a/n: this was rewritten just in case you were confused lmao

F A N A A

arabian ; the destruction of self for love.

～～～

She bids him goodbye on the harbour, surrounded by their people. Zariah smiles, kaleidoscope eyes lovely and silvery hair glittering, wounded around her neck to hide nothing.

They made love slowly last night, and she didn't dare to set the pace faster. Not when his arms were warm and steady around her and far and unemotional and there was only the harsh, unforgiving edge of his desk digging into her back to anchor her away from delirium when she knew— That if she gave him any hints, any at all, he would dig those powerful hands into her hips and mark the skin of her throat and tear his teeth down the length of her collarbone and make her unable to resist.

Zariah did not love Sinbad.

But she was a woman and he a man, and neither inhumane enough to be able to resist one of humanity's greatest sins.

"Be careful," she tells him with a smile, still tucked in his chest.

"Of course, you as well, my love," he returns her smile full on. Still putting on an act for his generals and his people.

"Won't you be leaving on a trip soon, milady?" Ja'far interrupts them, sounding suspicious. Zariah knows he means no harm, but where Sinbad is concerned, his people are willing to sacrifice everything.

"Hai," she nods, "it's a diplomatic mission to Balbaad. There seems to be some political strain there between the monarch and his people. But I'll only be gone for several days at most. Rest assured, Ja'far. Sindria will be in good hands."

"Of course, enjoy your trip, Zariah. And as Sin said, be careful. Sindria cannot manage without its queen, after all."

Could it? Before they were married, Sinbad, had, after all, established it and managed his trade and military by himself.

But those are not the words of a queen. They are the words of her court whispered from behind her back, so she gives a pretty smile like she is supposed to and waves goodbye alongside the Sinderian people.

～～～

Her people are still the same.

The Whisperer's Guild may have never been a part of the nation of Sindria, but they continue to thrive. Children in trees with their books as pillows, mothers with babes in one arm and books in another. They were peaceful, serene and innocent among their shelves of books and ancient scrolls. But that was what became their downfall.

The Missanian Scholars were once hunted. Her people disagreed with the logic of the Reim Empire to depend entirely on the Magi who had chosen them. Without their protection, her people were utterly defenceless. They were butchered and violated for their knowledge, their women raped and defiled while their men forced to labour in the fields until they died of exhaustion.

As the protege of the last grandmaster, Zariah led her people into Balbadd and helped them to establish a market in the cornerstone of trade that would sustain.

The Whisperer's Guild.

They barely clinched to the edge of civilization until one day, a man appears in front of her.

Zariah still remembers the rough of the wood of the dock. The gentle splash of the waves under the moon and the smell of the salt in the air, the cool of the ocean when her swinging feet dragged across the rippling waves.

He laid in the sand, like a fallen angel, all ripped silk and gruesome scars. Zariah remembers shifting her feet from the cold of the water in the summer night to the wood of the dock and tucking long, silvery hair from her face to look at the man.

Hair the shade of an intriguing mix of lavender and violet. Tanned and well-built, the white of his robes hardly hiding the gore of his wounds and the scars snaking up the length of his body. Harsh breathing and the shaking in his arms as he made pitiful attempts to move. A few more seconds go on and his arms give out from beneath him.

For a long while, he makes no more moves.

Zariah feels something akin to disappoint in the pit of her stomach. But the rukh around him flutter and grow soon after and for the first time she feels like she doesn't mind being the carbon copy of someone else.

She gets up from the dock and treads across the sand towards the stranger.

Zariah kneels beside him as he lets out a long, shuddering breath and brings more rukh to gather around him. Once she sensed that he was more stable, she hooked an arm under him and with great difficulty, flips him over.

The first thing she notices about him is his eyes. The strong jaw and the angular face and the deep-set eyes of molten gold. And she sees the world in them. Not the world she wishes for as a little girl, but the hunger for his world in those eyes. A pair of eyes of galaxies and fantasies that neither books nor magic could ever bring.

So Zariah helps him.

