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THE AIR SMELLED OF DAMP MOLD, and the ground against her body was cold and wet in places to the point that the cool wetness threatened to seep into her bones through the barrier of her skin, consuming her like a cotton ball picking up fire and darkening and wilting-submitting helplessly to destruction.

The sounds in her ear were the incessant dripping of a tap, water continuously-and with even breaks-splashing onto the ground in form of voluptuous droplets taking their sweet time to form. Her heart synced its beats with the droplets of its own accord, helping her body to revive itself without her knowing.

The water though, was only in the backdrop of the stage of other more prominent sounds in the girl's ears, and it was strange really how she had noticed only the droplets descending first. The stage of sounds was a play being performed, and heavy footsteps receding and ascending, male grunts of effort, a distinct sobbing of a woman, a crow's pressed cawing, a stick being tapped against iron bars, and the sound of someone accidentally dropping a copper pot to the ground, were the players and the main characters.

The latter sound however-the rather noisy descent of the copper pot-was the sound that revived Dilruba Badawi's senses, for her body had already been revived without her audible agreement.

She opened her eyes slowly, her eye lids feeling heavy as her mind's realization made her mercilessly privy to the multiple aches and pains marring her body. The girl felt as though her body had been trampled-she felt as though somehow she had never been saved from the horses on the Agraban street on her first day in the city, and this was the aftermath. She was dead and gone, and the horses had broken every bone in her body, and nothing-everything that was now rushing to her of the past few days-had ever happened.

Perhaps she shouldn't have been saved then, if she was to go onwards with her life and feel the same pain, why had he tried to dodge it in the first place? In fact, Dilruba Badawi was certain, that had she been trampled by horses, it would have hurt less than this. It would have hurt less than everything that had happened to her since.

Her emerald eyes met a break in the high ceiling dark wall. The break was in the shape of a small haphazard circle, as though somebody had once shot a canon ball inside in an attempt to break the entire ceiling, and instead had only made a shape break the size of the canon ball they had used.

Through the break in the wall, Dilruba saw the glowing night moon, and it was in the shape of sharp crescent.

She blinked at the shape. The last she remembered looking at the almost divine being in the night sky, it had been a full disc. She had sat with the tahararat min alkhatiya at the edge of that high flat-where a whole south facing wall had been missing-and had talked to him in front of a full disc of the moon. So much had happened since, but everything had happened during that night alone. During what was supposed to be Jasmine and Aladdin's wedding night. Dilruba had started that night as a free woman, and then had gone out of that night as a captive till her death freed her.

But Allah, how many nights ago had that night been? How long had she been gone into the darkness of her mind?

She turn her head to her side, her cheek coming in contact with a wet patch on the cold granite ground. She saw iron bars lining the cell that she was in. The realization did not startle her, for she knew she was being taken to the dungeons. Her cousin had called for the east side dungeons in the city, and Dilruba had decided that dungeons-whether in the east of the city or underneath the royal palace-must be almost entirely the same things despite their varying locations.

Opposite the cell she was in, was another cell, and it was from in there that the female sobbing was being heard. A copper jug was toppled over in that woman's cell by her feet, and in the darkness, Dilruba could make out the woman's legs underneath the scarce moonlight stealing in from somewhere, whilst the woman's back was pressed in darkness against the wall of her cell as she sat with her knees up.

Dilruba's cell was alight in comparison, for the high break in the ceiling caused the Hegran girl's entire body to be highlighted by the moon itself, giving her a center stage in the new situation she had found herself in, her olive skin glittering underneath the pale moonlight being cast upon her.

The Hegran court dancer and poetess slowly started to sit up, hissing in pain as her legs ached something terrible and her left elbow completely refused to be moved. She cried out, her eyes sharpening in tears as her hip almost screamed at her, making her freeze in her attempt to sit up. She was certain it was broken. She tried to push herself further, using her other elbow as support as she planted it against the ground to raise her body up, trying to properly sit up but her hip slashed at her in protest and wouldn't let her.

"No, please," Dilruba breathed, "Please, please."

She called onto God, asking his aid, calling his name under her breath as she tried to sit up again. But it seemed to her that God would not be found in a place so dark as this one. She gave in and dropped herself back onto the cold ground again, tears streaming down her face as she rested her head on the ground.

