Black Keys

by Rose B Mashal

  “This is beautiful,” I said to no one, admiring the plants and roses that surrounded the place. The sunroom had windows all over it, floor to ceiling. It was brightly lit, the soft sunlight was making it even more beautiful, if that was possible. It was such a sight.

  “Yes, it is,” the prince said, getting my attention back to him and making me realize that I wasn’t alone. “It’s my favorite spot in the whole palace.”

  Oh!

  “Was that your room before, uh-…” The thought crossed my mind, and I had to ask.

  He smiled lightly. “No,” was how he started his respond. “This is new to me, too.”

  I nodded, then gazed out of one of the windows after I took a few steps forward.

  “I’ll go call Mona to bring breakfast in here,” he said before leaving.

  Out of the windows, the view was as gorgeous as the inside of the place I was standing in. I could see a very large garden that I supposed surrounded the palace. There was a road that led to a huge gate at the end, but it seemed like quite a long walk to get there.

  I sighed.

  I had no idea how I was going to get out of here, but I wasn’t going to back down without even trying. Soon, I should try, once I get the chance.

  “The food is getting cold.” The prince’s voice brought me once again from my thought-clouded mind. I didn’t even realize that Mona had already placed the tray on the table and left, or even that he was back and waiting.

  “Yeah,” I said and made my way to the table. Everything looked delicious. The plates alone looked so good that I would’ve eaten them if I could.

  “I’m going to go and take a quick shower, if you need anything, just call Mona,” he told me.

  ‘‘Won’t you eat something?” I found myself asking.

  A small smile. “No, I’m fine,” and he left.

  I huffed, suddenly not feeling so hungry, but I knew I had to eat something or I was going to faint.

  The food was amazing. I didn’t know what half of the dishes were called, but it was so wonderfully good, I thought I’d never get enough.

  A while later, my eyes widened as a guy entered the room; I had no idea who he was. And for a moment, I panicked. I only felt comforted once the bright green of his eyes met my blue ones.

  The prince offered me one of his small smiles, but I just sat there gaping at him. He was dressed in black sweatpants and a short-sleeved white shirt. His brown hair was a mess on top of his head, but looked unbelievably organized at the same time. He looked so different than when he was wearing his thawb, like he wasn’t the same person, and, to be honest, both versions were incredibly beautiful.

  I was taken aback by the fact that seeing it was him comforted me. I mean, I’d just met the guy not two days ago, and a few hours earlier, I’d held a weapon intending to hurt him.

  He was still scary to me, nonetheless.

  I frowned in confusion when he came to the table and dipped his yet-to-be-used fork into the honey bowl then put it down on his yet-to-be-touched plate, messing his napkin that had lain neatly on the table in front of his chair. My confusion was gone once I saw Mona stepping back into the sunroom, clearing the table and asking us if we needed something to drink. He made it look like he had eaten with me. I went for coffee and the prince asked for tea. We didn’t even have the liking-the-same-drink thing in common. Pathetic.

  “Was the food okay?” he asked once Mona had left after bringing our drinks. I figured he was trying to make small talk. I wished he wouldn’t. It made me want to believe that he was a nice person. I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t believe it. It was impossible for him to be nice. He was raised to be rude and tough, I was sure of it. But pretending was something he’d been taught as well. He just did it with his servant–he pretended. Maybe that’s why he was acting like that. Maybe…

  “Uh, yeah, it was really good, actually. Mona seems to be a great cook,” I replied.

  “I’m glad,” he said. “Mona didn’t make it, though. It was my mother.”

  I choked on my coffee when he said that and coughed a few times. If I’d known it was his mother who’d cooked, I think I would’ve thought twice about eating it. She could’ve poisoned the food or spit on it or something. I still worried she’d actually done that, but then thought that she wouldn’t do it since her son was supposed to eat with me. Or so I hoped.

  “Your mother? The queen?” I asked in disbelief.

  “Yes.”

