by Lewin, Renee
The only reason Jem’ya had agreed to a session was to leave the dim confines of the cellar. At least there was sunlight in the library. She saw Tareq’s handsome smile and wanted to smash his perfect white teeth in. The empathy she’d felt for him during the last session was long gone. She didn’t feel any tingles in her hands when she looked over his body. All she felt was a growing irritation from being in his presence.
Tareq lie down on the table and Jem’ya began to pass her hands over his thighs, his back, his shoulders and neck. She waited for something, a feeling, a vision. The seconds ticked by. She felt nothing but the hatred beginning to boil anew inside of her. God was not intervening in this session. Her fingers curled. She dug her nails into his back and slashed them across his skin, leaving five thin bloody lines.
Tareq hissed. “Ah! What was that for?!” He flipped over on the massage table and sat up. He reached his hand over his shoulder to feel at the scratches but they were too far down. He arched his back in discomfort as the wounds began to sting.
She shuffled backward toward the door. “When will you let me go from this place? I don’t belong here!”
“I…I need to talk to you.”
“You want my company so you hold me hostage in a cellar? You’re absolutely sick! Why don’t you just admit that you wish I was dead?”
“Jem’ya, I don’t!” Nausea quaked Tareq’s stomach.
“You wish I would disappear, because you know I will never cease damning your name. I am the witness you want quieted, but who a shred of morality stops you from murdering. Instead you break my spirit so that I won’t speak again. You keep me isolated from everyone and everything that I love, to break my spirit and silence me!”
Tareq swallowed. “No.”
“Yes you are, Tareq!”
“No,” he repeated, quietly. He and Jem’ya sat in silence, Tareq studying the floor and Jem’ya watching Tareq. His shoulders were slumped. The tendons in his hands slid across his knuckles and his biceps twitched as he gripped the table’s edge again and again. His lips pouted slightly. A furrow was set between his brows. He glanced up at her from beneath his thick black lashes. “I’m not social like my brother Qadir is. I’m not an open book.”
Jem’ya stared blankly at him, listening.
“I don’t share my thoughts or emotions very easily, if at all. It’s not uncommon for me to go an entire day and speak only a few words. But then I began to go to the Coast to see you.” Tareq lifted his face. His gaze was more direct. “In the span of a year I felt myself loosening. Speaking. Trusting.”
Jem’ya recalled his steady transformation from a distrusting, stone-faced patient of few words, into a silly, bright and flirtatious young man who danced with her and would surprise her with gifts. Many times she’d cried, wishing he had not changed at all. Then she never would have been afflicted with a yearning for him.
“I could smile with you. You are the only person besides Qadir and Bahja that I would call my friend. Jem’ya…I know what it’s like to lose someone you love.” He stared at her with watery eyes. Jem’ya swallowed. “My father was on a leisure trip, in the region of Tusci, on that peninsula north across the sea, when he met my mother, Mariza. He saw her beauty and fell for her immediately. My father always gets what he wants. She was from a very poor family, so it was easy for him to persuade her into marriage. To gain a better life, my mother returned with him to Samhia. She tried to love him. She gave him two sons, but she still did not grow to love him. It wasn’t her fault. My father is an impossible man.
“She grew so lonely in this palace. She had Qadir and me, but that wasn’t enough. She…She eventually took a lover, a servant who shoveled coal in the palace furnaces. The King found out.” Tareq paused to take some controlled breaths. His chest was burning and his head was pounding. Tears clouded his vision. “The servant disappeared. Rumor has it that the King killed him by his own hand and threw the body into a furnace.” He paused, swallowed. “My mother received a public execution. He made us watch. My brother and I had to watch.”
Jem’ya clamped a hand over her mouth as her eyes filled with tears.