She remembered being pushed down the stairs by the Sultan's guard. She remembered being on one with the realization-during her fall-that it would not be a bad thing if she were to die in that moment. But she had been punished like this instead, she had been punished to survive with a broken hip bone and her functioning left elbow-definitely broken as well.

Not long ago before her fall down those stairs, Dilruba's neck had been broken in a way that had utterly frozen the latter half of her body. The tahararat min alkhatiya had helped her, he had used magic-paying the price that he had paid-to aid her. But who would help her now? Even if the former genie appeared in front of her now, Dilruba would not ask him for the sacrifice again. He had paid a price to borrow a bit of magic, and he had refused to tell her what it was. She would never ask him to spend more on her behalf again, regardless of whatever it was that he had to spend.

Allah, she had always been so self sufficient. Why did she feel so helpless now? But then again, who had broken her neck, deceived her heart, and pushed her down a dangerous flight of stairs just to land her in a cell before?

How had she fallen like this? How had she hit rock bottom so suddenly?

It was Agrabah, Dilruba decided, shutting her eyes tight as they stung with tears. Her face was already wet, with tears or the dirty water on the ground, she couldn't say. It was Agrabah, it was the fault of this city who had never wanted her here in the first place.

She should not have come here at all. She should have stifled her curiosity about her cousin and uncle, she should have strangled the stubborn hope that perhaps she would be able to grow close to them again. They hadn't wanted her, and now she had committed treason and they had an excuse to take her life away from her.

Had she committed treason? Dilruba Badawi was certain she knew the definition of the word-or at least she used to be certain. She knew nothing of Burhan Abelhamid's plans, she hadn't even known who exactly he was. She had just.. met him. She had just spent time with him outside of his plans and cruel ambitions and she hadn't suspected that he had those things to go back to, she hadn't suspected that he had had those things waiting on standby-like hungry tigers on a leash fighting to be freed.

Then he had kissed her once she had found out his agendas-ambitions that he had previously hidden from her. He had kissed her then, and had taken her breath away.

Dilruba had lost herself in that kiss, she had forgone her sanity and the only thing that had mattered to her in that moment was the kiss, and him.

And that was where she had committed treason. It was the kiss. If she could have saved herself from the accusation before, she would never be able to now. Not when the Sultan and the Princess of Agrabah had seen her kissing the man who's mere existence in the city had been threatening even their dreams.

"Why are you here?" A shaky voice floated into Dilruba's ears then, and the Hegran girl traced the speaker to the form of the sobbing woman in the cell opposite to her own.

Dilruba turned her head to the side to look at the woman, tearing her gaze away from the crescent peaking through the hole in the brick ceiling.

The woman sniffed in the darkness of her cell.

"Why are you here?" She spoke again, a contempt weaving into her voice. "You are beautiful-you look like you could be nobility. Why would they just put you in here?"

Dilruba blinked, the analogy confusing her. Sure, it was true that women like her-court dancers-could be punished in multiple different ways. In Hegra, when the governor punished girls-his dancers, he took things away from them. Be it their wealth or their limbs-he took things away from them but he kept them around, he kept them more or less free to leave or stay. He took some to his own harem, and he thought of agreeable looking women being put in cells as a wasteful thing.

He was a crude man-her patron-and if Dilruba had crossed him, he would take things from her just as his routine was, but he would not leave her like this in a cage.

"Treason," Dilruba managed then, shutting her eyes briefly.

Her voice sounded hoarse and she felt as though it had been a while since she had used it.

The woman scoffed.

"Good," She let out spitefully, "A little betrayal in their appetite would do them good, these bastards."

Dilruba looked at the woman's form in the distance.

"Why are you here?" She asked then. From the woman's tone of voice and the street dialect, the Hegran girl could tell that she was a mere peasant.

"I killed my husband," She answered, her tone blank.

Dilruba let the silence simmer in the air as the only disturbance was the grunts and footsteps of the people being held in cells further down.

"Why?" She asked then, not having the energy to assess if she should be asking such a question to a woman barred in a cell.

The peasant woman sniffed, and Dilruba could tell she had started sobbing again before she aggressively wiped at her face and contempt laced her voice when she answered.

"Because he drowned our five year old son-our only son."

Dilruba exhaled, shutting her eyes tight at the image.

"I reported him, you know," The woman continued, hatred in her voice as her mind conjured onto faces in her own life that Dilruba had not encountered.

