[AMAL POV]
Nine nights later, the torch outside our cell flickered erratically, wind slipping through the cracks in stones like whispered secrets. I opened my eyes before the guard's footsteps announced his arrival—a skill I had developed over three years of careful observation. My body had learned to wake to rhythms the way flowers turn toward the sun: instinctive, inevitable, necessary for survival.
This time would be different. No more crawling through kitchen waste chutes or squeezing through ventilation shafts they had already discovered and sealed. No more desperate scrambling in the dark like a creature afraid of light. This time, I would walk out of this place as if I had every right to be free.
They say madness is repeating the same action while expecting different results. I disagreed. Madness was believing there was no way out, accepting that these walls were the boundaries of my existence.
I crouched near the iron bars, wrapping the fraying scarf around my head with practiced precision. The cloth was brown and smelled of lentils—I had liberated it from a dropped bundle near the dish-washing stations. One of the newer girls had cried when she saw me take it, believing it was meant for her. I had not spoken, had simply turned and walked away. In this place, everything cost something, and survival was the most expensive currency of all.
The whispers had been spreading for days: a fire in the textile storehouse, two cooks fallen ill, a noble's wedding celebration in the western wing. Chaos bred opportunity, and I had learned to read the signs of institutional disorder like a scholar studying ancient texts.
Keys clanked in the corridor. Our gate swung open with its familiar groan of protest. The same guard stood before us—tall, with a lazy eye and the habit of clearing his throat before barking orders. Three years of the same routine had made him careless. He no longer saw faces, only counted heads like livestock.
"Eight of you," he announced, his voice carrying the boredom of absolute authority. "Laundry wing. No talking."
I stepped into the corridor with the others, head lowered in the universal posture of submission, hands folded in front of me like a woman who had learned her place in the world's hierarchy. The hallway seemed brighter than usual, oil lamps casting sickly yellow circles on the damp stone floors. We passed the chamber that housed the furnace used to heat the king's bathwater, the heat making my skin sweat and my teeth ache with its intensity.
The laundry wing lay down the eastern corridor, but that was not my destination. At the first bend, I allowed myself to stumble—not dramatically, just enough to fall behind the group. My shoulder knocked against the girl walking behind me. She hissed in irritation. I hissed back, playing the role of the clumsy, distracted worker.
I bent to retie my sandal, taking precious seconds while the group moved forward. Three heartbeats. That was all I needed.
I ducked into a side archway, pressing myself behind a stack of water barrels. My heart hammered against my ribs—not from fear, but from the sharp focus that came with action after months of planning. I counted ten breaths, listening for shouts of alarm that never came.
The corridor ahead curved into a servants' passage used primarily by stable boys and linen girls. I had memorized every turn during weeks of pretending to scrub blood from the courtyard stones. Left turn, right turn, down the narrow steps that led to the eastern wall.
My bare feet made no sound on the cold stone. Years of walking carefully had taught me to move like smoke, substantial but silent. I reached the wooden panel that marked the back entrance to the servants' garden and pressed my ear against the wood. Nothing but wind and the distant sound of water.
My hand found the handle just as footsteps approached from behind.
Fast. Purposeful. The sound of someone who was not supposed to be there.
I turned, pressing my back against the wall, and found myself face to face with a young maid carrying a tray of broken silver cups. She was perhaps sixteen, with freckles scattered across her cheeks like stars and eyes that held the softness of someone who had not yet learned to be afraid of everything.
For a moment that stretched like eternity, we stared at each other. Her mouth opened to speak, to call out, to raise the alarm that would end everything.
I moved forward and covered her lips with my palm, feeling her tremble against my hand like a captured bird.
"Please," I whispered, my voice roughened by months of careful silence. "Don't scream."
She blinked, wide-eyed, and I saw myself reflected in her gaze—not the girl I had been, but the woman I had become. Harder. More desperate. Willing to do whatever was necessary to taste freedom again.
"I'm not going to hurt you," I continued, my voice gentler now. "What's your name?"
She remained silent, but her trembling slowed.
"Mine is Hala," I lied, giving her a name that could not be traced back to the woman who had been dragged here three years ago.
Slowly, carefully, I pulled my hand away from her mouth. She did not scream. Instead, she whispered, "I never saw you."
Gratitude flooded through me like water in a desert. "Thank you," I breathed, and meant it with every fiber of my being.
I turned the handle and slipped through the door into the garden beyond.
The night air hit my face like a benediction. The garden was cold and damp, moonlight filtering through olive branches like liquid silver. My feet sank into mud that smelled of earth and growing things—scents I had nearly forgotten in the stone world below.
I kept low, moving between the bushes with the careful grace of a hunter. The olive trees were taller than my memory had painted them, their branches reaching toward stars I could barely see. The stones lining the walls were uneven, weathered by time and neglect—not high enough to stop someone who had spent three years planning this moment.