Tareq ducked his head as tears began to stream down his face. “I remember her long black hair. It was her glory. She let it grow so long that it almost swept the floor when she walked.” Tareq wiped the tears from his mouth and chin with the back of his hand. “I remember her hair…” Tareq broke into a sob, gasping a few sharp breaths, but he managed to reign it back in. “I remember how the executioner lifted her hair out of the noose. It took forever. My mother stood silent and brave on the platform before the entire kingdom.” Tareq raised his arm and reenacted how inch after inch of Mariza’s silky black hair passed over the hangman’s arm. His arm dropped into his lap. He held Jem’ya’s sympathetic gaze. “I couldn’t speak for months. I had so much rage and despair inside. I felt trapped and controlled. We were never allowed to mourn, no, the King didn’t even let us have a funeral for her.
“So, as a teenager, I went into battle hoping to die. It was unbearable living under the King’s constant scrutiny. Somehow, war gave me a certain release, an escape from my thoughts of ending my life. I gave no thought as to whether I was fighting the good fight. I rationalized battle as a means to an end, to one day rule this kingdom. I had no excuse. I’ve already sworn never to go to battle again unless I’m protecting my family. War was unfortunately one of the few things I’d found that took the edge off the pain inside. It destroys me, Jem’ya, to think that I have caused you anywhere near the amount of pain my father’s cruelty has caused me. The thought of you hating me as much as I hated my father for what he did…I can’t bear it. I can’t let you out of my sight until I know you do not hate me. That’s why I’ve kept you here.”
Jem’ya closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. “I don’t hate you. If I hated you, I would not be crying now for your loss,” she explained to him as well as to herself.
“But do you forgive me?”
“Did you ever forgive your father?”
“No,” he admitted.
“Then you understand well how much you are asking of me.”
Tareq nodded and sighed. “I just want you to smile at me again. I want you to laugh like you did at the Coast when I washed up on the shore tangled in seaweed.” He gave her a sad smile. “I want you to be happy. But will you ever feel happiness again after what I’ve done?”
“I don’t know!” Jem’ya exclaimed, dissolving into intense sobs.
Tareq stepped down from the massage table and went to her. He wrapped his solid arms around her quaking body. The warmth of his bare skin melted her shivers away.
“You always think you can bend others’ will,” she cried. Her forehead rested against his bare chest. “You cannot force people to feel what they do not feel, Tareq.”
“I’m so sorry, Mahsalom.” He stroked her hair and immediately fell in love with the soft texture. His fingers found her right ear. He affectionately stroked the curve of it. Her tears trickled down his broad chest and fell into the place where their bodies met. He pressed his nose against her hairline and rubbed her back as she cried. They stood that way for a while, Jem’ya hugging herself and Tareq hugging her. Finally calm, Jem’ya looked up at him. Her lips brushed against his chest as she lifted her face.
Tareq’s eyes were the color of rich honey and his gaze upon her was just as sweet. His eyes flickered over her mouth. He squeezed her a little tighter, thinking of kissing her. He was surprised when her eyes fell to his lips as well.
She wanted him to kiss her. After so many days of isolation and anguish, she desperately wanted more of the solace he was giving her through his embrace, through his touch. Jem’ya angled her face closer. Tareq eagerly met her the rest of the way.
She’d never had a kiss so gentle. Her lips trembled as he delicately explored her mouth with his own. The kiss let her mind release its grasp on the thorned heavy branches of sadness and resentment. Jem’ya felt as though she was floating and
Tareq’s embrace was the only thing keeping her grounded.
Tareq kissed her even though he knew it would only make him want her more. He wanted her in his bed, now, and his enthusiasm surprised him. He was usually a very controlled person. Sexuality was a guarded thing for Tareq because his mother’s promiscuity, his father’s violent lust and his brother’s destructiveness had taught him it was best to avoid temptation at all costs. When propositioned by maidservants, princesses, harem girls, and other seductresses, he easily walked away, but with Jem’ya there was nothing easy about holding back his desire. He wanted to touch every inch of her and taste every part of her. His hand settled at the small of her back. He pulled her snug against his arousal and deepened the kiss. When she moaned against his lips, he introduced his tongue to the mix.
Jem’ya’s senses came rushing back at the sound of her own moans. She realized how intimately their bodies were pressed together and yelped. Jem’ya ripped her body away from his grasp, horrified.
Tareq reached out for her arm. “Jem’ya, please don’t—”
“Haven’t you taken enough from me?!” she cried. Jem’ya left quickly, almost forgetting to wear her burqa.
