LITMIR.BIZ

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her mother goaded, had held a note until doves lined the palace windows just to hear her play.

      Tension had been building for years, yet on this night Leila had refused to give in and obey her mother’s silent command to remove herself. Instead she had continued to play—plucking the qanun’s strings, refusing to be quiet, as was the unspoken rule in the palace.

      Had her older brother, Zayn, been here he would have, by now, defused the situation. Zayn would have diverted their mother somehow.

      But Zayn wasn’t here tonight.

      Soon he would marry the woman whom he had been betrothed to since childhood, Leila thought.

      Even though she was twenty-four Leila’s marriage had not yet been arranged—it upset her mother too much to get around to it, for Jasmine would have been such a beautiful bride, Jasmine would have had such adorable babies.

      Jasmine, Jasmine, Jasmine.

      She would be a spinster forever, Leila thought. She would be here alone in this palace with them until the day that she died.

      Night after night spent hiding in her suite would be her life and so she brought things to a head tonight in the only way she knew how.

      Leila said with her fingers, with each pluck of the strings, what could not be voiced by her mouth.

      They told the truth.

      The harmony that she created was not a peaceful one.

      It spoke of the night sixteen years ago when Jasmine had died.

      Leila had been only eight at the time but she remembered it well and, as an adult, she understood more clearly what had happened.

      The music she made spoke of a young woman going off the rails. It spoke of drugs and drink and hips that had provocatively swayed as she’d danced with Zayn’s best friend at that time. The music spoke of things that, even now, Leila didn’t properly understand for she was, and had always tried to be, a good girl. Yet tonight her fingers spoke of sex and forbidden fruits and a young girl taking a dance with the devil himself.

      ‘Leila...’ Her mother spat. ‘Enough!’

      But still Leila’s fingers strummed on.

      Deep into her music she went. Exploring Zayn’s fury and anger when he had found out how his friend had betrayed him with his sister.

      Leila recalled some of the furious words that had poured from her brother, things that even now Leila could not really comprehend—how men like Jasmine’s lover used women, that it was only the thrill of the chase that had them keen. How, now that he had had her, soon he would not want her.

      Zayn had thrown Jasmine’s lover out into the night and Jasmine had made the decision to follow him. Their mother, to this day, had Zayn almost eaten alive with guilt over the repercussions.

      Leila’s fingers revealed the screams that had filled the palace when the terrible news had hit that a car accident had left the young princess and her lover dead.

      With not a word uttered, Leila exposed the truth of that night, with her musical talent.

      ‘Khalas!’ Her mother stood and screamed for her daughter to stop; she screamed for salvation. Farrah grabbed at the harp and sent it clattering to the floor, and as Leila’s stood to retrieve her most beloved possession, it was then that her mother said it—‘I wish that it had been you!’

      Leila’s golden eyes met the furious gaze of her mother’s, willing her to retract, silently begging Farrah to break down and take back what she had just said, but instead her mother clarified her words past the point of no return.

      ‘I wish it had been you who died that night, Leila.’

      Now Leila drew in a breath, now she fought back.

      ‘You fail to surprise me, for you have wished me dead from the moment that I was born.’ Leila’s voice did not waver nor did it betray the agony of the truth behind each word that she spoke. ‘You have never wanted me. Even as I nursed at your breast your milk tasted sour from your resentment.’ Leila knew that might sound an illogical statement, but as far back as she could remember Leila had known that she wasn’t wanted.

      ‘It was the maids who fed you,’ her mother, blameless to the last, said. ‘It must have been one of their milk that was sour with resentment. They always complained you were such a greedy baby.’

      Leila wished there was no gravity; she just wanted to leave the earth, to be lifted to space, to disappear.

      Yet her feet stayed on the ground.

      As she somehow must.

      ‘Sadly for you, Mother, I didn’t die that night. I’m alive. I have a life and I have already wasted far too much of it trying to win your love. Well, no more.’

      Her mother said nothing and Leila turned on her heel and walked past her father, who sat with his head in his hands. It hurt that he had done nothing to intervene. Yes, Leila understood that his brain was still addled with grief even all these years after Jasmine’s death, but his silence in this argument spoke volumes.

      Her jewelled slippers made no sound on the marble floor as Leila swiftly walked and there was a notable absence of her mother’s footsteps running behind her.

      Hurt heaped on top of hurt as her mother made no attempt to follow her youngest daughter and try to take back those cruel words. Leila wanted her mother to tell her that she was mistaken, that she was loved.

      Leila passed the family portraits in the long hallway as she made her way to her suite. Always she walked quickly at this point, always she did her best not to look at the paintings that hurt so very much, but surely nothing more could hurt her now.

      Leila slowed down and came to a halt and turned.

      There on the walls of the palace was her history. There, for all to see, was the truth that Leila had always known and tonight had been cruelly confirmed.

      The first painting that she examined was a large family portrait. Her parents were sitting in far happier times; her mother was holding Zayn and smiling as she gazed at the baby who would one day be king.

      Leila adored her older brother. Zayn loathed injustice and had stepped in over and over for Leila. Growing up he had done all he could to shield her, and his protectiveness towards his youngest sister had only increased since Jasmine’s death.

      Her mother blamed Zayn for what had happened to Jasmine too.

      He carried not just the grief of losing his sister, whom he had been closer in age with than Leila, but he carried the blame for her death. Leila’s heart broke for him too.

      Did she wish that Zayn was here tonight though?

      No.

      For there was nothing that Zayn could do to protect her from this.

      He could not force their mother to love.

      Leila’s eyes moved to the next portrait and there was Jasmine—wearing her famous cheeky smile that her mother so often spoke about.

      It wasn’t a cheeky smile, Leila thought with a shiver; it was manipulative, for she had been on the receiving end of it often.

      Jasmine has been everything that Leila wasn’t. Jasmine was pretty and funny and charming too.

      Leila was serious and diligent—and as she looked at a portrait that had all three children in it, Leila’s heart ached for that child with confusion in her eyes.

      Leila’s hair was cut short and, unlike Jasmine, she had been chubby and plain, but far more unforgivable than that she had been born a girl.

      A long and difficult birth had assured that there would be no more babies for the queen. Oh, how Leila had tried to be everything that her parents wanted—she had tried so hard to be as brave and fearless as Zayn and had begged to go out hunting with their father, only to

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