  “Wow!” I said. “You don’t, uh, hire cooks?” I couldn’t imagine the queen having nothing better to do.

  “What? Oh, no, of course we hire cooks, but it’s a tradition for the mother-in-law to cook for the bride for a week,” he explained.

  Oh!

  “Even the queen?”

  “I’ve told you before, Princess. We don’t make up the rules or traditions, we only obey them.”

  I nodded, taking what he’d just said in. “Is that only for the royal family?”

  “No, for everyone,” he said. “The bride is–how do you put it?–um, spoiled rotten during her first week of marriage. They serve her–her whole family and friends–even if she was a servant herself.”

  That’s why Mona seemed offended that I did my hair by myself, I thought.

  We went silent for a few moments as we both gazed out of the windows. I watched the bright sun, as it filled everywhere I could see from my spot on the chair I sat on, while the prince stood right in front of the biggest glass window and sipped his tea.

  The sight was mesmerizing, there was no doubt, but I didn’t think I’d ever seen anything prettier than the birds that were flying together in the baby blue sky. It seemed like they were dancing, like they were surfing waves, going up and down, separating and then uniting once again to draw the same shape, or an even better one than they had made not moments ago.

  “This is so beautiful,” I repeated the same words I had said a few times earlier. My voice was full of amazement at the magical sight in front of me.

  The price looked at me over his shoulder and smiled, a small one like the rest of his smiles, and nodded when I pointed with a shrug of my chin to what I was looking at.

  “I’m going to give you a tour once Mona goes to sleep, but we’ll have to be very quiet since she’s practically living here for the week,” he told me. “If you’re up to it, of course.”

  My eyes widened. “The whole palace?” I couldn’t believe it; it would make my escape plan a tiny bit easier if I knew the directions and what was where.

  “No, I’ve already told you we can’t leave,” he said. “I meant a tour of what will be your home for a while. Our wing.”

  My shoulders hunched down. It was very disappointing. I really wanted to look around the palace and see if there was an easy way out, but alas…or, could I convince him?

  “But you left this morning,” I tried.

  “Yes, but that’s the only time the groom can leave his bride, so her family can see if she needs anything after her fir-…you know.”

  “So, you won’t leave the room again for the rest of the week?” I asked.

  “No. Not unless it’s an emergency or something very important.”

  I sighed when he said that. If he wasn’t going to leave my side, it meant that I’d have to wait for the whole week to end before I could get the chance to escape.

  But, I knew I’d figure it out. I always did.

  “Do you want to go inside?” His question came when I put my empty cup on the table and yawned, sleepiness poking its head out and waving at me.

  “No, I’d like to stay in here for a while. You can go ahead, though,” I told him.

  “Oh! You want to stay alone?”

  “Yeah,” I replied. His company made me have alien feelings–some things like unease, discomfort or something like that, I didn’t know. I only knew that I wanted him far away. “Would Mona frown upon it?”

  Would she go and run her tongue all over the kingdom? The question stayed in.


  “Not really, I’ve already asked her not to come unless one of us calls.”

  “Good.” I sat back comfortably in my chair, as he put his mug beside mine on the table. But he didn’t leave. He just stood there awkwardly, not looking at me.

  “I mean,” he finally said, “It might get really cold in here.”

  “I’ll be okay,” I told him, wishing he’d just leave.

  He did.

  Everything after that was a haze, and I remembered how sleepy I was. It had been over twenty-eight hours since the last time I’d slept. The events of the day before, the emotions, the hurt, the confusion…it all got the best of me. I felt so tired and my eyelids grew heavy. I fell fast asleep in my chair, right there in the sunroom, surrounded by green and blue, just like the prince’s eyes and mine. My last thought was of a leaf the exact shade of green as the prince’s eyes.

  My head was pounding at some point. I felt as if my body was drowning in heat, burning my skin, and covering me with cold sweat.