She nurses him back to health and without the grim and mud and dirt and blood, she recognizes him as the King of Sindria, the King of the Seven Seas.

It is unsaid that the first thing she thinks of aren't the fairytales and stories them scholars are so fond of, but ways to use his position to get her people entry into Sindria. But that is hardly possible without her people losing more.

So she uses Sinbad's vow to repay her as means to get closer to the Balbardd King instead, and ignores his suggestive glances and maddeningly gentle touches.

～～～

But everything, everything changes when he steps foot in one of their libraries.

And Zariah is familiar with the glint that enters his eyes when he marvels at the scrolls, all kept away and hidden from the world for centuries.

The touches become longer, he begins to stand closer. Suddenly, he is everywhere. Outside of her study as he roams the halls of Balbardd alongside Ja'far, outside training alongside her people as she reads in the orchard, sitting closer during the council meetings held in Balbardd, the Guild and Sindria. She finds that she liked it.

The strange man whom she had met only months before had incorporated himself onto her so thoroughly that even when he is not near, she can still hear his laughter, see his smile beneath her eyelids.

She resists his advances. He doesn't prod further. There are only brushing of arms and hands on chest and eyes to deep to ever see through and hearts too broken to ever be healed.

But those days were lovely. Pretenses and lies, ones that she played along to, but enjoyed nevertheless. The first time begins in the library — the seemingly innocent way he had tipped her chin and pressed his lips to hers — no fireworks, no sparks, only the gentle pressure of his mouth and the warmth of his arms around her, anchoring her to the shelf.

And she knew—

He had kept his eyes wide, wide open. And the way he had looked at her after she walked off was not of lust, but of calculation. Of what move she would make next, of how he could charm her into giving him the knowledge her people died for.

He's selfish, but to him, the world is but a chess game. And to him, this sort of collateral damage must be kind of fun.

～～～

Sinbad is drunk when he shows her a piece of the broken man he is. Drunk and intoxicated, he doesn't fondle and grope her like she expects him to. Instead, his eyes tell of dying stars and unreachable suns.

It is gone in the morning and she wonders if it was an act. And it was, because she realizes that the things he had mused in perfectly worded prose about in what seemed like drunken melancholy was much too close to the unfeeling perspectives of herself.

He leaves for months, and she thinks he had forgotten.

But he hasn't, as it is evident when he returns and still with the same smile of destruction and proposes, and Zariah thinks it's unfair. So, so, unfair. But she accepts, either way. For her people is her only means of existing. And she accepts, because they are the same in that way. People who have lost. Forever hungering for the forbidden fruit, the unreachable stars, and their people — that love, no matter how pure it seemed, was only a way of justifying their own actions.

Sinbad treats her like a goddess, but his smile is a little too fake and his touches a little too long or the fact that when they make love— even the first time, it is always on his desk or his chair or outside, because a bed is too intimate and they could never look at each other in the way people expect them to.

Sinbad is a toxic flame, but Zariah is just as guilty because she is the one who adds the fuel.

And that is evident on their wedding day— Surrounded by showers of flowers and the dawn and the dying sun, they burn like the last embers of a dying fire and the last sparks of a dying star, and Zariah thinks that she wouldn't mind if she never looked at anyone else quite like how she looks at Sinbad—

Even as they both open their eyes, now bonded—

His of the mirages and darkness he so desperately tried to hide. And her, of the chill and detachedness that spoke the true volume of their love.

～～～

For her people,

she will ruin herself.

～～～

edit: rewritten yoooo kylalily maybe i did just want to ship them wtf

dedicated to XXAkemiBeauty

i just read all for your sinbad fics offline and they're so gOOD

～～～

i didn't lie when i said i wouldn't update much

like, if i don't finish this before i finish the magi + adventures of sinbad series rewatch, i probably won't be able to update this

and this won't be like a literal book it'll be more like

detailed one-shots in order of plot

stuff like that

and like sinbad will be kinda bad and kinda not bad?

idk

i'll still love him tho

lol

Sophie xx