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“THERE were talks of you being engaged to Azraq?” Oriana asked, tilting her head. She’d been listening silently up until that point.
Yana smiled. It had been four years now since she and Oriana became friends. When they met for the first time, she never dreamed she would show this much of herself to someone else.
Back in Ete Karima’s palace, Yana had kept dozens of servants, but there wasn’t a single person among them she could call a friend. No matter how long they knew each other, at the end of the day, a servant was still a servant and Yana was a princess. Yana realized how much power her words had, which was why she gradually began to keep an emotional distance from those around her. It wasn’t until then that she realized, for the first time, that other people never thought themselves close to her to begin with.
Oriana’s different. She gauges where the line is, but she never distances herself. And right now, she’s actually trying to step past my walls.
Yana never dreamed she would be able to make a friend like this. Part of her was chagrined that Oriana asked for details, but at the same time, she was happy to have someone to listen. She stammered as she spoke. It was the first time she had ever spilled her guts like this before.
“That’s right,” she said. “Azraq was from a respectable enough family that it didn’t matter if I was married out of royalty. Rather than send his unruly daughter off somewhere that she might cause issues, my father must have figured it better to keep me under tabs within the country by sticking me with Azraq.”
Oriana knitted her brows, puzzled. “But then why would you even bother with this trial…?”
Yana found her friend’s expression blindingly innocent. That’s right, Oriana doesn’t yet know what love is. She probably thought that if you liked someone, a sudden engagement to them could only be cause for celebration. Oriana didn’t know what it was like to feel as if your heart was on fire, to want to cry so badly you were willing to do things that went completely against your true feelings, to be desperate to run away, to have a jumble of absolutely miserable emotions that were so overwhelming they were beyond handling.
“The answer to that should be obvious enough: because I don’t want to marry him,” Yana said with a smile. “I really have been glued to Azraq ever since we were little. And that’s why I know exactly who it is he has feelings for.”
Oriana swallowed hard.
I, too, wish I could return to the time when I didn’t know what love was. I’m sick and tired of my own emotions leading me by the nose, of being powerless to resist them, Yana thought to herself, remembering how innocent she’d been as she clung desperately to Azraq’s hand as a child.
“You see, Azraq is in love with Mother. My mother, that is.”
Azraq’s gaze was always fixed on her. Yana’s mother had been accepted into the harem at fourteen, and she was only sixteen when she gave birth to Yana. She’d been too young to be a mother, which was why Yana was so much tinier as a baby than any of her siblings.
Among her father’s harem, Yana’s mother was probably the most beautiful or close to it. She was the target of jealousy and envy at the palace. Naturally, as a young boy, Azraq admired her. When they were around her, even though he was supposed to be protecting Yana, his attention was always fixed on her mother.
Yana’s mother was a bit of a klutz, which meant she needed more looking after than Yana did. Her mother was already charming enough, but being scatterbrained on top of being a world-class beauty only added to her appeal. Each time her mother would bump into something or drop something, Azraq would leave Yana behind and race straight to her.
Any time Yana’s mother left the harem, Azraq was always right with her. He stayed glued to her left side. He’d undergone a growth spurt since passing age ten, and so even as he stood beside her, he didn’t look the least bit out of place.
It was forbidden for any man to touch one of the king’s wives, so Azraq always had his right hand hovering close to her without ever actually making contact. That hand was always off-limits to Yana; he had to have it free to protect her, he insisted. But in reality, he always kept that hand free to protect her mother, even though she wasn’t his charge. That alone said how much he wanted to touch her even though he couldn’t, and as she watched from behind, Yana’s chest squeezed painfully.
That right hand stole my heart. I fell in love with him because of how much he yearned for my mother.
That was the beginning of her futile love. No matter what she did, she could never win. It was made that much worse by the fact that she was a princess in Ete Karima. She was in a position where she could ignore Azraq’s feelings and still have him for herself anyway.
“Azraq is eighteen. My mother is thirty-two. Apparently, she’s even more beautiful now than she was before.”
During the long holiday, a servant from Ete Karima had informed her about her mother, and it only served to make her miserable. She hadn’t returned once since enrolling at Lagen Magic Academy. Before coming here, Azraq had already looked like an adult when standing beside her mother, and he’d probably look even more fitting at her side now.
There was only a two-year difference between her and Azraq, while there was a fourteen-year difference between him and her mother. Yet the two of them looked far more suited to one another. Even after having a child, her mother had only grown more beautiful. She could do nothing but sit there, and she would still be irresistibly alluring.
“I don’t want Azraq to see even a glimpse of her, which is why I don’t want to go back.” Yana laughed at her own cowardice.
Each year, her face grew to resemble her mother’s more and more. No matter how much people praised her for her beauty, it didn’t make her the least bit happy. It actually made her sick when Azraq, in particular, praised her looks.
“It’s a serious crime to fall for one of the king’s wives. But in the end, that’s all just an excuse. I simply…don’t want him to love me as my mother’s replacement when she’s the one who’s really captured his heart.”
When her father approached her about the arrangement, she strongly refused, even though Azraq was present. She did it because she wanted to emphasize to him that she had no intention of marrying him and that her feelings for him weren’t romantic at all. She even selected him as her bodyguard for her trial because she was desperate to keep her cruel, cowardly feelings a secret.
Even if it meant dying otherwise, I still wouldn’t want to be his wife, not when he loves my mother.
Yana didn’t want to live in a whirlpool of regret by becoming his wife. Each time he touched her, he would surely remember whose skin he really wanted to caress. When he called her name, he’d remember whose name he really wanted to cross his lips. And each time they gazed into each other’s eyes, her likeness to her mother would act as yet another reminder for him.
“I know it’s foolish, but this was…the only way I could think of to protect my heart.”
One needed a fitting reason to refuse the king’s chosen groom for them. Fortunately, Yana was in a position to turn him down since, as his daughter, she could instead opt for her right to undergo a trial.
“This trial really was perfect for me because my future husband has to be able to best Azraq in a duel. As an excuse, I keep telling myself that if someone is able to best him, then that must be fate. That Azraq never wanted to marry me, either.” The tears Yana had been holding back began to trickle down her cheeks, dripping onto the floor. “But if Azraq is the strongest, I’ll end up wanting him instead. I’ll find myself ordering him to steal me away. I can’t help myself, you know?”
That’s why I’ll marry whoever bests him.
Yana managed to force a smile on her face, but her expression soon caved. This was the first time she’d ever confessed her feelings for Azraq—that she’d ever admitted her own resolve out loud. She never knew it would be so painful or that it would bring her such relief in the process.
Suddenly, Yana felt an oppressive weight around her. Oriana had thrown her arms around Yana and was squeezing. She was slightly taller, so the way she wrapped around her petite friend made it seem as if she was trying to protect Yana from the world. Her arms were pulled so tight that it was almost painful, but this was exactly what Yana wanted, more than anything else.
Yana rested her cheek on Oriana’s chest, her tears soaking into the other girl’s shirt, turning it damp and cold.