When consciousness returned, she could not say how much time had passed. It might have been a heartbeat, it might have been a week – it was all the same to her. Her eyelids were heavy as stone, her limbs cramped and stiff; the agony in her stomach had receded to a dull ache, not unlike the pains she experienced each month when her moon blood came.

But she had not seen her moon blood for four months. She was carrying Awan’s child.

Awan.

The memory came rushing back with a stab of pain more sharp and intense than she could have believed. Her stomach convulsed again. She clenched her fist and groaned.

A pair of cold hands gripped hers. ‘My lady!’ Ani’s urgent voice was muffled, as if she were a great distance away. ‘Susa – I thought we’d lost you!’

Susa forced her eyes open, wincing against the light, gazing at the familiar lines of her sister’s long face until she was in focus.

‘What happened?’ she whispered, her voice hoarse from disuse.

Ani squeezed her hand. ‘The city is fallen. Your father and husband are dead. You lost the child.’

Closing her eyes against the words, Susa exhaled long and deep. The grief was numbing, too much to absorb all at one time. It overwhelmed her - she was alone in the world. Her people would look to her for protection, but who could she look to? She felt she ought to cry, to express her grief, but the pain was too strong for tears, and her heart could not yet accept the truth of things. To weep would be to make it all real.

‘And my maids? Nazaru? ... Ashan?’ she almost feared to ask about her son. Her most precious jewel. Her one remaining link to the love that was forever lost.

‘The maids have been parcelled out to Babylonian soldiers as spoils of war. They spared me because of my royal blood, tainted though it is. Ashan is with Nazaru. Your bodyguard has refused to leave you – he says he swore a sacred vow to your husband, his kin, to protect you as if you were his own wife, even unto death. A Babylonian pressed his dagger into Nazaru’s throat, drawing blood, commanding him to leave, and still the boy would not back down. Whatever ill may befall you, I do not think you will come to harm while he lives.’

She sighed. If Ashan was safe, she had a reason to live. She could not ask Nazaru to speed her to the underworld to join her husband - she had a duty to their son, to put him in his rightful place on his grandfather's throne. Awan would have expected no less of her.

‘I would like to speak to Nazaru, if he is nearby,’ she croaked, eyes still closed.

‘He’s in the antechamber. I’ll fetch him.’

The cold hands disappeared and Ani’s footsteps receded. The door opened and closed with a dull thud. Two sets of footsteps returned – one quick and light, the other firm and heavy. When she sensed them near her bed, Susa made the effort to open her eyes.

Nazaru’s face was impassive, betraying no hint of sympathy or pity. She was glad; she did not think she could bear it. He looked down at her, waiting.

‘I want you to promise me something,’ she said, beginning to recover some of the strength of her voice.

‘I am sworn to you,’ he answered. ‘Whatever you command, it is already done.’

She nodded gently, feeling the weight of her head straining her neck and a jolt of pain behind her eyes. ‘I do not know what will happen in the days and weeks to come. I do not know what to expect from the Babylonians, nor what their intentions are for me. If they attempt to defile me in any way, you must prevent it. I will not allow them to add that further insult to my husband's memory.’

He jerked his head sharply. ‘I swear it. Even if it costs me my life.’

‘No,’ Susa said. ‘Not your life. Mine.’

‘I am sworn...’

‘To protect me. Believe me, Awan would consider this a form of protection. I shall not live shamed and in servitude, as it my maids are fated to. If they attempt to dishonour me, I would have you slit my throat and dedicate your life to the service of my son.’

The brutish young man did not flinch, but gave a grunt of assent. Susa considered the matter settled.

‘Have the Babylonians given any hint of what is to happen to me next?’

‘As soon as you are well enough, you will be brought in chains before their king, Hammurabi, to formally surrender the city. Ashan is head of the royal family now, and in his minority, you must speak for him.’

She grimaced at the thought. Chains. A token gesture, but a humiliation to add salt to her wounds. Though under the weight of her other griefs, chains would feel light as wind. ‘And then?’

‘Then you shall be taken to Babylon as a guest.’

‘A hostage,’ she corrected.

‘A hostage,’ he agreed. ‘A guarantor for the city’s good behaviour.’

As Susa opened her mouth to reply, a silhouette filled the doorway at the corner of her vision.

She turned her head. Her stomach churned as her eyes met those of the captain who had dumped her husband’s head so unceremoniously at her feet. ‘Good to see you awake, princess,' he said. 'The king is most anxious to return to Babylon. Your ill health has delayed him for two days now. He insists that you be presented to him today so that his business here might be concluded.’

‘But my lady is not well enough,’ Ani protested vehemently. ‘She can barely open her eyes, let alone walk.’