"I reported him but nobody did anything," Her voice cracked, "The magistrate-I even pleaded mercy to the Sultan's guards. They said the Sultan has no time for petty trifles, his daughter was getting married. They all let my husband roam free after murdering my son, so I took my baby boy's revenge."

Dilruba's eyes stung with more tears. An innocent little boy of five years, and a cruel man.

"I'm so sorry for your loss," She managed, tearing up for both the woman, her boy, and her own self lying against a damp dirty ground with a broken hip bone and elbow.

"Truly," She uttered, "I'm truly so sorry."

The woman sniffed, demeanor softening at Dilruba's understanding. And the latter could not fathom what part of the woman's story was wrong enough to land her in a cell in the city dungeons? Her husband should be the one here, he should have suffered more before he had been killed. How could a man murder a five year old boy-or any boy for that matter? It was abhorrent-utterly cruel and inhumane.

Burhan had killed Hajjar Dagher's dwarf secretary in front of Dilruba with such ease and skill that she had believed that the act of killing had really no such consequences. Burhan had went on with his life after making that kill and he had gone on to butcher so many guests at Jasmine's wedding, while this woman had been captured with the drop of a beat for killing a murderer and was now behind bars for avenging her little boy.

It didn't make sense to Dilruba.

She blinked then, thinking of where Burhan was now. Had he managed to escape? Or had he ended up being captured after all? The last Dilruba had seen of him was that abrupt movement he had made as soon as the Sultan's guards on top of him had relaxed. It had almost been as though he had been biding his time. But he was injured, there had been a sword thrust in the side of his torso. Had he even then been stable enough to know to bide his time until the guards let their guards down?

Allah, had he been stable enough to hear everything that had happened? Had he heard Jasmine accusing Dilruba of treason and the punishment she had been given by her cousin? Had he heard how little-or nothing at all-she had said in defending herself?

If he had, Dilruba found herself feeling as though she had been humiliated. Why hadn't she defended herself? Regardless of her cousin and uncle's preconceived spite against her, she could have at least denied their accusations. She could have shouted her innocence. Why had she just given in? In that moment when Burhan too was possibly listening, and she had a functioning body-why hadn't she stood up for herself?

Her savior-her betrayer, and Arab's infamous thug-probably thought she had no respect for herself. He was probably thinking how empty she was, both to just give into his kiss without protest and to meekly surrender to an accusation that was the furthest from the truth.

Now it was too late to right those wrongs, too late to prove to any of them-Burhan, Jasmine, the Sultan-that she had done nothing wrong and she hadn't deserved to be treated as they had treated her.

Where was Burhan? She wondered again then, and suddenly found herself wishing that he had escaped, even though the fact was in gross defiance of the very Sultan's law that had ended the poor woman opposite to her in that cell for killing her murderer of a husband.

Dilruba hoped Burhan had escaped, but she hoped she never saw him again. She hoped he would just disappear and never cross her path again. She hated what he had done to her. He was the reason she was in here, all the life she had carefully curated for herself from the ground up had been destroyed in mere days, and it was all Burhan Abelhamid's fault.

Allah, what would the governor of Hegra think when he found out? Would the Sultan even send word to Hegra? Or would Dilruba die unbeknownst to her patron? Or worse, what if the governor received word of her captivity and he refused to intervene? What qualified as worse anymore? She couldn't figure.

"My hair," Dilruba whispered to herself then, tears still streaming out of her eyes.

She raised her functioning hand-her other hand entirely numb now, courtesy of her unmoving elbow-and touched her hair.

It was still in the ripple waves that Ahya had formulated with a hot tong, but the long loose soft hair felt damp now and had turned into a mess underneath her, pressed against this dirty floor for however long it had been.

Dilruba thought of Ahya, and her heart audibly cracked. The tahararat min alkhatiya had mentioned Dilruba's maid-in that room at the palace they were hiding in-as though she was still alive. And though the Hegran court dancer-in her ignorance and anxiety-hadn't thought upon Ahya's fate then, and even at the flat the former genie had taken them to afterwards, Dilruba now felt a hollow in her soul.

Ahya was dead. There was no other way to explain the loss that Dilruba was feeling inside of her at present at the thought of the girl. Her maid had been killed with the guests at the palace, and Dilruba wanted herself to be wrong, but she felt the truth of it inside her. Nobody had thought to rescue a maid, and the girl had been left to fend for herself.

"Do you-," Dilruba started, breaking off to raise her voice more than just a miserable whisper.

"Do you know how long I have been here?"

