Aneesa had always imagined palaces to be radiant places with gilded halls and opulent gardens. She thought they would be filled with scholars and music, where exotic scents hung in the air and wisdom was passed like bread.
She had not imagined it would feel so much like being buried alive. This was not the palace of her childhood stories; it was a golden coffin, beautiful and suffocating all at once.
When the gates of the Alhambra clanged shut behind her, it felt like the finality of a tomb. She was met by a procession of servants who didn't greet her so much as examine her. Adjusting her veil, tightening her sash, measuring her like a cut of meat. She was stripped of her name, her clothes, and her silence. Now, she was "new," and all eyes fell on her with a judgmental gaze.
They bathed her in rose water. Rubbed oil into her skin until she gleamed. Combed her curls until her scalp ached and twisted them with threads of gold. They laced her into cream colored silk, sheer and shimmering. When she looked in the bronze mirror they handed her, she barely recognized the girl staring back.
She looked like one of the painted women in the erotic poems Safiya used to hide in her embroidery case.
She looked like someone who belonged here.
And yet every inch of her skin screamed in protest.
The harem quarters were more beautiful than any place Aneesa had ever seen, and yet it was the kind of beauty that strangled.
Fountains murmured in marble courtyards. Carved archways spilled colored light onto mosaic floors. The air smelled of sweet smoke and saffron. Women moved like shadows through the space, their laughter soft and practiced.
The head of the harem, a tall woman named Zaynah, spoke in clipped tones as she led Aneesa through the stone corridors.
"You will learn to walk with grace. You will learn to speak only when spoken to. You will not read without permission, and you will not speak of the outside world."
Aneesa bit her tongue. What is the inside world, if not a prison with velvet curtains?
They passed a group of older concubines lounging near a fountain. They eyed Aneesa like a new animal brought to the zoo, altogether curious, amused, a little bored.
"Her figure would please the Sultan," one said.
"But her eyes are unusual," said another.
"I wonder how long it will take the Emir to reject her."
Zaynah waved them off and ushered Aneesa into a private room with high walls and a lattice window that let in angled light.
"This is yours," she said. "Until it isn't. I suggest you learn *very *quickly how to keep yourself appealing."
Aneesa looked around her new quarters with a bit of wonder. It was adorned with colored glass filled with exotic perfumes, and fresh flowers were placed throughout. A narrow window overlooked the town of Granada. She stopped herself from searching for her father's shop before collapsing onto the soft bed. She pulled the book she had from her sleeve, escaping into its pages.
Later that evening, the girls were summoned to the royal gardens for a seasonal blessing ceremony. Aneesa stood among them like a wilting flower, her spine stiff and her feet aching in the embroidered slippers she forced her feet into. They were lined up like an assortment of Jewels in preparation for the royal family's arrival.
A horn sounded, and dancers stepped forward, gyrating to music as the servants bowed deeply at the arrival of the Sultan and Malika. Behind them was a procession of high-ranking officials, maids, and servants.
Then she saw him. The nobleman she often encountered in her father's shop, glaring at her as she wrapped up ancient tumes or climbed a ladder to reach a scroll he requested to view.
He arrived without fanfare, walking several paces behind his father and the rest of the royal court. Where others glittered in gold and sand colored robes, he wore deep indigo, his robe marked only by the alchemical sigil of a sun split in half.
Was he the Emir?
She'd read of him. Tariq ibn Yusuf al-Nasir. The quiet Prince, the scholar son, the Sultan's greatest disappointment. They said he rarely smiled. That he spoke more with books than with people.
Now she understood why. Was Tariq the reason The Malika asked her father to sell his only child, to amuse her spoiled son?
Tariq's eyes, amber like firelight, met hers for one fleeting moment, his expression shifting from indifference to surprise and then, what appeared to be, disdain.
She turned her head sharply and looked at the garden's reflecting pool instead.
And in that moment, Aneesa felt something shift. It wasn't recognition. Or fate. Or love.
It was resentment.
Fine, she thought. I want nothing from a prince anyway.
She didn't yet know that this was the man who would one day change her life.
Nor that her presence would change his.