Crestfallen, Tareq watched her run out the door. One step toward Jem’ya’s forgiveness had become twenty steps back. He sighed. “Damn.”
Bahja saw the way Jem’ya rushed out of the room and saw the shock in the girl’s eyes behind the black mesh of the burqa. “What did he do to you?”
“What hasn’t he done?” Jem’ya hissed.
Bahja returned Jem’ya to the cellar and left her alone. Jem’ya stood in the center of the dark room. Tears spilled down her face. I let him kiss me. My enslaver. My brother’s killer. I let him kiss me. Suddenly dizzy, Jem’ya took hold of the back of a chair. She was sure she would faint. When the room finally stilled, the memory of Tareq’s lips and his caress made her stomach warm and a hot need tingle between her legs. The sensation was followed by rage. She slammed the chair to the ground. What is wrong with me?! He ruined my people’s lives. He ruined mine. All he had to do was tell me his sob story and I was in his arms?
How dare he try to equate his pain to mine! My pain is fresh. The only thing Tareq and I have in common is having to face our loved one’s murderer day after torturous day. But now I can’t even stand righteous before the murderer because I was clinging to him like a desperate whore! Curse him!
Jem’ya glimpsed her reflection in the mirror and froze. Her eyes were red and puffy. Her hair was falling out of its bun. Her lips were swollen from kissing. She was overcome with disgust. Before she knew it, she’d pulled the mirror from the wall and it was in shards, scattered across the ground. There was blood beneath her fingernails. Jem’ya panicked at the sight of it. She ran to the water bowl and soaked her hands. As Jem’ya studied her fingers in the water, she remembered that the blood was not hers, but Tareq’s. She hung her head and cried, distraught that she’d become a woman she didn’t recognize. There was hardly anything left of the nurturing, confident Jem’ya.
He is a man like any other, always wanting more, never satisfied. Just like Kenzo. More women, more money, more power, never enough. Tareq will not stop until there is nothing left of me.
For the first time in her life, she did not feel that God was with her. It was the loneliest notion.
She needed to escape Tareq’s influence before everything she’d built herself to be was ruined. But how? Even if she got out of cellar room, the palace was completely surrounded with security at all times. She couldn’t break out.
That night, Jem’ya forced herself to accept that she needed Tareq. The only way she could get out was to somehow receive Tareq’s permission to do so.
CHAPTER SIX
In the morning, Bahja gripped the wooden handle of a broom with her plump, aged fingers, methodically sweeping up the pieces of glass from the floor of Jem’ya’s prison cell. That’s what this is, Bahja thought, a prison. She glanced at the young woman sitting in the corner of the cell. Jem’ya was resting her head against the wall and watching the dry yellowed straw at the end of the broom rake the broken glass into a loose pile. The vacant look in the young woman’s eyes made Bahja want to raise the broomstick and whack Tareq a dozen good times.
Why didn’t he see that keeping Jem’ya here was more damaging than good? He was holding onto Lady Jem’ya so tightly that the young woman was suffocating. He’d already taken enough from this divinely-favored girl, the dear friend who had given him so much in the span of a year. The girl’s healing touch went deeper than the prince’s skin. Bahja had seen how a flicker of contentment warmed Tareq’s eyes for the first time in years following his first visit to the healer, and the spark had grown ever since. Jem’ya needed to know her power over the prince.
“Lady Jem’ya?”
Jem’ya’s dark eyes drew away from the sharp glass on the ground and up at the concerned maidservant. “Yes, Bahja?”
“Each prince stole a piece of my heart the day they were born.” Bahja smiled and looked down at the glass, her mind replaying a memory of the two little boys—Tareq was three and Qadir seven—laughing and chasing each other through the white marble halls. Their eyes were so bright then. Bahja’s smile fell as the memory of that rare cheerful moment in the Samhizzan palace dissolved. She glanced at Jem’ya and continued speaking as she swept the floor. “I have given and will continue to give them as much love and support as I can, but it is not lost on me that my efforts could never equal having their mother back or having a caring father. Still, I give.” The maidservant gripped the broom handle. Her voice lowered. “Allah did not bless me with a healthy womb, so my princes are...”