"I saw them bring you in three days ago," The woman answered in a plain voice. "I was brought in a day before you."

The Hegran girl gasped. Three days? She had been in this clammy wet cell for three days? Her body definitely confirmed the woman's words with every ache and pain. Her broken hip, resting broken for three days now and refusing to let her sit up, as well as her broken elbow which now looked swollen and blue to Dilruba. All these things confirmed her three day indisposition.

"Have I been eating?" The Hegran dancer asked then, her voice cracking. "I feel-I don't feel that I-"

Her stomach was not cursing her. There was no hungry wallow inside of her-no beast growling for a scrap of food. Dilruba hadn't even eaten at Jasmine's wedding, how could she had survived so long without food? Allah, why was she still alive in this miserable condition?

"I have seen them shove dry bread into mouths with a iron rod," The woman scoffed. "They don't care if you are out, if the Sultan needs you to suffer, you eat whilst you suffer. You are kept alive. But I guess your treason must be hard to swallow, because you were not brought any food."

Dilruba touched her stomach slowly with her functioning shaking hand. She tried to block out all the pain she felt-both emotional and physical-and it was then that she realized she was.. full.

She was not starving though she didn't remember eating. She was well fed, and that was what had kept her alive. Somebody had kept her alive by feeding her when her cousin wanted her to starve out in the dungeons. But how? How when there was no one in the cell and she had been here for three days already?

It was magic. It must be magic. It must be the tahararat min alkhatiya. But why? Dilruba's heart tightened in her chest, he should just let her die. After everything that had happened, why was he still keeping a match lit when cold winds were all around them?

It was alright for him. The former genie was accused of nothing. He would be alright, he would survive. There was no saving Dilruba now, so why was he giving her the agony of keeping her alive when her body and spirit were entirely broken? Why was he risking himself like this too?

"I don't know how you are not dead yet," The woman in the opposite cell uttered. "If it's black magic, you keep that shit away from me."

"Once," Dilruba spoke softly after a pause. "In Hegra, there was a woman who lost her child."

The Agraban woman in the cell didn't respond, and silence engulfed the air before the Hegran girl ventured to break it again.

"She had no one else, so she prayed to Allah for him to give the child back," Dilruba breathed, finding herself easily short of breath.

Lying in one position for three days had assembled blood into a strange state in her body. Perhaps her blood had frozen and compiled like lumps in her body, the thought of it made her physically sick.

"He refused, because he loved the child more than she had loved her own child," The poetess continued, her tone becoming lilting, as though this was but a poetry recital and instead of being privileged enough to star in it, Dilruba had become the tragedy the prose she uttered usually spoke of.

"The woman did not agree. She became angry, and demanded that no one can love a child more than its mother."

The woman in the cell opposite, shifted. Slowly, she moved closer and out of the darkness in the corner of her cell. She crawled forwards inch by inch to approach the bars of her own cell, and Dilruba saw the woman's face become visible to her in the dim light of the moon touching the opposite cell.

Dilruba Badawi gasped softly. The woman's familiar face was a hollow of cheekbones, and she looked not much older than Dilruba herself. On that day on the streets, on the Hegran girl's first full day in Agrabah, when she had seen the woman struggle with her five year old boy on the street, the woman's skin had been lighter than Dilruba's own, but now it was darkened with blue purple bruises covering both her blue eyes and were littered at what was visible of her chest and neck. Her thin black hair lay straight against her skull and reached her chest.

The woman's eyes were fixed on Dilruba's, entranced by this story that seemed to be a mirror of her own life, but there was no recognition in the woman's eyes. For why would a woman trying to get her five year old boy off the street to prevent him from being trampled, notice or remember anyone or anything else in that scene?

Dilruba startled then, a sharp ache in her heart. That boy she had jumped in after, the chubby five year old boy that Burhan had called an ungrateful little roach after he had saved both of them, that boy was dead. That little boy had been drowned. Dilruba felt sick to her stomach. They had both been near death together, hadn't they? They had both been on the brink of being trampled under horse hooves, and now he was dead and she was alive. It felt wrong, surely he deserved life more than her? Surely a five year old boy deserved to breathe more than she did?

"She tried to curse the God, furious with him for undermining her love for her child-the love that God himself had given her, for the child that God himself had blessed her with."

