Crimson draped an  hewn-stone palace with polished cedar pillars; the color a reminder of the nine elder brothers King Uzza slew to acquire his throne. The banners and flags waved joyously from the walls; summoning every eligible, noble-born maiden from across the kingdom for their presentation to king and court. My golden-red bay, Mayla, flicked her black mane; the gold hairs on her neck catching the light as it twitched with irritation at the bite of a fly. I batted the obnoxious insect from her neck, my veiled eyes lowering from the palace to the carriages rolling in tidy procession up the sloping hill toward the palace, to pass between a multitude of lower buildings that surrounded the palace, constructed of the same stone, but lower in height, as they were used for matters of state, business, and trade rather than housing the royal family. It was beautiful, that was undeniable; but father said it was a cesspool for ambitious, and opportunistic opponents who duel with word sand secrets; using the court like pawns in their never-ending game for power.

Dressed like the servants of our father’s household, save for the veils that shieled our faces from view, I turned to my sister. “Rather more imposing than the carvings distributed on the foothills,” I called above the tromp of our horses’ hooves; my voice coated with the dust of the drought dried land it had taken us three days to traverse.

Alona, two years my senior, bowed her head in a solemn nod. “Very,” she agreed; her glance met mine, and I guessed by her raised brows that our thoughts were on a similar path; these were the high walls, patrolled by heavily guarded men, where our mother had chosen to live out our tender years as the concubine of the king.

The squawking of our father second wife, our mother’s sister, Beltis, reached me then. “The palace! It’s in sight. Girls, girls! Shush…I allowed them to ride this far,” I heard her argue with my father. My head drooped, my lips pursing with premature irritation. “No. Stop the carriage!” She shrieked. “Girls, dismount and return to the carriage!”

The oxen that were yoked to our carriage were pulled to a stop. Alona directed her horse to stop, handed her reins to one of the six men hired by our father to guard us on our journey, and dismounted. Mayla’s body twitched again between my legs. The day was sweltering, the intense sun vaporizing even the humidity my breath created beneath my veil; but it was not nearly as unpleasant as a carriage ride with Beltis. Ignoring my fathers second wife was futile, especially when I had given my own word at the start of our journey to come when she called. It was a miracle she had even allowed me to accompany them to Alona’s presentation; they had tried to send me to reside with my father’s cousin who lived in the allied kingdom to the east. I would be on my way there now, never to return to the land of my birth; if cousin Iltani had not fallen too ill to collect me.

Banishment for a crime I could not control. I didn’t want to look like that skeletal woman, her face as gaunt and strained as a bird’s beak, with a voice of harsh rasps; my body had simply blossomed this way. They were all far from happy that they were forced to bring me along, but tradition called for the maidens being presented to the king to be attended by their sisters or young cousins. Beltis’s daughters were six and four, leaving me the only option.

Callum, a good man who had served my father longer than the hired guards, steered his horse back to mine. His horse stamped his feet when he stopped at Mayla’s side; his ears tall. Callum extended his hand for my reins. “No use in running,” he murmured.

I snorted and handed him the reins. “Running would only tighten my leash.” The carriage was an elegantly painted wooden box of red and yellow, and pulled by two dusty brown oxen painted with elegant swirls of yellow paint. The driver had stepped down from his seat, allowing Alona and I access to the curtain door. I entered behind Alona, careful not to meet Beltis or my father’s eyes when I knelt at Alona’s side on the cushioned interior. Once inside, the driver retook his seat and nudged the oxen into its jerky stride. “Did you girls realize how close we were?” Beltis asked, her tone accusing.

“Peace,” Alona and I’s father sighed at her side.

“You ask for peace, yet we have known no peace since Hadass began walking. Peace,” she spat. “If you had concerned yourself less with your peace and disaplined her properly, we would not be on our way to that cursed palace, as we would all have peace.”

“Woman, we cannot deviate from the path before us. If god had intended for Hadass to behave differently, he would have designed her so.”

Appreciation warmed my affection for him; but not even his words could brighten the guilt graying my horizon. Beltis was right. This was all my fault.