Jem’ya nodded, understanding.
Feeling acknowledged and respected by the young woman, Bahja went on. “I love the boys equally, but I admit that I’ve treated the boys differently. They are different souls.” Bahja rested the broom against the wall and held onto the bars of the door for support as she got down on her knees. She sighed. She massaged the swollen joints of her fingers before picking up the remaining slivers of glass by hand. The reflective shards plinked against the inside of a copper wastebasket.
“The King favors Tareq over Qadir. Everyone in the palace knows that. Prince Tareq is tenacious, like his mother, and strives to be rational and even. Qadir’s emotions are up and down constantly. He’s naturally dramatic and tenderhearted. Even that lanky frame of his suggests his vulnerability. The King recognized this distinction in his sons early on.” Bahja’s lips curled. “The King seems to fuel himself with the pain and fear of others. Qadir showed the most fear, so Qadir received the cruelest treatment.”
Finished cleaning, Bahja sat back on her calves and rubbed at her sore knees. Her moist green eyes were vivid as her face was framed by a bright blue head scarf. “The bond the princes have is unbreakable because they have survived an unmatched misery together, but their father’s unequal punishment has distanced them, when all they really have is each other. I treat the princes differently, but only because it’s what they need. I would never choose one over the other.”
“Of course not,” Jem’ya said softly.
Bahja nodded. “Qadir needs structure and strict guidance because he doesn’t take things seriously. He knows that I do it because I love him, but I think in his heart he accepts it as another disfavor, since I am much softer with his younger brother. But Tareq has sharp edges that need smoothing and a heart brimming with emotions that he doesn’t express. After more than a decade he still refuses to talk with me about the day his mother passed away.”
I didn’t know he’d broken years of silence for me. Jem’ya pulled her legs closer to her body. “He told me about that day.”
Bahja’s eyebrows went up. “He told you?” She placed a hand over her heart. “When?”
“Yesterday.”
Bahja smiled with tears in her green eyes. She laughed some as the tears began to stream down her plump cheeks.
Jem’ya stood up and hur
ried to the woman’s aid. She knelt at her side and rubbed her back. “I’m sorry, Miss Bahja. I didn’t mean to take that moment away from you.”
“No, Lady Jem’ya. I’m not upset that he spoke to you about it. I’m happy he did. I’m just sad that my princes don’t need me anymore. Now that the boys are men, they are yearning for a different kind of love.” Bahja wiped the tears from her ruddy face. “Jem’ya, Tareq has changed for the better since he met you. I know it’s hard to believe, considering the present circumstances.”
Jem’ya held her tongue.
“I haven’t told him yet, but our Queen had a necklace just like those earrings he picked out for you. It had a pendant made of gold wire and a large pearl. When Tareq was very little, too little to remember, he would sit in his mother’s lap and play with the pendant, gurgling and sighing as babies do. When he came home that day with those earrings for you,” Bahja shook her head, “I knew it was a heavenly sign.”
Jem’ya looked away from Bahja’s keen eyes.
“Tareq hides it, but he is just as sensitive as his brother. It’s not easy for Tareq to trust someone with his feelings, and greatest of all, to trust that Allah won’t take those he truly loves away from him. He’s experienced such deep loss that to let another woman he loves out of his sight has been almost impossible, yes?”
Jem’ya couldn’t hold her tongue any longer. “You are seeing Tareq through a mother’s eyes. He doesn’t love me, and I don’t care what happened to him in the past. I don’t deserve this.”
“If you know what the King did to our Queen, then don’t you see how dangerous it is for Tareq to keep you here? Tareq is the favored son but the King has no reservations about making disobedient people disappear. My life is in danger too because I am aiding Tareq in this. What Tareq is doing isn’t right but he’s doing this for you. You are a beautiful young woman and the only person that he doesn’t distance himself from. Don’t underestimate your power over Prince Tareq.” Bahja squeezed Jem’ya’s hand. “It pains me to put such responsibility on you, but, Jem’ya, if you save yourself from this place, you will also save me and my prince.”
