"You saved me from the dark—you cannot leave me now."

When consciousness returned to Sima like a reluctant lover, the world had fallen into an unnatural silence. The avalanche's roar had vanished, replaced by the soft whisper of wind—a melody like the one her mother used to hum while weaving protection charms. Her head pounded like drums at a funeral feast, each heartbeat sending waves of dizziness through her body. Every movement felt like swimming through honey, her muscles crying out in languages of pain she had never known existed.

The snow around her glowed with an otherworldly brightness, as if all the stars had fallen from heaven and buried themselves in ice. She blinked, trying to clear her vision, feeling as lost as she had the day she was brought to Babylon.

"Farid..." she murmured, her voice weak. Then, louder, with a rising panic, "My prince!"

Only silence answered.

Sima pressed her knees into the biting snow, swaying as pain bloomed in her temples. Time dragged as she forced herself upright, each movement an eternity. Her legs felt like lead, but she stumbled forward, scanning the endless expanse of white.

"Farid!" His name tore from her throat raw and ragged, like the last cry of a dying bird. The sound echoed off the mountain faces, returning to her empty and alone, a hollow mockery of her fear.

A flash of steel caught moonlight like a fallen star – his sword. Sima stumbled toward it, her breath catching in her throat like trapped birds. The unfamiliar weight of it in her hands anchored her to reality, its silver-gilt pommel still warm as if it remembered his touch.

Possessed by the kind of desperate hope that moves mountains and parts seas, Sima cast the blade aside and plunged her hands into the snow. Her fingers, once adorned with henna patterns for palace celebrations, now bled freely as she clawed through the ice. She ignored the pain, remembering how he had lunged head first to save her from the collapsing mountains.

The sight of dark fabric – his riding cloak, embroidered with royal sigil in threads of gold and silver – sparked something wild in her chest. She tore at the snow like a woman possessed, uncovering the prince inch by torturous inch. Farid lay still as a carved marble statue, his skin the color of moonlight on alabaster, his lips tinted the deep blue of lapis lazuli. The fierce warrior who had fought armies was now as fragile as blown glass.

"Farid!" His name burst from her lips like a spell of resurrection. She cradled his face between her palms, the way her mother used to hold sacred crystals when praying for protection.

Her mother's voice stirred unbidden in her mind, carried on the snow's whisper. Was it guilt? Or something deeper, something nameless?

Farid's skin was cold as burial stones, his pulse a butterfly's whisper beneath her trembling fingers. A solitary tear fell from her eyes like a betrayal, like a silent prayer to whatever gods might be listening.

"Wake up," she pleaded, her voice trembling. Her thumbs traced the little scars on his cheeks, battle marks that told stories of his devotion to Persia.

But he didn't stir.

The howls that echoed across the mountainside were not the mournful cries of ordinary wolves. These were the hunting calls of the White Wolf Clan, whose blades had already drunk deep of royal blood.

The sounds drew closer, like death itself circling ever nearer, and Sima's heart thundered in her chest like war drums before a final battle.

Providence revealed itself in the form of a cave mouth, barely visible through the curtain of snow – a sanctuary carved by ancient waters into the mountain's flesh. It was small, as if the rock itself was reluctant to part, but it was enough.

Drawing upon strength she never knew she possessed, Sima pulled Farid's body across the snow-shrouded ground. Each movement sent daggers of pain through her muscles, yet she persevered. Tears froze on her cheeks as the howls drew closer, echoing in her ears like a death knell.

The cave's entrance was as narrow as a prayer through clenched teeth, but Sima managed to guide Farid's limp form through it, her hands gentle despite her desperation. Inside, the space wrapped around them like a mother's embrace, barely large enough for two. She laid him on the frozen earth as carefully as if he were made of spun glass, her own body trembling like a storm-tossed leaf.

Outside, the howls became deafening, punctuated by the crunch of boots through snow – hunters seeking their prey. The White Wolf Clan moved with the certainty of those who had already tasted victory.

Sima curled herself around Farid like a living shield, sharing what warmth remained in her body. Her lips moved in an endless stream of prayers – to the old gods and the new, to the spirits of their ancestors, to the sacred flame that had burned in their family's temple for a thousand years. The blizzard began to rage again outside, the wind howling as fiercely as the wolves. 

"This cannot be your ending," she murmured, pressing her forehead against his frozen one. "Farid, wake up. Please." 

The cave walls shuddered as the storm raged, wind screaming through tiny fissures like the voices of imprisoned djinn. But Sima only held him tighter. Her hope burned in her chest like the eternal flame of her ancestors – small perhaps, but refusing to die.