  I felt myself shaking, I felt myself talking, but I didn’t know why I was shaking or what I was saying. I only felt so tired.

  I heard voices, people were speaking–two of them, maybe three–no, just two, but their language was foreign to me. I tried opening my eyes, but I couldn’t. I tried moving my hand, but it was a lost cause. So tired.

  I saw things behind my closed eyelids, shadows of things I’d already seen, though some were new to me. It was like a dream. I saw my brother, he was hurting me, the prince, too. I begged them to stop it, but they didn’t.

  I felt a tear falling, it burned. I felt a hand brushing it away, it soothed.

  The hand was strange to me, but I came to like its touch more and even more every time it touched my face. It felt like I wanted to feel it on me to no end.

  The throbbing in my head was fading away slowly. The pain was easing. The heat was waning. And when my eyelids felt lighter, I opened them.

  I wasn’t in the sunroom anymore, I was in a bed I’d never slept in before. It was a bit dark in the room, and pitch black outside the window.

  On the other side of me there wasn’t a window, but there was a shockingly beautiful sight. The shocking part wasn’t related to the beauty–I’d already known of that. Nor was it the fact that the prince was lying in the bed beside me–sleeping. What shocked me was the fact that I found myself comforted by his closeness, and that deep down inside me, I wondered what it’d feel like to wake up to this face every morning. Forever.

  It’s human nature. When you’re starving: you eat. When you’re thirsty: you drink. When you find something really beautiful: you like to own…you touch.

  It’s human nature. That was my answer, my excuse to myself when my hand moved of its own accord to touch the prince’s face—his cheek. It was the spot right under his left eye, an inch above the hairline of his stubbly beard—his cheekbone. It looked so soft, so tender, but not in an out-of-place kind of way, no, it looked perfect, even on such a strong, powerful man.

  ‘It’s human nature’ was the lie I told myself to avoid freaking out by admitting that I was feeling something wrong, something I shouldn’t be feeling, something that wasn’t just right. I knew I was falling into a trap that was set for me to fall in, but I was stronger than that, I shouldn’t fall, I wouldn’t fall.

  ‘It’s human nature’ I believed.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ I convinced myself.

  ‘Just curiosity,’ I promised.

  ‘Nothing is wrong,’ I lied.

  There was just something about finding him sleeping so peacefully beside me that made my heart swell, a feeling of something strange snapped inside of me, and I couldn’t deny I enjoyed the sight, nor that I questioned my sanity for enjoying it. I mean, the guy was dangerous, I just knew he was. If we looked at it from a different side, it’d look like I was kidnapped, and even though he wasn’t the one to kidnap me, he still kept me trapped in here even after he knew I didn’t like it. I should fear him more, try to escape faster, not try to touch and wonder about my feelings while looking at the beauty of his features!

  I was losing my mind, and I needed to get it together.

  When I was pulling my hand back to where it was, I noticed something that I wasn’t aware of before: my arm was bare, and after a quick glance under the covers, I realized that I wasn’t in the clothes I was wearing earlier. I was in a night gown.

  My breaths hitched, and my chest raised and fell rapidly with it. My heart beat so fast, it felt like it was going to burst out of my chest. My throat went so dry, as I was breathing mostly through my mouth and not my nose. My head was spinning, playing scenarios of the prince and what he did, along with how I was put on that gown, that were too racy for my liking, all of the scenes in my head were bad, ugly, and it made the tears tingle in my eyes.

  I sat up quickly, my head spinning even more at my sudden movement, holding the thin cover that was already over my body up to my neck, fear consuming my every thought.

  The mattress shifting underneath me must’ve woken the prince up, because at the very next second he sat up on the bed, too, and faced me. When my panicked eyes moved to meet his, I saw relief filling them.

  “You’re awake! Alhamdulilah! Alhamdulilah!” he said.

  I gripped the cover tighter to my chest, “What did you do to me?” I choked out, tears streaming down my cheeks, terror filling my heart.

  Did he drug me?

