Princess Leila Al-Ahmar of Surhaadi froze as finally Queen Farrah voiced her truth.
Deep down Leila had always known that her mother would have preferred for it to be Leila, rather than her sister, Jasmine, who had died on that terrible night. Having it verified though, hearing her mother say the words that no parent ever should, felt like an arrow was right now being shot through Leila’s heart and caused an agony that even she hadn’t properly anticipated.
Not that Leila showed it to the woman who was now staring her down.
Only at night, only in sleep, did Leila cry for a love she had never been shown.
The absence of love in her life had made Leila resilient though, so she stood, unflinching, as her mother poured boiling oil onto already raw wounds. Only it wasn’t just resilience that made Leila stand proud and silent—quite simply she was too stunned to react.
For all of her twenty-four years Leila had done everything she could to avoid this moment, but she had finally stopped running from the truth tonight.
After dinner, instead of heading to her suite, instead of disappearing, Leila had taken up her beloved qanun—a small harp that was so much more than an instrument to Leila. It was both her friend and her companion. It was gentle and pure and wild at times too, and when she played it Leila knew for sure that love existed.
Even if she had never known it from her parents.
Farrah loathed that her daughter adored music so.
Jasmine had played better apparently, Farrah said as she took up her embroidery. It was the same tapestry that she had been working on for more than sixteen years.
Night after night she unpicked the threads and resewed, going over and over it and refusing to finish as Leila’s father sat silent in the chair.
No, she hadn’t played better than me, Leila wanted to scream, for she knew that was not true.
Jasmine, 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