate and conviction.
“I aborted my own grandchild and threatened to kill the three others if Kareen wouldn’t cooperate.” She pressed harder while I struggled with both my hands and legs to get her off of me. “Don’t you get it, idiot? I will get those drawings with or without your help. You’ve already told me too much without even realizing it. You thought I was Shams and did it all in front of me, because you’re so fucking stupid.”
With one last squeeze of my throat, she let go. I started gasping for air and coughing hysterically, tears running down my face. My whole body was shaking.
“I was never going to give you those five minutes, anyway,” she said before she left. I sucked down air, then threw up all over the floor.
My walls were breaking down.
I didn’t know if I passed out or fell asleep. A great pain, starting from the lower part of my stomach and spreading all the way to my hips and back, woke me up.
The pain lasted for half a minute before it was completely gone as if it had never existed, leaving me to the other constant pain that I was feeling because of the hard floor I had been sleeping on for the past few days.
How many days had passed, anyway?
When is Mazen coming to get me?
I closed my eyes, trying to clear my mind. It was useless. I only wished the fear that The Snake had made me feel would go. She truly knew how to be scary.
Without warning, cold water splashed onto me, making me gasp. And, before I could even wipe my face, I was dashed with another wave of cold water.
I struggled to get up on my feet, but I eventually did. I was gasping for air and trying to turn my back to the door where the water was coming from, trying my best to protect my stomach. The pressure of water made it feel like someone was throwing bricks at me.
Another splash hit my back, and I almost toppled onto my stomach, but thankfully I was able to brace myself and didn’t fall.
It took me a few minutes to recover, and when I was finally able to open my eyes fully, I didn’t see anyone. Whoever had done this didn’t stick around to watch me suffer.
The water on my face got a companion in my tears as I started crying. The floor was flooded, and it would be impossible to lie down on it.
She didn’t even want me to be able to sit.
When another similar pain hit my lower stomach and back, I knew. There was no doubt that I’d started my labor. The day I’d been waiting for impatiently had come –the day that I imagined would be overflowing with joy as we waited to meet our little prince.
Instead, I was petrified.
I couldn’t ignore the pain anymore, and I couldn’t dismiss my troubling, horrified thoughts. Everything The Snake had told me was curling through my mind.
I was running out of time, and Mazen had not come.
What if everything Qamar had said was true? Would she really do all she’d promised? What if Mazen never found out where I was?
The doubt was spreading like ink in my head. The word ‘scared’ didn’t describe for one bit how I was truly feeling. It felt as if I was dying slowly.
While I struggled to stay on my feet, I couldn’t touch my back to the wall because my wounds were painful. So, I ended up propping my side against the wall to get any sort of relief. I was weakening by the second as I waited for the water to magically disappear.
My contractions were irregular and far apart, assuming I was calculating them correctly. I had no watch, so I was counting each and every second and minute while I paced slowly in search of a dry spot that I could sit on.
I wondered if The Snake was able to tell that I was in labor from watching me on the cameras. I hid my pain as much as I could. It didn’t help that I couldn’t stop crying. I was too brokenhearted not to think of how miserable I was and cry about what I was going through and what lay ahead for me.
My heart dropped to my stomach when I heard The Snake talking to someone. I couldn’t tell what the words were. The other person was a man, and I was even more scared when the voices grew louder as they neared.
The Snake’s eyes were as hateful as always, but with a hint of excitement. The kind of excitement that terrified me, because it meant bad things were coming my way.
Although I couldn’t think of anything more terrifying than what I was going through, I knew that she wasn’t going to run out of ideas on how to make me even more miserable anytime soon.
She took pride in her creativity.
“Here’s your gift,” she announced in a sing-song voice, gesturing at me, and my lips started trembling. It couldn’t mean any good that she was telling a man – whoever he was – that I was his gift.
The man came to my view, and it took me a few moments to place where I’d seen him before. And when I did, I let out a terrified gasp.
It was Bassel, the royal guard that my husband had discharged from the army and humiliated in front of everyone two years ago. For my sake.