It had begun on a quiet morning, just after dawn at the height of summer. My younger brother, Simon, and I had been hunting through the melon vines that had descended down the unnaturally low riverbank, their roots reaching for the narrow strip of water than had managed to endure the summer drought. My skirt tied up to my knees, and my veil discarded, I’d reached through knee-high melon leaves, the prickly vines scratching my bare fingers and wrists in their idle fight to prevent me from taking their succulent treasure. My long fingers closed around the rough sphere, and I’d twisted it, freeing it from the vine. “Simon!” I’d cried in excitement. “I found another one!” I raised the melon above my head as danced around to face the seven-year-old boy, who was clutching the two others we’d found.

“That one’s huge!” Simon crowed with glee.

I hoped through the half-submerged vines; knocking my knuckles against its rippled rind. “It sounds ripe!”

“Do you think Mother will be pleased to see these? She likes melon.” Simon asked, admiring the two he held.

My dancing slowed, and I sucked air through my teeth. “Hard to say…” I murmured. Beltis didn’t approve of much of anything I was involved in nowadays. I couldn’t quiet determine if she was afraid that I would corrupt her children with my adventure-seeking, back-talking, wildings; or, if being in my very presence endangered them. it could have been either, and it could have been both.

“Then what should we do with these?” Simon asked.

“I think we should round up Alona and our younger sisters and feast on them until our bellies are as round and plump as these melons,” I teased.

Simon's eyes brightened with delight, and he grinned at me. “I’ll go find Gia, Ziva, and Ruth.” He handed the melons to me and began wading through the garden pond to avoid the thicket of vines, but stopped as he passed a knot of vines to his left. Dipping his hands between the leaves, he retrieved a large, round melon from beneath. “Look!” He cried. “Another one!”

I twirled where I stood; the melons clutched tight against my chest. “We shall have a feast!”  I laughed, not noticing the party of twelve horses tromping across the opposite bank until one of their riders saluted me.

“Ho there!” he called, startling me. “Why do you dance among the rivers’ vines, maiden?” he called. The rider was dressed in a short riding robe of rich indigo, with gold accents, his leather sandals reached his knees and appeared to be of the finest make. As for his face, it was mostly covered by his black, curling beard, which he had groomed to blend seamlessly with his shoulder-length curls.

My smile slipped from my lips, and I quickly untied my skirt, dropping it modestly back over my legs and ankles; as for my face, there was nothing I could do with the three melons filling my arms. My eyes quickly flitted to the others in his company who watched me with less enthusiasm. A man behind the stranger wore clothes just as fine, his robe of deep green; but his face and head were shaved bare. The ten other men were dressed as guards or eunuchs.

 The stranger beamed at me. “Maiden, I asked why you are dancing among the rivers’ vines?” The rider repeated.

“These are melon vines,” I shouted in return, hoisting the melons in my arms higher, hoping they would draw his attention away from my face. “I dance because they have produced fruit.”

Simon, who had stopped at the top of the bank, raised the fourth melon for the strangers to see. The strangers smile broadened to show the whites of his teeth. “That is a sign of true resilience to produce such a feast during such a taxing drought as this,” he called back to us. “Will you take them home to you family in the foothills village?”

“The estate overseeing the village is ours,” Simon corrected. I sensed the danger in his revelation before I could intercept him. “We are the children of former Grand General Lior. The might calvary general, who led King Uzza’s forces against our Southern enemies and beat them back beyond the jungle!” Simon crowed with radiant pride for our father former glory.

Every one of the men shifted with surprise before my eyes; turning in their seats to whisper to one another, before looking inquisitively at the two princes who had shared a silent yet explosive look. “I was not aware Grand General Lior lived near here,” the rider said by way of answer; and I had the uncomfortable realization that he was looking much more attentively at me. I ducked my head, and stumbled through the vines back to my brother’s side. “Are you headed home?” the stranger called after me.

“We’ll be missed if we do not return soon,” I answered.

“Aye,” the stranger called agreeable. “I wish to pay my respects to your father. May accompany you, and partake in your feast?”

I dutifully bowed to the men. “My brother and I shall carry the fruit to my father’s estate for you to enjoy,” I vowed. The rider raised his hand in farewell and the party trotted down the river in the direction of the estate. “This is bad,” I whispered; but the words werent strong enough. This was catastrophic.

“Why is it bad?” Simon asked innocently.

Hiking up the top layer of my skirt, I dropped the melons into the basket I had created. “Firstly, because they’ll reveal our excursion to your mother,” I answered; my words replacing Simon’s pride with horror. “And second,” I continued. “Father never wanted us to be found.”

