"A flower may bloom in the garden of kings, but its roots remember the blood that watered them."

The sun hung like the Shah's medallion over Susa, its rays painting the ancient streets in strokes of saffron and gold. Here was a city that remembered—its stones echoing with ten thousand years of whispered prayers and broken promises, its winding paths a tapestry of destinies interwoven like silk threads in a master weaver's loom. Fortune and ruin danced together in these streets, twin dervishes spinning through time immemorial.

As Farid and Sima passed beneath the shadow of the great gates, the city's breath enveloped them—warm and heavy with stories. Saffron floated on the air like strands of sunset, twining with the rich aroma of lamb that had been kissed by fire and blessed with spice. The musk of desert-worn camels mingled with the metallic song of copper being transformed by craftsmen whose ancestors had adorned the palaces of Cyrus himself. Their hammers rang like heartbeats against the ancient air.

The bazaar bloomed around them, a garden of earthly desires. Merchants' voices rose and fell like waves in a desert of sound, offering treasures that might have fallen from paradise itself—silk that captured twilight's deepest hues, figs that glistened like dewdrops on the tongue of dawn. A storyteller, his beard white as temple doves, wove tales atop a carpet that might have once flown through stories of its own. His words danced in the air, each syllable a spell that bound his listeners like moths to flame. Through it all wound a boy, liquid grace in human form, balancing rose-tinted pomegranate juice that caught the light like liquid rubies, his path through the crowd as destined as the course of stars across heaven's vault.

Sima kept her steps measured, her veil drawn just enough to obscure her face from those who might recognize her. The harem's most favored sogoli had no business walking these streets, but here she was, bathed in the dying sunlight like an apparition returned to the living world.

Then, she saw him.

An elderly man stood at the corner of a spice vendor's stall, his eyes like burnished gold coins that had seen too much trade. He was watching her. And when she blinked—he was gone.

Sima's fingers tightened around the folds of her silk cloak. Who was he?

She cast a glance at Farid, but he was deep in conversation with a baker's apprentice, asking for directions to the Zurvanite lair. Oblivious. Carefree. He had no idea that shadows were closing in around them.

As they threaded through streets ancient as prophecy itself, the man materialized again and again—a shadow given form beneath a jeweler's awning where gems gleamed like frozen tears, then melting like smoke between stalls where brass lamps hung like captured djinn awaiting liberation. He moved with the practiced patience of a desert hawk stalking its prey through windswept dunes, each appearance a reminder that fate's net was drawing tight.

Sima's heart pounded.

But then Farid turned to her, his face bright as dawn breaking over the Zagros mountains. "I have the location," he declared, hope painting his words in colors only lovers and dreamers could see. "Beyond the bronze gates that remember the touch of ancient kings."

Sima's mind raced. If the man was watching her, if he was waiting for her to be alone... she needed to know why.

"Your Highness," she said, her voice soft, careful. "I have family here."

His brows lifted in surprise. "Family?"

"A cousin, born of my mother's blood," the lie fell from her lips smooth as honey from a copper spoon. "While fate lifted me to the palace heights, they remained here among the dust and dreams of common folk. The years have flowed like water through my fingers since I last saw their faces. If the gods do not grant me this moment, another may never come."

Farid frowned. "Then let me come with you."

"You can't." She met his gaze with practiced sincerity. "The Shah needs you more than I do."

His frown deepened. "Why not wait until after we've met with the Zurvanites, when time flows more gently?"

Sima lowered her lashes. Because the man might disappear. Because she needed to know who he was and why he was following her. Instead, she whispered, "When you serve the Shah, you give him your all."

Farid studied her, then sighed in understanding. "I will meet you later at the lair. Do not take long."

With a smile quick as lightning across summer skies, Sima melted into the crowd, becoming one with the city's eternal dance.

१

She waited.

The market's symphony swelled around her—voices rising and falling like waves in an endless sea, the sharp song of a butcher's cleaver striking bone, the whispered promises of merchants older than their wares. She moved through the labyrinth of alleys like a ghost through memory, passing a woman whose mortar and pestle sang the ancient song of herbs becoming medicine, beyond an astrologer who traced heaven's secrets in earthly dust.

And then—there.

He stood beneath an apothecary's weathered awning, where shadows draped him like a cloak of secrets. Time had carved its story into his face with the precision of a master calligrapher, each line speaking of years spent in the art of watching, of waiting, of knowing.

Sima did not waste time. "Who are you?" she demanded. "Why have you been following me?"

The man smiled, slow and knowing. "Because the tides of empire shift like desert dunes, sogoli. Your fate rests upon the edge of choice—cooperation or consequences."

Cold wrapped around Sima's heart like chains of winter frost. "Your words are riddles without meaning."

The man clicked his tongue. "You have been watched for ten years, child. I know who you are."

She stiffened.

"You are Sima of Golemut," he murmured, each word falling like poison into a golden cup. "Last flower of Vizier Mahmoud's garden, blooming still after the Shah's storm of swords. For a decade, you have served your vengeance cold—a deadly lotus floating in the Shah's wine, killing him with precision that would make the ancient assassins weep with envy. Your poison is as patient as your hatred, so subtle that the wise men who tend his health see only the natural decay of years."

Sima's breath hitched.

The letter. The one that had appeared on her pillow like a scorpion in moonlight, its threats wrapped in flowery prose. Now the hand that had penned those poisoned words had a face, had a name.

The man took a step closer. "I am Ardashir," he said. "And I serve Hormoz."

The Crown Prince's name rippled through her like wind through temple flames. Farid's brother—born of the same blood but carrying none of the same mercy.

Ardashir's smile spread like oil across water. "He sees your worth, Sogoli. A woman who could turn death itself into an art. He offers you what the Shah never dared—true power, a throne beside his own. But such gifts demand payment in kind."

He reached into the folds of his robe and withdrew a small vial of clear liquid.

"Complete your dance with death," he whispered. "Let the Shah take his final sip of your patience. And then—" his voice softened to silk over steel "—guide Prince Farid down the same shadowed path."

Sima's pulse beat against her throat.

"When both lions lie still, your vengeance will be complete as a perfect circle," Ardashir continued, "Hormoz will raise you higher than your dreams dare reach—chief advisor, governor of districts vast as small kingdoms. Power to shape empire itself. Wealth to make merchants weep. All that the Shah dangled before you but never truly gave."

His fingers, dry as ancient parchment, wrapped around hers, pressing the vial into her palm like a secret being sealed in blood. "Do not let your hesitation become our disappointment."

Then he was gone, dissolved into the crowd like incense smoke into evening air, leaving only his words echoing in the chambers of her heart and the weight of choice heavy in her hand.

The market continued its eternal dance around her, but Sima stood motionless as a temple statue, the vial burning against her palm like frozen fire. In her mind, two faces warred for dominance—Farid's, bright with trust she had never deserved, and her father's, forever frozen in that last moment of betrayal as the Shah's soldiers broke down their doors.

Above her, the sun slipped lower, painting Susa's walls in shades of blood and gold. Once, all she had wanted was vengeance. Now, she held the means to achieve it. But Farid...

Would she be willing to kill him too?

Would she trade one cage for another?

Would she choose revenge, or something far more dangerous?

Something that felt too much like love.

१
Please vote and drop a commentッ