I reached the edge of the courtyard and paused, studying the path that led to the main gate. Beyond the outer wall lay the lower road, and beyond that, the world I had been stolen from. If I could reach the goat pens, I could climb the outer wall at its weakest point—stones loosened by rain and time, mortar crumbling with age.
I was two steps from the first wooden crate when a bell began to ring.
Sharp. Piercing. The sound of discovery and alarm.
"Prisoner count! MISSING!"
Voices erupted from the palace like water from a broken dam. Dogs began to bark. The careful silence of my escape shattered like glass against stone.
I ran.
Mud splashed up my legs as I sprinted toward the wall. My stolen scarf flew back like a banner, and I didn't stop to retrieve it. Behind me, torches flared to life, casting dancing shadows that turned the garden into a maze of light and darkness.
A figure appeared to my left—a guard, moving to intercept my path. I bent, grasped a stone from the garden border, and hurled it with all the strength of three years of suppressed rage. It struck his shoulder, and he stumbled with a curse.
Another turn. Another desperate breath. My lungs burned with the effort, my legs trembled with exhaustion, but the wall grew larger in my vision. Freedom was so close I could taste it, sweet and sharp like the first bite of fruit after a long fast.
I reached the stones and began to climb, my fingers finding purchase in the gaps between weathered blocks. One foot, then the other. The wall was higher than it had appeared from below, but not impossible. Nothing was impossible for someone who had learned to see opportunity in desperation.
A hand closed around my ankle.
I screamed—not in fear, but in fury. Three years of planning, of watching, of hoping, and I was being pulled back into the abyss by fingers that had no right to touch me.
Then another hand grasped my wrist, and for one wild moment, I thought someone was helping me climb. But when I looked up, I saw a face that made my blood turn to ice.
It was him. The guard who had applied the brand to my wrist after my second escape, the one whose scar curved across his chin like a permanent sneer. He smiled as he recognized me, and the expression held no warmth, only the satisfaction of a hunter who had cornered his prey.
"You really thought this would be the one?" he asked, his voice carrying the casual cruelty of someone who had broken many spirits. "Third time's not the charm, darling."
He yanked me down with casual strength. I landed hard on my back, the air driven from my lungs like a punch to the chest. Stars exploded behind my eyes, and for a moment, the world tilted and spun.
They beat me again. Not with the rage of the first time or the frustration of the second, but with the methodical boredom of men who had done this many times before. It was routine now, as predictable as the sunrise.
When I next opened my eyes, I was back in the stone chamber that had become my world. My lip was split, my ankle twisted, my body painted with fresh bruises that would fade to yellow and green before disappearing entirely. But this time, they had not rebranded me. Perhaps they believed I had learned my lesson. Perhaps they thought I would finally accept my place in their carefully ordered hierarchy of suffering.
Najwa hovered beside me like a guardian angel, her face creased with worry and something that might have been admiration. "Why?" she asked quietly when she thought I was strong enough to hear the question. "Why do you keep trying?"
I didn't answer immediately. My mouth was thick with the taste of blood and defeat, my throat raw from screaming. But later that night, when the torchlight had died and darkness reclaimed the corridor, I whispered my answer to the stones above.
"Because I'm not dead yet."
I couldn't walk for six days after the third escape.
My ankle had swollen into something unrecognizable—purple and angry, a testament to the guard's casual violence. My lip split open every time I tried to speak, so I chose silence instead. It was easier that way, and silence had become my closest companion in this place where words were dangerous and screams were common.
Najwa became my guardian during those days, bringing me stale bread from her own meager rations and chewing loudly enough for both of us—a small act of solidarity that meant more than any grand gesture could have. She didn't ask questions this time, didn't demand explanations or justifications. She simply watched me slowly crawl back to myself, like a soul being pulled from the bottom of a well one breath at a time.
"Next time," she said on the seventh night, when I had finally managed to sit up without the world spinning, "try flying. Maybe the wind will be kinder than these bastards."
I cracked a smile—my first in weeks. The expression pulled at my healing lip, but the pain was worth it. Najwa had given me something precious: the acknowledgment that there would be a next time, that my spirit had not been broken by failure and violence.
Something had shifted in the aftermath of my third attempt. I was no longer simply the girl they had dragged back to the cells. I had become something else—the woman who tried, who refused to accept that these walls were the boundaries of her existence. It was a dangerous transformation, one that painted a target on my back while simultaneously earning me a measure of respect from the other prisoners.
The guards felt it too. Their eyes followed me with new intensity, tracking my movements even when I performed the most mundane tasks. There was a weight to their attention, like chains wrapped around my thoughts. I spoke little, kept my distance from the others, and let my bruises fade into memory. But the knowing remained, settling into my bones like winter cold.
By the fifth year, only nineteen women remained in our chamber. Some had been sold to other masters, their fates unknown and unknowable. Others had found what they called "a better place," though in this world, better was a relative term that could mean anything from death to a different kind of slavery.
