"Sometimes words escape my lips like birds from an unlocked cage."

Winter descended like a hungry djinn that year, devouring autumn's last warmth in a single, frost-laden breath. The sun hung like a tarnished copper disk in the winter sky, casting light that transformed the palace courtyards into a tapestry of silver and ash. Hormoz had departed with the dawn prayers, his army of two hundred thousand men stretching across the horizon like a river of steel and silk, their weapons catching the pale light as they wound their way toward the northern provinces and the Caspian Seas where he ruled with the ruthlessness of ancient kings.

Now, as the temple's call to afternoon prayer faded, it was Rostam's turn to leave—a departure unmarked by fanfare but heavy with fate.

Farid stood beneath the great brass gates, his dark robes whipping around him like ravens' wings in the bitter wind. He watched Rostam's men mount their horses with the fluid grace of desert wolves. Seven thousand strong, they were warriors whose mothers had sung them battle songs in their cradles, whose fathers had taught them to hold a sword before they could walk. Their obsidian and gold banners snapped in the wind like the wings of the Simurgh herself.

Rostam—named for the great hero of the Shahnameh and every bit as imposing—clasped Farid's shoulder. His hands were scarred maps of countless battles, but his touch carried the gentleness reserved only for family. He towered over Farid like the ancient cedars of their childhood home, his voice as rough as stone against steel.

"Court life doesn't suit me, Farid," he said, "But you—" he searched his brother's face with eyes the color of storm clouds—"you have too much light in your soul for this nest of vipers."

Farid's laugh was bitter as vinegar grounds at the bottom of a cup. "And what would you have me do, brother? Ride off with you to Persepolis? Become one of your men?"

Rostam's chuckle rumbled like distant thunder. "By all the stars, no. Our mother's spirit would rise from her grave in the Garden of Martyrs to curse me until the end of days."

Their laughter twined together, but the moment of brotherhood fled swiftly. Rostam's face darkened and he drew closer, his whispered words carrying the weight of secrets meant to be buried in shadow.

"There's something foul in the palace," Rostam murmured, "Father's health withers like a rose in winter's first frost—too swift, too sudden to be the work of nature alone. They say poison flows like water in these halls, brother. Keep your eyes sharp and your cup closer."

Farid nodded, feeling the truth of his brother's words settle in his chest like lead. The palace had always whispered its secrets to those who knew how to listen, and lately, those whispers tasted of ash and betrayal. "I'll guard my steps as carefully."

Rostam's weathered face softened, the hard lines of battle smoothing into something more human, more vulnerable. "And Farid—" He paused, choosing his words with the care. "Your wife. Even if love hasn't bloomed between you like the roses in mother's garden, remember she's not a piece on a shatranj board. Women carry magic in their blood older than these stones. Don't forget that."

The words struck Farid like a slap from fate itself, but before he could demand meaning from this riddle, Rostam had swung onto his stallion—a beast as black as a moonless night—with the fluid grace of a man who had learned to ride before he could walk. His army followed, their departure marking the air with the thunder of hooves and the whispered prayers of soldiers who knew they might never return.

As the great brass gates groaned shut with the finality of a tomb being sealed, the palace seemed to inhale around Farid, its ancient walls pressing closer like a predator tightening its coils. The air grew thick with incense and secrets, and Farid found his feet carrying him toward the royal stables, where the honest eyes of horses promised a respite from the poisoned honey of court life. The stable's wooden beams still held memories of summer heat, and the scent of hay and leather offered comfort like his mother's long-ago lullabies.

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The stables wrapped around him like a mother's embrace, the mingled scents of hay and leather as familiar as the prayers he'd learned at his mother's knee. He traced his fingers along his favorite mare's neck, her coat warm as sunbaked earth beneath his palm, carrying memories of wild gallops across endless deserts.

Then he saw her.

Sima emerged from the shadows like a djinn from smoke, her slight frame draped not in the jewels and silks expected of the Shah's most precious sogoli, but in a simple robe the color of dawn. Her fingers danced across a leather saddle. Even in such plain garments, she carried herself with the quiet deadliness of a viper coiled in silk.

