The inn smelled of roasting meat, spilled wine, and too many bodies. I stood in the doorway, just another commoner in rough-spun clothes, the weight of my brother's coins in my pouch. Trying this place had been a desperate gamble; my time was running out, and this inn was the end of the line. It was still my best hope.
Smora had provided advice. The old servant's eyes, clear and sharp despite her pain, had held mine. She could not leave the palace, but she had family. "My sister, Inara," she'd whispered, her voice a dry rasp. "She is a weaver, just beyond the market. She sees the threads that bind our part of the city. Give her my name. She will help you."
Disguised and alone, I had navigated the warren of streets to a small, tidy home that smelled of dye and wool. Inara had her sister's eyes. I told her I was looking for a sick girl named Dalia whose brother had been taken. Inara listened, her hands never ceasing their work at the loom. "The boy's sister?" she'd said, her voice soft but certain. "She took odd jobs from Lady Hamil at The Weary Traveler. A kind woman, for an innkeeper. But I have not seen the girl since the flogging."
And so I had come here, to the inn, expecting to ask questions, to begin a search. I never expected to find the answer waiting for me.
I spotted Lady Hamil directing a server, her presence a point of calm authority in the room's chaos. I approached her, my heart a frantic flutter against my ribs. "Excuse me," I said, my voice low.
She turned, her eyes sweeping over my clothes with a practiced, dismissive glance. "If you're looking for work, the kitchens are full. If you're begging, the temple is that way."
"I'm not looking for work," I said, keeping my head bowed. "I'm looking for a girl named Dalia. I was told she sometimes works for you."
Her posture changed. The professional hardness in her eyes softened with caution. She scanned the room before nodding toward a narrow flight of stairs. "Up here. Now."
She led me into her private sitting room and closed the door firmly. "Who are you, and why are you looking for her?"
I pulled back my hood. Her sharp, intelligent eyes widened, not with immediate recognition of a princess, but with the dawning confusion of a half-remembered face.
"It's you," she breathed, taking a step back. "From the market. The girl with the silk under her robes. The one who paid the date-seller."
The fact that she remembered me, that I had been noticed, sent a jolt through me. "Yes," I said. "And I was at the table when my brother, Prince Kareem, mocked Nadim for screaming his sister's name. My family sees a thief. I see a boy who tried to save the sister I told to simply 'go home and rest'."
The shared memory, the confession of my own inadequacy, was the bridge between us. The caution in Lady Hamil's face gave way to a weary resolve. She walked to a small chest and pulled out a key. "You are not looking for her. You have found her."
She led me down another, more hidden corridor. The air behind the door was still and smelled of fever. On a simple cot lay Dalia. Her life seemed to be guttering like a cheap candle. Her skin was slick with sweat, and the small, carved wooden bird was clutched in her limp hand.
"I went to their barn the day of the flogging," Lady Hamil said softly, her voice thick with a sorrow that felt like guilt. "I found her like this. The fever was already consuming her. I couldn't leave her there to die alone."
Seeing her there, so fragile, solidified my resolve. This was a human being my family had discarded. I turned from the devastating sight and faced the innkeeper. "I know the cure," I said, my voice low and urgent. "The Desert Starsuckle. I'm one of the Royal Family, I can get the blossoms."
Lady Hamil's eyes widened, understanding and terror dawning at once.
"But I cannot get them to her alone," I continued. "The servants' physician, Ishra, can be trusted, but we have to get her into the palace. If I risk my freedom to get the cure, will you risk yours to help me?"
It was a monstrous thing to ask. She looked from my face to the dying girl on the cot, and I saw the war in her expression.
"He was just a boy," she whispered. Then she looked back at me, her gaze clear and steady. "When do we do it?"
That night, the palace garden felt haunted by the memory of a boy's desperate hope. I moved through the manicured hedges, my every footstep an echo of Nadim's. The air was thick with the sweetness of the Starsuckle. To me, it now smelled of injustice. With a small, sharp knife, I snipped the pearly blossoms. The irony left a metallic tang on my tongue.
With the blossoms safely concealed, I found Akram. "It is time," I said. He sighed. "Are you certain this is necessary, Aliya? It's just one girl."
"Kareem made her more than that," I countered. "He made her a story. And stories are dangerous. This ends it. Quietly."
He nodded. "The west servant's gate. In an hour. I will be arguing with the captain of the guard about the wine shipment. It will be loud."
An hour later, under the cover of Akram's theatrical rage, a laundry cart rumbled to a halt. Lady Hamil, disguised as a washerwoman, gave me a sharp, nervous nod. We lifted Dalia's small, feverish body and hurried through the servant's corridors, conspirators carrying precious, dangerous cargo. Once Dalia was safely settled in the infirmary, Lady Hamil, still in her washerwoman disguise, slipped back out through the west servant's gate, melting into the pre-dawn shadows. Akram's feigned argument had created just enough chaos for her unobserved exit.
We found temporary sanctuary in the infirmary. The old servant, whose own back was still laced with the wounds of my family's justice, took one look at the unconscious girl and her face hardened with resolve.
Together, we became healers: the princess who had abandoned her privilege, the young physician defying the palace, and the servant who had already sacrificed so much. Ishra, his face grim with concentration, meticulously prepared the Starsuckle infusion. He didn't speak, but the intensity in his eyes, the precise movements of his hands as he coaxed the warm, bitter tea past Dalia's lips, spoke volumes. A silent understanding passed between us, a shared defiance against the palace's indifference.
It was Smora who gave voice to our final problem. "She cannot leave the palace," the old woman stated. "To be seen in the city is a death sentence for her now. Her story is known."
We had saved her from the fever only to trap her in a new cage.
"But a new girl in the scullery," Smora continued, her dark eyes finding mine. "One with no past and a new name. No one pays any mind to a scullery maid. She can be a shadow, hidden in the light."
But as dawn approached, painting the small window with pale, unforgiving light, a change came over Dalia. Her breathing, which had been a shallow flutter, now seemed to become an irregular gasp that was both alarming and, perhaps, a sign of effort. A sheen of perspiration had appeared on her forehead, and her skin, still hot, felt like a burning ember. A small tremor still ran through her body, and her small, carved wooden bird remained clutched in her limp hand, a fragile, unmoving sentinel.
I let out a sound, a choked sob of despair. Smora placed a hand on my arm. The hope that had carried us through the night was evaporating before our eyes, leaving only the cold dread of failure.
I looked at the small, still form on the cot, the carved bird a mockery of flight in her limp hand. I had stolen a flower. I had smuggled a girl. I had defied my family and risked the lives of these women who had trusted me. And for what? To watch the last ember of a life I had tried to save be extinguished by the very darkness I fought against. I had stepped over a line into treason, not with a sense of liberation, but with the sickening certainty that it might all have been for nothing. The silence in the room was absolute, broken only by the sound of our own breathing as we waited for a breath from the girl that might never come.