✵ featured ~
❝Once upon a time in Baghdad, a street girl teaches the Khalifa of the kingdom why a king needs a queen.❞
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Started: June 5, 2021.
Completed: March 30, 2022.
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cover by @xniftykayx
featured on wattpad historical fiction, undiscovered...
It was the first time he had seen her in the bazaar that day-- the first time he had seen her since their childhood together. He would never have recognized her had her mother not been with her who had served the royal family in her prime and he was there to witness it. She was only a youngster back then.
But where their friendship in their early days was only their innocence, he knows now it's anything but innocent. For now it is a yearning he has been feeling ever since he laid eyes on her in the bazaar, the little girl who would once narrate stories and poems to him having grown into a woman more bewitching to him than a sorcerer's spell. There has been a dull ache in his heart since that day, and he knows there's only one way to ease it.
"Noura." He looks up at the full moon sparkling over the desert dunes in the dark night. "My light." He smiles.
She belongs to him or destiny wouldn't have conspired to bring them back together. She belongs to him and he will have her.
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Her
It has been a long time since Noura had stopped seeing Eskander as an older brother but rather as someone more than that. It happened slowly over the span of them growing apart when he left to join the army and she stayed at home. The days away from each other changed both of them-- his semblance and her heart. The relationship of siblings they once had is no more. After all, he isn't her kindred and the fact has taken its roots in her head firmly now.
Eskander was adopted by her parents when his father was martyred in a war, his mother having already died giving birth to him. Unlike her father who was part of the advisory council of Khalid ibn Al Malik, one of the former caliphs, his forefathers had served the royal family in the army for generations. And later on, he took over that duty too.
When they were both kids, she would like to play his little sister. None of them having any sibling of their own, they were each other's best friends. When time passed, that bond grew weaker on her part. It wasn't until he left and returned years later that the bond completely broke and turned into something else entirely for her. Guilty of her feelings, Noura has been hiding them from him. Eskander probably still sees her the same.
Or maybe not. She hopes.
He might very well be aware of this change too. And if he is, he's feigning oblivion. But he doesn't call her his sister anymore, that habit long buried after returning home from his training in the army. Kinship is made upon blood, not words, Noura thinks to herself. And Eskander isn't her brother by blood-- never had been. And with her heart's inclination towards him, he never will be.
"Nour."
She blinks out of her reverie as he calls her, her name always sounding different to her from his lips. She doesn't bother finding the cause of it-- she knows the reason very well of it.