Sabria fell ill during the winter, her graceful hands becoming gnarled and stiff with age and malnutrition. She whispered poetry in her sleep—fragments of verses that lived only in her memory, pieces of a culture that was slowly being forgotten. I would sit beside her during the long nights, listening to words that carried the weight of a thousand years, holding them in my heart like precious stones.
She died quietly on a Tuesday morning, her head resting in my lap while I pressed a damp cloth to her burning forehead. Her last words were a line from a poem I didn't recognize: "The desert remembers every grain of sand." I buried her in my mind beside Halima, in the place where I kept the names and faces of those who had mattered.
Najwa grew sharper in the years that followed, her jokes disappearing like flowers in winter. The smiles that had once come easily transformed into gritted teeth and clenched fists. She never tried to escape—not once—but I knew she dreamed of it. Her fingers twitched in her sleep, reaching for doors that existed only in her subconscious.
The younger women began calling me "Silent Amal." Some were afraid of me, stepping carefully around my presence like children avoiding a sleeping snake. Others looked at me with the fascination reserved for fire—unsure whether to draw closer or back away. I didn't care about their fear or their fascination. I had learned to listen more than I spoke, to observe more than I acted.
I listened to the guards discussing changes in the outer wings. I memorized their complaints about extended shifts during Ramadan. I noted how the nobles' demands affected the daily routines of the palace. And most importantly, I paid attention to the things the women said when they forgot I was there, when they believed I was too lost in my own thoughts to hear their whispered conversations.
We were peeling potatoes in the scullery when the talk turned to the royal family. The air smelled of damp clay and old metal, scents that clung to your skin long after the work was done. Najwa sat beside me, her back aching from years of bending over washing tubs, her fingers nicked and raw from countless small cuts. The others huddled closer than usual—a sign that the guards had been absent from the upper halls for longer than normal.
That kind of silence usually meant someone important was visiting. Or someone had died.
Fatima broke the quiet first. At seventeen, she looked older. "Did you hear about Alya?"
"What about her?" Najwa kept her eyes on her potato.
"They found her in the river yesterday."
My knife stilled. "The river?"
"That's what they're saying." Fatima's voice was flat. "Said she must have slipped on the stones."
Najwa snorted. "Right. And I'm the queen of Sheba."
The scullery door creaked. We all froze, hands going still, hearts hammering in unison.
After a moment, Fatima continued, quieter now. "She was working the tea service last week. Left a water spot on something."
"Ya Allah," I breathed.
"Don't." Najwa's voice was sharp. "Don't say anything else."
But Amina, the youngest among us, leaned forward. She hadn't learned yet that some questions were better left unasked. "Have any of you actually seen him? The king?"
Fatima looked up from her mending. She'd worked in the embroidery wing before they moved her down here. "Once. During an inspection."
"And?"
"Tall. Good-looking, I suppose. But..." She paused, choosing her words. "You know how some people walk into a room and everything just goes quiet? Not because they're loud, but because they're not?"
We nodded. We'd all felt it with certain guards.
"That's him. Like the air itself is holding its breath." Fatima twisted her headscarf around her finger. "They say he's had sixteen wives."
"Had being the key word," Najwa muttered.
"What happened to them?" Amina asked.
"Same thing that happens to all of us, eventually." Fatima's voice was matter-of-fact. "Some died birthing his sons. Others just... weren't needed anymore."
"He got his heirs though," I said. "Three princes."
"Three we know about," Najwa corrected. "But only two show their faces much. The third one—"
"The strange one," Amina finished.
"Strange how?" I asked.
Fatima shrugged. "Never married. Keeps to himself. Some say he's devoted to his books. Others say he's just cold."
"Cold like his father?"
"Different kind of cold." Amina's voice dropped. "I heard he walks the gardens at night. Always alone. No guards even."
Yeah, we all know only that of the prince as if it is a golden discovery.
"You've seen him?"
"No, but Mari in the kitchens did. Said she was dumping scraps one night and saw someone under the big flowering tree. Just standing there, reading. Like it was the middle of the day."
"Reading? In the dark?"
"That's what she said. Gave her the shivers."
I set down my knife. "Do you think he knows?"
"Knows what?"
"What happens down here. What his father does."
Najwa's laugh was bitter. "Oh, he knows."
"How can you be sure?"
"Because he's a prince. And princes don't get to be princes by being blind to how their world works."
The silence that followed felt heavier than the others. I stared at the cracked ceiling, tracing familiar patterns in the stone. Somewhere above us, those princes lived wrapped in silk and comfort, debating matters of state while we whispered about dead girls and disappeared wives.
But someone had to remember. Someone had to keep track of the cost.
That night, lying on my straw mat, I listened to the others breathing in the darkness. Najwa was cleaning another cut on Amina's ankle—she was always tending to someone's wounds, finding purpose in small kindnesses.
"More guards in the east wing today," Sabria mentioned quietly.
"Someone coming to visit?"
"Or someone leaving." Fatima's voice carried the weight of experience. "Either way, it means changes."
And changes, for people like us, were rarely good.