Fortune Favors the Cursed
the-reticent-seer
diverselit
diverselit
1.3K5
An orphan girl with questionable morals. A scarred prince with two lives. One relic to change their world.
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Badriya As-Sahra is sick of piling up camel dung and ...Chapter 31
Even with all its vastness and beauty, the palace's walls suffocated Badriya.
The silence left from the wake of the celebrations made her think more about Ayaz and nothing else. Every single waking moment for the last few days, all she could think was the taste of Ayaz's lips as they crashed toward hers. The flame that awakened inside her as Ayaz held her and their hands were locked together by his sword.
He knows. He knows. He knows.
Her mind chanted those two words when the wretched kiss happened that night, and had been doing so since then. It shouldn't have bothered her so much—the two of them had already shared a kiss twice.
But it did. Because he remembered.
She could easily do something to change that. Wish it all away. Make Ayaz forget all over again. Perhaps even better, make her forget everything about Ayaz too.
But was it worth wishing away? She could just remember it later in her life, just like Ayaz did. Somehow the wish didn't work, and that wasn't worth adding another gold spot in her hands, which had already overtaken more than half of her wrists. She hadn't uttered a single wish since the end of the celebrations, but it still continued to spread across her skin bit by bit. Up to this day, she kept Kareem's warning of the curse to heart. If there was anything the djinni had been serious about, she was certain it was that.
And so, in her chambers during the noon, Badriya held the Jewel out and summoned Kareem. The djinni appeared in a puff of blue smoke, a mischievous smile on his lips. Badriya crossed her arms, her eye threatening to twitch.
"Ah, sayyida!" Kareem started, hastening himself into a short bow. "To what do we owe the pleasure of—"
"I wish for you to answer my questions," Badriya interrupted, "in all honesty from this moment forward."
In her peripheral vision, she saw new small spots appearing on one of her hands.
"Oh." Kareem slowly rose from his bow. His grin faltered. "Am I in. . . trouble?"
"How did Ayaz manage to remember me?" Badriya asked, ignoring his question. "I thought my wish was supposed to be absolute. That it's powerful enough for him to forget about me."
Kareem opened his mouth, but his face twisted as if he had tasted something sour. He tried speaking again but his lips quickly sealed shut, making him turn wide-eyed.
"What's the matter?" Badriya settled on the edge of her bed, smirking. "Lies tying your tongue down?"
Finally, he took a deep breath. "The wish backfired because you wanted the prince to forget about you."
"So?" she said. "I worded the wish specifically, didn't I? I told you to make me a stranger to him."
Kareem cleared his throat. "Yes, but that didn't account for his feelings."
"His feelings?" Badriya echoed. "What do you mean?"
"He may have forgotten about you," he said. "What you look like, what you sound like. What you two have gone through together. But that doesn't mean he forgot what he felt about you. Part of the Jewel's limitations is that you can't manipulate a person's emotions, just like I told you the first time. See where I'm getting at?"
"Yes. . ."
She understood perfectly, but she wished that she didn't.
Because that meant that Ayaz had a thing for her. And she might not be able to do anything about it.
"And. . ." Kareem paused with a wince. "I may or may not have hinted that you were more than you said you were."
"What?"