the fold edit

She slept in the oldest wing of the palace,

in a long low room where the ceiling beams felt close enough to touch

and woven mats lay in rows like quiet, dreaming pages.

 

Every dawn, the other girls rose reluctantly,

rubbing their eyes, braiding their hair,

trading half-whispered complaints about the day ahead.

 

She rose with them—

but sleep never held her the way it held the others.

 

Her nights drifted into places that didn’t belong to this world:

vast halls lit by drifting dust,

lattice patterns glowing across stone floors,

a curtain pulling back as though someone had just stepped through.

Sometimes a woman stood at the far end of her dream,

her silhouette tall, poised, familiar in a way that tightened the girl’s chest.

Always just before the woman turned—

she woke.

 

She carried those dreams like a secret bruise.

 

By the time the first call echoed faintly over the palace walls,

she was already smoothing her mat,

already tying her scarf,

already practising the quiet invisibility

she had perfected over the years.

 

Her days unfolded in motions so precise they felt rehearsed.

She swept the corridors still chilled from the night,

her feet whispering across stone.

She carried ceramic trays through narrow servants’ passages,

balancing tea and sweetmeats meant for rooms she would never enter.

She folded veils finer than breath itself—

silks that caught the light

exactly the way the lattices in her dreams did.

 

Sometimes, when the afternoon sun angled just so,

the lattice-shaped glow landed on her forearms

and the bundle of veils she carried.

The pattern felt warm,

recognising something in her

she did not yet recognise in herself.

 

Across the room or down the hall,

Nadira would pause,

her hands suddenly still.

Years of silence lived behind her eyes.

 

Nadira granted her small mercies the others never received—

a longer break,

a softened instruction—

but she hid every kindness as soon as it was given.

She would return to polishing steps,

or reorganising linens,

or scrubbing courtyards already clean,

afraid the other girls might notice the difference

she worked so hard to erase.

 

The palace, however, noticed her effortlessly.

 

Lantern flames lifted as she passed.

Curtains fluttered without wind.

Gold-leaf columns brightened along their edges

when she came near.

Even the shadows seemed to breathe more slowly

in her presence.

 

She pretended not to see.

 

In the servants’ room at night,

the girls whispered themselves to sleep,

their stories familiar and safe.

Nadira often sat by the door with a lamp,

mending something with careful fingers.

Every so often, she would look up—

not at the cloth,

but at the girl—

softly, painfully,

as if guarding a truth too heavy to speak.

 

The girl would lie awake watching the thin slice of sky

visible through the narrow window,

willing her mind to stay empty.

 

It never did.

 

Dreams came instead—

lattice-light shifting on marble,

the whisper of heavy curtains,

bare footsteps echoing in a corridor she had never stepped into.

And always,

the silhouette of a woman she almost remembered.

 

The night everything changed,

the air felt wrong before any sound reached them.

 

She woke with a start.

The others stirred moments later,

confusion swelling through the room

like a tide rolling in too quickly.

 

Then—

boots.

Armour.

Torches flaring.

 

The door slammed open.

 

Firelight swept across terrified faces

as the King’s Guard filled the doorway.

 

“Nadira bint Zaharan,” the captain said.

 

Nadira stood slowly,

her face composed in a way that made the girl’s stomach twist.

 

“The King summons you,” he said.

 

A tremor passed through the room.

 

Nadira turned her head.

Her eyes found the girl—

and held.

 

“Come,” she said softly. “You’re coming with me.”

 

“Why?” the girl whispered.

​

For a single fragile heartbeat,

Nadira’s mask broke—

revealing sorrow, resolve,

and a love shaped by years of silence.

 

“Because it is time.”

 

She took the girl’s hand.

 

They walked through corridors she had only ever cleaned.

Tonight they felt impossibly tall.

Lanterns bowed toward her.

Curtains brushed her arm like a whispered greeting.

Twice, the warm lattice-light from her dreams

appeared across the floor before her—

and vanished as she stepped over it.

 

Nadira’s grip tightened each time.

 

At the carved door to the King’s private chambers,

the guards stepped aside.

 

Nadira hesitated only once—

a single breath held tightly in her chest—

before pushing the door open.

 

The chamber smelled of rosewater

and something older,

like grief let out too slowly.

 

A low bed stood in the centre,

silk draped like ripples of morning light.

The King lay upon it—

thin, pale, fighting for the space between breaths.

 

When the girl entered,

his eyes sharpened

as though waking from years of sleep.

 

“Closer,” he whispered.

 

Her feet carried her forward

though her lungs could not.

 

His trembling hand rose,

hovered beside her cheek,

and touched her with a reverence

meant for something precious.

 

“She has her mother’s face,” he said,

voice breaking on the edge of memory.

 

Her breath caught.

 

Nadira moved to her side

with a slowness filled with decades of restraint.

 

“You asked me to keep her safe,” Nadira said softly.

“And to keep her unseen.”

 

The girl stared between them,

the room tilting.

 

The King’s eyes glistened.

 

“I smothered the truth beneath fear,” he whispered.

“The court would have destroyed you.

Your mother died asking me to protect you,

and I… I chose the only protection I knew.”

 

Her vision blurred.

 

“You were raised in shadows,” he said,

“not because you were nothing—

but because you were everything

they feared could unravel them.”

 

Nadira bowed her head,

her voice near breaking:

 

“I raised you with a promise in my mouth

and terror in my throat.

Every day I feared this moment

and longed for it.”

 

The King gestured weakly to a carved box.

Inside lay a ring—

gold heavy with lineage,

set with a stone that caught the lattice-light

exactly as it had in her dreams.

 

Nadira placed it in the girl’s hand.

 

Warmth bloomed beneath it.

 

“My child,” the King said.

“My heir.

Forgive me.

But take what was always yours.”

 

His breath rose once,

shuddered,

thinned—

and was gone.

 

The golden lamps flickered.

The room held its breath.

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