Memories unfurled like rosewater seeping through silk, staining the fabric of her consciousness with their bittersweet perfume. She could still see the boy he had been.

He had been eight, trailing behind Rostam in the shah's court like a wayward star. She had been eighteen, fragile as spring ice, newly caged in the harem's gilded walls. Her world then had been a haze of fear and bitterness, her spirit crushed beneath the weight of her family's death and the shah's cruelty.

Farid had blazed like a lamp in darkness even then, his smile as bright as the midday sun reflecting off the dome of the great temples. There had been no serpent's venom in those eyes blue as lapis lazuli, no hunger for the poison fruits of power. Just a boy whose laughter rang pure as water in a desert spring, whose wonder bloomed like jasmine in a palace where ambition choked all gentle things.

He'd caught her sleeve once, his small fingers as innocent as dawn. "Why do you wear sorrow like a veil?" he had asked. She hadn't answered, couldn't part her lips sealed with the wax of grief. But that moment nestled in her heart.

Through the turning of seasons, she watched him from behind the latticed screens, watched the boy become the man who now lay still as marble in her arms. His mother's death had dimmed the light in his eyes like clouds passing before the moon, and she had seen how grief followed him like a loyal shadow. He shed no tears where others could see—princes must wear masks of steel—but she knew the weight that bent his shoulders, heavy as centuries of dynasty.

While his brothers circled the lion throne like jackals around a kill, their appetites sharp as curved daggers, Farid remained apart. He was a verse of Rumi in a court that spoke only in commands, a man who had learned to dance with wolves without becoming one. In a garden where every flower concealed thorns, he remained true.

And now he lay before her, pale as winter moonlight on marble, his life essence seeping away like water through cupped hands—all because he had deemed her worthy of salvation. Sima's heart twisted like a dove caught in a hunter's snare, pierced by an emotion that had no name in any tongue. In ten years of palace shadows, no soul had ever gazed upon her and seen something worth preserving, as if she were a precious manuscript that should not be allowed to crumble to dust.

She bent over him like a willow in grief, her tears falling like spring rain onto his frost-kissed skin, each droplet crystallizing into tiny stars. "Please, my prince," she whispered, her voice breaking. "You can't leave me. Not like this."

Her trembling hands traced his face, desperate to coax warmth into his frozen skin. She prayed to the old gods she had abandoned, bartering away her vengeance and poisons in exchange for his life.

"Take from me what you will," she breathed, her words rising like incense. "Four years of my life, four decades of my sins, but let his flame continue to burn."

She pressed herself against him like a seal against heated wax, willing her warmth to flow into his veins. But the bitter winds that howled outside their cave were hungry wolves, and she could feel winter's teeth sinking deeper into their flesh.

Then inspiration struck her like lightning illuminating a midnight sky. A wild thought, dangerous as drawing water from a serpent's mouth, but it held the seeds of salvation.

With fingers numbed by frost but driven by desperate hope, she began to shed her layers like a snake casting off its old skin. The bitter cold kissed her exposed flesh with lips of ice as she stripped away her tunic and cloak. Her hands, usually so steady with deadly powders and potent elixirs, fumbled with the clasps of Farid's armor and the layers of his robes. His body was limp and unyielding, and the gash on his side bled sluggishly, but she forced down the fear that threatened to choke her like desert sand.

She pressed herself against him, flesh to flesh, wrapping their bodies together in the tight, narrow space. The cold was merciless as a djinn's curse, but she focused her entire being on him, on the whisper of his heartbeat—or the prayer of it. She cradled his head beneath her chin like a mother bird sheltering her young, her hands moving across his arms and back with the desperate rhythm of a Sufi's dance.

"You will not surrender," she breathed, her lips grazing his frost-pearled hair. "You saved me from the dark—you cannot leave me now."

Time passed in agonizing slowness. The blizzard outside raged on, its wails mingling with the distant howls of wolves. Sima held Farid as if he were her anchor to life itself, her body trembling like a flame in a windstorm, wracked by cold and the weight of her vigil.

Into the darkness she wove her prayers and promises, her voice quavering but strong as steel forged in Damascus. "You will return to the light," she whispered, the words both prophecy and plea. "You will open your eyes, and we shall walk the path back together. I will show you gratitude that would make the nightingales weep, Farid. I will thank you in ways that would make the poets of old set down their pens in wonder."

And as the night bled into the early hours of dawn, Sima's prayers became her lullaby. Her determination became her shield against despair. She held him tighter, willing her warmth, her life, into him.

For the first time since her family's blood had stained the sands of Golemut, she allowed hope to bloom in her heart like a rose breaking through winter soil.

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