The Hegran poetess didn't stutter in her story, grounding her heart and pouring her emotions into her voice as she continued. Regardless of her battered body, her voice held its strength, especially when she slipped into her poetess role. Her voice obeyed her just as it always had, even though her body didn't.

"So Allah complied. He let the woman seek help from a witch. He let their dark magic succeed," Dilruba breathed. "Then He watched as the woman embraced a monster from the grave who carried the look of her child. She did not see the hollows under the child's eyes, she did not seem to care that her child did not speak, did not eat, and did not hold any love or recognition for her."

"What happened to him? To the boy?" The Agraban woman, now clutching the bars of her cell with some anxiety, her face in full view and her own troubles pushed to the back of her mind, asked eagerly, her eyes wide.

Dilruba glanced away from the moon on the ceiling and looked at the woman, offering a soft broken smile. She hadn't spoken of the gender of the child in the story. It was a woman's heart that related her aches and troubles to the aches of troubles of another woman.

"The boy," The Hegran poetess affirmed, still smiling, "Was with Allah, and he was so happy and so well, that when told of his mother's situation by some angels, he asked God to forgive her. And she was forgiven."

A serene silence cascaded over the two of them then, as Dilruba sighed, fixing her gaze back on the moon shining from the break in the ceiling. Was it sinful to wish that she was dead too? Free from the pain that her body and heart had encased her in?

"Thank you," The Agraban woman uttered then, her voice cracking. "Thank you for this story."

Dilruba turned her head slightly again to look at the woman, and saw her pull her knees up and put her back against the wall adjacent to the bars of her cell, holding a bar with one hand and resting her head against it, no longer wanting to retrieve deep into the darkness of the cell.

"Your welcome," She offered gently, not knowing why she had told the story that she had, but grateful that the woman had listened.

That was the thing with poetesses like Dilruba who spoke other people's written prose, shaping their words with her beautiful tone of voice-with her ephemeral recital. Women like her were treasuries of poetry and stories stored deep inside them, pulled out sometimes on demand-in recitals for money-or whenever else the occasion called, like bejewelled anecdotes glittering underneath the lights of the sun and the moon.

Dilruba wondered then at the state of the outside world. Had the Sultan managed to get his palace back? What would the outcome be if Burhan Abelhamid had indeed escaped? What if he had gotten his hands on the Sultan? What then? She thought if she should ask if the woman in the cell opposite knew anything, but the woman had come in a day before Dilruba, which means before the day of the wedding and the attack. That woman possibly knew nothing.

But what outcome was more desirable for Dilruba? She could not answer that question. The Sultan-her uncle-was content with letting her die for her treason, but if the Sultan was thrown off-he was taken or killed, then would Dilruba still be left to die for treason against a Sultan who no longer sat on the throne?

Dilruba felt sick. Who was Jasmine to immediately order Dilruba's slow death for treason? Where was the Hegran girl's right to a trial? Why had the Sultan just agreed to his daughter's given orders? Was there no coherence to the law in Agrabah? Or was the law exactly what the Sultan's only daughter deemed it to be?

Dilruba thought of her own mother-who's face she did not even remember anymore. Had her mother too once been like Jasmine? A stubborn, decisive Agraban princess who believed so much in herself that she gave others no room for their own beliefs? A Princess who thought the world was made for her and her alone?

No, Dilruba's mother-the late Princess of Agrabah-could not have been like Jasmine. Yes, she too had fallen in love with a commoner-a penniless peasant, but she had been made to let go of her title as Princess in order to marry a peasant, as per the law of her father. Dilruba's mother had agreed, and had done what was required, relinquishing her title.

But Jasmine was still a Princess, and own father's law had no such limitations. In fact, her father's law had raised a mere penniless street rat to a Prince. Dilruba wondered what might've occurred to the love story had Jasmine been under the same law as Dilruba's mother and Jasmine's aunt. Would Jasmine have stood so tall then too? Would she have been so heartless in order to give Dilruba such a punishment without even hearing her out? Would she have still thought the world revolved around her and her life, that a betrayal meant instant death?

Dilruba Badawi tried to stop her mind from dwelling on such thoughts. They were useless thoughts, like pebbles being thrown into a still lake just to see how far they skidded on the surface of the water before they sunk and were meaningless forever.

But it was hard to stop her thoughts in a position she had nothing but her thoughts.