  Did he undress me?

  Did he rape me?

  God! Oh, God!

  I felt dizzy, sick to my stomach, aching in my chest. I was so scared, so, so scared.

  “What?”

  “What did you do to me?” My voice was broken, heart bleeding.

  He just stared at me, confusion covering his features, and a frown deepened on his forehead.

  “Did you drug me? Was it in the food? Of course, it was. That’s why you didn’t eat!”

  His features changed from confusion, to shock, and then it was anger, the same shade of fury I saw in the morning following the wedding.

  After few moments of staring, his eyes mad and mine terrified, he shouted, “Mona!” startling me. In seconds, she was knocking and opening the door right after.

  “See if the princess needs anything,” he said as he got up and disappeared inside of the sunroom, closing the glass-doors behind him, anger seeping out of him in waves.

  “I’m glad to see you awake, Princess.” Did she know I was drugged, too? “How do you feel?” she asked.

  “W-what happened to me?” I asked, maybe she knew the answer to that, as well.

  “You were really sick, you scared us,” was her answer.

  Us?

  “Sick?”

  “Yes, Princess. You had a fever. It’s because you slept for hours in the sunroom, your body was warm still from the shower, I guess. The sunroom gets really chilly every now and then, when the windows open automatically to let the plants breathe,” she explained.

  Oh!

  Oohh!

  Fever? I wasn’t drugged? Wasn’t the food poisoned? The queen could’ve poisoned it. But, no, I was really sleepy, I was tired. She also wouldn’t risk her son eating from it.

  “Who put me in this?” I pointed to the gown.

  Mona frowned, “You did, Princess. Yesterday, after the bath.”

  “No, I didn’t. I only wore the dress you gave me!” Does she think I’m a fool?

  “Yes, but the gown is attached to it, you wore them together. The dress is designed to be taken off easily without the gown if needed,” she said, and it was my turn to frown. “Here, let me show you.” She went to where the dress was placed on a clothes hanger that was in the corner next to the window. She showed me how the dress had hidden buttons in the middle of it between all of the decorations, from the top all the way down. It opened like a rope if you unbuttoned them all, and the gown was attached to it from the strips to the insides of the shoulders of the dress.

  I assumed it was only a layer o
f cloth when I wore it, I thought.

  “Who undressed me?”

  “I did. It wasn’t comfortable to sleep in the dress,”

  It wasn’t the prince! He didn’t do anything wrong. The thought made me hang my head in shame for what I accused him of.

  Mona must’ve taken my reaction to be shyness or embarrassment because she continued: “Don’t worry, Princess. It was only me and the prince in the room, no strangers,” she assured me.

  I just nodded, then touched my forehead with my hand and rubbed it, feeling the pounding in my head getting stronger, I had no idea if it was caused by the fever or the shame I felt for my actions towards the prince.

  “What do you say about preparing a bath for you?” she suggested.

  “What time is it anyway?”

  “It’s about four-thirty AM,”

  Whoa! I slept for almost twenty hours?

  “I hope we didn’t disturb you,” I apologized, sure that she had been sleeping.

  “Not at all, it’s my job. I was already awake since prayer time should be soon,”

  “All right, but I’m just going to take a shower, no need to fill the tub.”

  “As you wish,” she said with a smile, then disappeared into the bathroom.

  I got up slowly, taking the dress and putting it loosely over my shoulders and gazing out the window absently for the few moments Mona took doing whatever in the bathroom.

  I felt so bad for what I said to the prince, but then I thought I shouldn’t be so down. He knew I was sick and didn’t even bother to call a doctor for me. He even laid in the bed beside me–without my permission. I would’ve never agreed if I was conscious.

  “Call me if you need anything,” Mona said her familiar words, leaving me to shower.

  “How did you guys know what size I wear?” I asked as Mona handed me yet another dress to wear: this one was dark blue, but very similar to the red one because of the golden decorations and the chiffon layers and all.