‘Then she shall be carried on a litter,’ shrugged the man. ‘It makes no matter. So long as she can speak, the purpose will be served. Prepare her. I return in one hour.’

*

The black waves of her hair were combed and oiled, topped with a diadem set with rare pink diamonds. With painstaking care, Ani had dressed her in a rose-coloured gown and propped her up against a mound of white silk pillows on the litter. Susa had refused powder or paints for her face. She would go to the king as pale as the moon, and looking every bit as ill as she felt. He was to be held responsible for her sickness, he must see the human cost of his conquest.

Had she had her first choice, she would have walked in with her head held high and her eyes dry. She would teach her son to show no weakness to the enemy, to stand proud and tall in the face of adversity however much he might feel like collapsing under the weight of despair. But it could not be, and so she insisted that Ashan remain behind. It would not do for him to see her frail and in a state of submission.

As he had promised, the captain returned precisely one hour later, two loops of light, silvered chain in his hand. He wound the first around her ankles, the second around her wrists, Ani declaring all the while that her lady was in no fit state to escape, and the chains were hardly necessary. Susa let it wash over her like a summer rain; sadness gripped her chest too tightly for her to raise a word of protest. Shame would be her only companion as she was presented to this empire-building, kingdom-shattering pillar of power.

The links of the chain were cold against her bare skin. She shivered.

The captain worked with a look of irritation on his face as Ani berated him. Finally, he turned to Susa with a hard stare. ‘In Babylon, women are seen and not heard. If you do not shut your maid up, I will.’

Ani’s mouth fell open, momentarily speechless. Then she recovered herself and drew breath to harangue him once again.

Susa shook her head at her sister. ‘It will do no good,’ she murmured. ‘We must endure it.’

When the captain was satisfied with her, he summoned four soldiers to bear the litter down to the great hall. Every step jarred her very bones. It was a perilous descent, down the curving stairs of the tower; more than once, Susa felt herself sliding dangerously near the edge. With her hands chained, she was powerless to do anything but cry out and hope that the guards corrected themselves.

Her head pounded as though a blacksmith worked at his anvil inside her skull. A dull hammering filled her ears and a vague tingling sensation took a hold of her limbs. She wanted nothing more than to have the ordeal concluded so that she could return to her bed to sleep off her sickness and grief.

She recognised the doors to her father’s great hall as they approached, but as they burst through into the grand chamber, reality hit home. It was not her father sat in the great carved stone chair on the dais, but a stranger garbed in foreign clothes, speaking a foreign tongue to the man at his right-hand. The cavernous hall that had once been her home was suddenly a cold, alien place. The man in the chair was no taller than she was, lean and wiry with a hard look to his face. He wore a military half-tunic and a plain circlet of beaten gold set over his brow to mark his status.

The litter was set on a polished wooden stand below the dais. All Susa could do was stare resentfully up at this man who had cost her a father, a husband, a child, and everything she held dear. The longer she looked, the more brightly the hatred within her burned.

‘Susa, princess of Elam?’ he asked, by way of greeting.

She nodded.

‘Your city is captured, your army destroyed, your former king executed. Your city and her citizens may yet be spared, if you surrender them willingly. Do you?’

‘I do,’ she answered, her voice low but steady.

‘Then I command the captain of my guard to strike off your chains, and I gladly bid you welcome to my family.’

‘Your family?’ she gave him a quizzical look as the captain began to unwind the chains that bound her.

‘We begin our return journey to Babylon tomorrow. When your health is restored, you shall be married to the crown prince. A fine prize for one of my sons. My brother shall be left behind to govern Elam in my stead. I am led to believe that the people are quite fond of their former royal family – they will adjust peacefully to my rule, I am sure, if it secures your safety, and no doubt you will be more compliant knowing that their wellbeing rests on your conduct.’

Susa looked at him in silence. A mixed blessing – she would be treated honourably, retain her status, would even be queen one day... but the price of that would be marriage. Her stomach turned as she imagined it - bedding with another man, bearing his children. The prospect repulsed her. She would only ever have one true husband in her heart. They could force her to say the words that bound her to another, but she would never accept him as anything more than a constant reminder of the love she had known and lost.

When he saw that she had nothing to say, Hammurabi waved his hand in dismissal. ‘I see you are speechless – I shall attribute it to your illness. See that your son, your bodyguard and your maid are ready to travel at first light.’

With that, her litter was hoisted into the air once more. She gripped the edges as the soldiers wound their way back to her sanctuary at the top of the tower.

Between them, Ani and Nazaru lifted her from the litter into her bed. She was weak as a newborn kitten. Still strained and pale from the ordeal of her miscarriage, and feeling safer with Nazaru at her side, as soon as the door closed behind the soldiers she fell into an exhausted sleep.