Farid's throat tightened. "Sogoli."

She turned, her gaze meeting his with the unwavering intensity of a desert falcon. The silence between them hummed with unspoken words.

"Your Highness." Her voice rippled like water.

The hay whispered secrets beneath his feet as he drew closer. "Do you often seek sanctuary here?"

A smile flickered across her face like summer lightning. "Only when the harem threatens to suffocate me with its perfumes and politics. Here, at least, the air tastes of freedom."

He nodded, trying to ignore how her presence made his skin prickle with awareness. There was something dangerous about her stillness—the patient, deadly calm of a scorpion waiting in the shadows. Her eyes were wells of midnight that seemed to hold centuries of women's secrets, passed down in whispers and woven into lullabies.

"Does your gift please you?" The question dripped from her lips like poison from a golden cup, sweet with mockery.

Farid's spine stiffened like a sword being drawn. "You are not a gift," he said, the words sharp as desert thorns. "You are—"

"I meant your wife."

"Ah." His breath caught like fabric on a thorn.

"Forgive me," Sima murmured, her voice dropping to the softness of silk against skin. "Sometimes words escape my lips like birds from an unlocked cage."

"It's alright. Zabel, she's—" He paused, tasting the words before speaking them. "She's interesting. Quite—"

"Interesting?" Sima's laugh rang through the stables like silver bells, startling a nearby horse. "How diplomatic of you, Your Highness."

"Quite."

"And what makes her so... interesting?" She leaned forward slightly, like a cat scenting prey.

Farid found himself smiling despite his better judgment. "I never know if she's imagining my death or actively plotting it." The words escaped him like a confession at midnight.

"Women are like the moon, they say." Sima said, her voice taking on the cadence of an old tale. "We show different faces to different people, and our darkest side remains forever hidden."

"So I'm told."

His gaze settled on her then, really seeing her for the first time—not as the Shah's sogoli, but as something still dangerous, but far more intriguing.

"What?" she asked, though her tone suggested she knew exactly what thoughts were crossing his mind.

He stared at her, trapped in the gravity of her presence. She tilted her head, not quite reading him as usual.

Catching himself falling into those fathomless eyes, he muttered something about loyalty being the backbone of court life.

Sima's laugh was sharp as broken glass. "You speak like a man who still believes in children's tales," she said. "Learn quickly, Your Highness. In these halls, loyalty is as rare as rain in the desert, and virtue?" She smiled, the expression beautiful and terrible as a drawn blade. "Virtue is nothing but perfume on a corpse."

Her words hit him like a poisoned blade, their truth seeping slowly into his veins. "And what would you know of loyalty?" he asked.

She glided closer, close enough that he could see the slender scar along her jawline—a pale whisper of a story untold. "I know enough," she murmured. "But such knowledge would only darken your dreams, Your Highness."

She bowed with the fluid grace of a reed bending in the wind. Then she was gone, her footsteps whisper-soft against the packed earth, each step precise as calligraphy on parchment.

Farid watched her disappear like smoke through his fingers, her words hanging in the air. She moved through the world like a verse from a forbidden poem—beautiful, dangerous, and impossible to forget. She was more than the Shah's prized sogoli, more than the elegant creature who graced the palace with her presence. But whether she was a scorpion or a nightingale in disguise, he could not tell.

What he knew with the certainty of sunrise was that the weight of the empire pressed against his shoulders like a burial shroud. In the treacherous waters of the court, he had few anchors. There was Parisa, his beloved sister, whose impending marriage felt like losing a limb. Soon she would be gone, leaving him alone to navigate the poison-laced currents of palace life. His father's health withered like a flower in winter's grip, each day bringing new signs of unnatural decay. And now this enigmatic sogoli, whose every word seemed to carry double meanings...

He needed allies as desperately as a desert traveler needs water. Eyes he could trust, hearts that beat in rhythm with his own. But in a palace where even the walls had ears and the shadows held daggers, whom could he truly call friend?

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