She tried to focus on the sounds in the dungeons. She heard aggressive grunting and pants coming from a few cells down, a captive man possibly doing something she did not want to speculate upon. She teared up again, feeling the smallest she had ever felt. All her life had been reduced to this-this cell and her broken body. The realization kept her eyes wet, and her facial skin supple underneath the constant tears.

"You can't move, can you?" The Agraban woman in the cell opposite asked then, her voice slow as though she was drowsing off to a sleep.

A flurry of footsteps sounded somewhere far away, and the sound was largely ignorable under the constant grunts in the women's peripheries.

"No," Dilruba responded softly. "I have broken bones."

"Allah, how?"

"I was pushed down a flight of stairs by a Sultan's guard," The Hegran girl looked at the woman and watched her compatriot's features darken.

"Those shits," The woman shook her head, eyes shut tight. "To treat a woman this way-those shits."

"It's alright, I-," Dilruba broke off, not knowing what she was beginning to say. It's alright she would.. what? Kill herself so that her bones breaking was a mere forgettable prologue? Starve to death so that the state of her bones in the whole process of starving wouldn't matter?

Suddenly then, like an incessant tapping sound that gets heavier and louder each second, footsteps erupted into Dilruba's senses as someone was heard racing down towards her cell-or perhaps beyond it for she understood that there were cells lined up both at the right and left of her cell. Two entire chains of cells privy to a single crooked stoned hallway in between. It was strategic planning, as far as the city dungeons were concerned.

Dilruba's heart tightened in her chest, she tried to lift her head and move her body away from the bars of her cell. They were only a single yard to her left, she was so close to them. She needed the respite of the depth of her cell, she needed to push herself against he furthest wall because she was scared of whoever who was coming.

Her body wouldn't comply. She hissed in pain, her eyes going dry as they exhausted themselves of tears. The Agraban woman in the opposite cell had already scurried away, pushing herself back into the darkness of her cell whilst Dilruba was the only one left exposed.

The Hegran poetess shut her eyes, her head half lifted as her fist tightened at her side. Allah, she couldn't even move the fingers of her other arm with the broken elbow. The whole limb felt.. swollen, throbbing and useless.

The footsteps banged against her eardrums then, even though feet on stone was not a mighty sound and had never been so. It was merely the panicked girl's anxious heart and terrified mind which was making mountains out of every disturbance.

Before Dilruba's scared mind could understand it, a figure had appeared at the bars of her cell.

With fear she looked, and her emerald eyes found familiar anthracite orbs looking down at her. The eye contact sent a jolt throughout her body, her heart thrashing against her ribcage violently as of it wanted to be free from its bounds and reach for him.

Burhan Abelhamid-killer, usurper, swordsman and a leader of his gang of thugs-was a night terror as he stood there in the dim moonlit darkness of the hallway outside Dilruba's cell. His hair was wrapped up in a cloth, and his face was on full display, his jaw tight and his dark stubble shading hos face. He was alive, he had escaped and he had survived. But what did that mean? Were the Sultan and the Princess in danger? Or had Burhan simply been driven back?

Moonlight was only upon her. It was only showering her battered body with its light-flares pressing against her eyes and illuminating her from the inside out. Nothing else was being afforded the same light, not the hallway outside, not the Agraban woman's cell opposite, and not Burhan Abelhamid's form as he raised a thick muscled arm to grip a singular bar of Dilruba's cells with his tanned fingers.

She saw the ring she had seen on his right pointer finger before. It was a plain but thick silver band etched with a carving she couldn't make out at present. It was strange, the Hegran girl had noticed the silver ring before, but she hadn't thought much of it, thinking that it was just a piece of jewelry he liked to wear. He had been wearing it at the marketplace too, when a seller at a stall had displayed more rings to him and Burhan hadn't paid any attention.

But what was strange was that she now could see that the ring had a carving in it. A carving made rings personal, it made the things immortal. People usually stayed away from purchasing rings from antique stalls that were carved-for who knows what curse or blessing was carved upon them? For they knew that the language of Arabia was one where a single word could be interpreted in a thousand different ways, one could curse you in words that seem pleasant and you would never find out until tragedy struck.

"Farashat rayiea," Burhan Abelhamid groaned then, his tone thick and.. miserable? As he leant his forehead against the bars hard, his eyes fixed on her.

"I will never forgive myself for this," He let out then, before tearing his eyes away from her and yanking out his signature silver hilted dagger-the one all of his men too carried.

