An old storage closet.
This discovery had shocked him, but his grandfather had quickly assured the prince that the isolated position of her room would only make his task easier.
The king had misunderstood Kamran’s astonishment.
Even as he climbed yet another flight of stairs, the prince struggled to imagine what such a closet might look like. He knew servants occupied the most humble housing, but he’d not anticipated the girl might live among rotting vegetables. Did she share a room with sacks of potatoes and pickled garlic, then? Was the poor girl left no recourse but to sleep on dank, moldy floorboards with only rats and cockroaches as her companions? She was worked so hard she nearly wore the skin off her own hands—and yet she was not recompensed with the most basic offering of a clean bed?
Kamran’s gut twisted at the thought.
He did not like to think how poorly these revelations reflected on his aunt, but worse: he did not know whether he would’ve done any better. The prince knew not how every snoda in the palace was treated—and it had never once occurred to him to ask. Though he considered it was perhaps not too late to find out.
Kamran had by now lost count of the flights of stairs he’d climbed. Six? Seven? It was uncanny to experience the arduous commute she made day and night—and it was yet another astonishment to discover how far removed she lived from the breathing bodies of others.
For a moment it made him wonder whether the girl preferred being so far from everything. Certainly no one would make such a journey up into the attic without cause. It was perhaps a comfort to feel so sheltered.
Though it was perhaps desperately lonely, too.
When Kamran finally stood in front of the girl’s door, he hesitated; felt a disconcerting flutter in his chest.
The prince did not know what he might discover herein, but he tried to prepare himself, at least, for a vision of abject poverty. He did not look forward to rummaging through the girl’s private life, and he closed his eyes as he pulled open the closet door, whispering a quiet apology to her ghost.
Kamran promptly froze at the threshold.
He was met with a soft glow of light, and overwhelmed at once by the intoxicating scent of Gol Mohammadi roses, the source of which he pinpointed to a small, crocheted basket in a corner of the room. The makeshift bowl was stacked high with corollas of slowly desiccating pink petals, a kind of homemade potpourri.
Kamran was stunned.
The small quarters—so small that he might’ve lain down and spanned the length of it—were warm and cozy, flooded with perfume, rich with color. No cockroach in sight.
Like a madman, he wanted to laugh.
How? How did she always manage to reduce him to this, to this shameful state? Once more he’d been convinced he understood her—had pitied her, even—and instead he was humbled by his own arrogance.
A vision of abject poverty, indeed.
The room was spotless.
Its walls and floors and ceiling had been scrubbed so clean the boards did not match the black, molding exterior door—which she’d left untouched. There was a small, beautifully patterned rug arranged on the ground next to a modest cot, which was neatly dressed in a silky quilt and pillow. Her few articles of clothing hung from colorful hooks—no, they were nails, he realized, nails that had been wrapped in thread—and a collection of miscellaneous items were placed with care in a clean apple crate. They appeared to be sewing supplies, mostly. But there was a single book, too, the title of which he could not discern, and which he peered at now, taking an unconscious step into the room. The entire space came at once into view—and too late, Kamran saw the candle burning in an unseen corner.
He went suddenly solid.
There was the familiar press of a cold blade at his throat, the feel of her small hand at his back. He heard her soft breathing and could tell merely by the unmuffled sound that she did not wear her snoda.
He must’ve surprised her.
His flutter of anticipation suddenly magnified. It was a bizarre sensation, for what he felt even as she held a knife to his neck was not fear, but elation. She was not supposed to be here, and he’d not dared to hope he might find himself alone with her again.
A miracle, then: her hand still pressed against his back, her racing pulse nearly audible in the silence.
“Speak,” she said. “Tell me what you seek here. Answer honestly, and I give you my word I will leave you unharmed.”
Was it terrible that his heart pounded in his chest at the soft sound of her voice? Was it worrisome that he felt nothing but pleasure to be held at her mercy?
What a fascinating creature she was, to be so bold as to offer him his life in exchange for information. What worlds he might be inspired to give up, he wondered, in the pursuit of knowing more of her mind.