As Dilruba watched, he lifted the dagger and brought it down hard upon the heavy iron lock and chains holding the opening of the cell. The act itself didn't make sense, for why would a small dagger be able to break through thick heavy-

A bright and brilliant spark emerged and the lock was halved clean. The two halves clattered onto the stone floor along with the broken heavy chains.

Magic, Dilruba thought then. Allah, his dagger-and possibly all the similar ones that his men too held-was magic. Or perhaps she had no idea about the strength of daggers themselves, having never used one at heavy locks. But that spark, it had been too bright to be anything but magic.

Burhan yanked his dagger back onto his trouser belt, and then pushed the cell door aggressively open. The rusting iron creaked against the uneven stone floors, but he didn't care. He had entered the cell and was beside Dilruba in a second, dropping to her lying form.

"For what?" She breathed then, not knowing what else to say as he snaked an arm underneath her knees, slowly gathering her like she was battle spoils on a conquered land.

She cried out in pain when his other arm-which was now behind her back-tried to shift her close to him. Her hip screamed at her, and she shut her eyes tight.

"For what-will you not forgive yourself?" She managed through her pain, her voice cracking, as Burhan assessed her injuries, his eyes on her lower waist as he understood the bone breaks she had been suffering with.

He looked at her then, his dark eyes intense as he tried to focus back on her question.

"For landing you in here," He uttered, "For every fucking thing that has happened to you because of me."

She cried out as he finally gathered her up and heaved her into his arms, holding her against his chest as she let her broken arm sway at her side-not being able to move it but hissing every time it hurt her with its movements.

"Shh," Burhan breathed against her forehead then, his warm jaw stubble brushing against her cheekbone as she rested her head against him.

"Bear the pain for a little while, farashat rayiea, for I swear to you there will no more pain for you, only for those who have made you suffer."

Dilruba did not know what to say to that. Her hip, now that her body was bended in his arms more than she had tried to bend it herself, was making her entire body throb viciously in pain. She couldn't even think because of it, and her head started pounding like her senses were being pressed against lead from all sides.

"No, Dilruba, stay with me," He let out then, his voice jolting her as she realized that her eyes were closing.

He had brought her much out of her cell, Allah, they had made it entirely out of the section where her cell had been. She did not recognize this part of the city dungeons, but Burhan's efficient strides were enough to tell her that he did.

"Wait," She breathed then, her voice taking so much effort.

"The woman in the opposite cell to mine.. please free her as well."

"No," Burhan's voice was hard, blunt, as he stepped past bodies of unconscious or killed guards.

Dilruba's eyes could not even widen because of her state, but she felt the shock in her core. The guards' bodies were littering the path, and some of Burhan's men-silver daggers glinting at their trouser belts-joined him and fell in behind him as he walked past them guarding the pathway for him.

"Please," Dilruba managed swallowing, her voice becoming a chore. "Please-she's-her son is dead, and she's all alone. Please-"

"No," Burhan grunted, his eyes fixed ahead as he held her securely and carefully to him, his every move mindful of the fact that she was hurting.

"I'm no one's damn savior, farashat rayiea."

"You are mine," She whispered then, her eyes closing and the energy to hold her head any longer dissipating away from her as he put her head back against his chest and closed her eyes.

"You are my savior, Burhan."

Abelhamid stiffened slightly, and in her state she couldn't tell if it was because she had called him her savior again or because she had used his name for the first time. Had she truly never called him by his name before? She couldn't dwell on her thoughts, for she was already drifting away in an unconsciousness that felt like it would ease all her present pains.

"Ghazi," Burhan let out then, his tone low as he addressed someone else beside him-one of his men-as his eyes fell on Dilruba's closed ones.

"The woman back in that opposite cell, go back and free her."

"Yes, rayis," The affirmation was heard as subtle footsteps sounded turning immediately in an opposite direction.

Rayis. Chief. Leader. Burhan let the word echo in his mind before he put it back in its rightful place.

Dilruba's body in his arms was a heavenly feeling, and he knew the state of him had already started rivalling everything that his men knew and believed of him. He was taken with her in a way that he couldn't explain, he craved her-obsessed after the mere thought of her so much that it left him reeling, and it showed. All of it fucking showed on his face. His men knew the extent of his madness, yet still they followed him. And if he was grateful for anything, it was that.

To be still respected and followed by the men who relied on him-in midst of his madness for a woman-was asking too much and he knew that, for a woman's trap was the deadliest trap that ever a man fell in.