Holding my skirt high, so the melons didn’t bound against my legs, we ran for the house; taking shortcuts through the river, hills of sagebrush, until we reached our fathers shriveling vineyards; our bare feet caked with dirt and stinking from the dry, crunchy plants.

We’d beat the strangers to the house, but they weren’t far behind us. The front door was too loud to enter at this hour, as the creak of its hinges would echo through the tiled atrium, alerting the house to our entry. I led Simon through a heavy side gate into our father’s vineyard, and hurried between two rows of drought-withered grape vines, turned right to the house, and slipped through a door that deposited us into the cool, covered stone walkway lined with plaster columns that boxed in the estate’s exposed inner garden. The garden was cloaked in shadows of the rising sun, and mercifully, father and Beltis’s summer bed chambers bordering it were still quiet. I motioned for Simon to be quiet, and tiptoed around the gardens' carefully trimmed shrubs and flowering plants, skirting a small fish pond at its edge, and the statues guarding it. The covered walkway that boxed in the garden met in an arch as I led him left around her father’s meeting chamber into the warm kitchen. Steaming loaves of bread were being pulled from the oven by Sin, our cook; his assistants slicing fresh vegetables to be eaten with breakfast, and roasting small rabbit carcasses over a fire.

“You snuck out,” Sin grumbled; and I winced at the disapproving look he cast me, and guiltily deposited the melons on a table.

“I did,” I wilted, not daring to lie to him. “Does Beltis know?” I asked, bending my knees ever so slightly so my skirts hid how dirty my feet had become.

The door to the kitchen burst open, and Beltis charged into the room, her angry sandals smacking the floor. “Where have you been?” Beltis demanded, her shrill voice echoing off the stone walls. Moaning, I slowly turned to face the woman. Beltis was dressed in a yellow linen nightdress and an off-white shawl, which dangled loosely from her arms, with her long brown hair whipping the air behind her. “Simon, I have been looking all over for you. Where have you—,” her question faded as her eyes landed on the melons, before quickly moving to Simon and I’s scratched forearms and hands. “Where did you get these?” She asked; uncommonly breathless.

“The river,” I admitted; not daring to meet Beltis’s owllike expression.

Beltis’s eyes turned wild, her delicate frame growing taller and more robust. “You picked them?”

“We woke up before the rest of the house, and rather than risk waking anyone else up at such a early hour…we uh…went for a walk…” Movement behind the woman caught my eyes as my father entered the kitchen, his brow creased with a frown that told me he expected to hear the truth rather than the lie I’d been fabricating on my tongue; Alona, my elder sister, at his side.  

Oh, why couldn’t she have stayed upstairs?  Lying to Beltis with father present was already difficult enough without the very sister who had raised me to be better than I am present. I heaved a defeated sigh. “We woke up early on purpose to explore the river bank and found the melons hidden in the vines.” I wilting like a reed in the sun beneath my father’s disappointed sigh.

“Were you seen?” Alona asked, stepping to Beltis’s shoulder, a wool shawl held tight around her shoulders of her linen nightgown. “Hadass?” Alona asked, her date-brown eyes round with concern. “Were you seen?” My hesitation caused Alona’s eyes to widen with alarm.

“Hadass!” Beltis shrieked; her eyes widening to take in my face. “Your veil. Were you seen without your veil?” Beltis asked sharply. I glanced at my sister, desperate and yet at a loss for how she could possibly make this better. Beltis did not wait for Alone to rescue me. “We have these rules for a reason, Hadass!” She shouted; her voice magnified by the tiles decorating the atrium’s walls and floor. “No leaving the estate unescorted, and no removing your veil!” 

The wild urge to remove my shoe and throw it at her came over me, but I fought to restrain it; and resorted to yelling back instead. “You forgot no laughing, no playing, and no breathing without your permission!” I fumed. I didn’t choose to be born. I didn’t choose to wear this face, yet you continue to punish me for it.  Alona’s fate is no different.”

“How dare you!” Beltis fumed, looking from me to her husband. “We’ve set these rules to protect you! Not abuse you! Your mother was younger than you are now when her beauty caused her to become a concubine to the king. We’ve set these rules to prevent you from being taken, used, abused, and reduced to the broken-hearted and stagnant state that took your mother’s life!”

My hands raised shakily into the air. “I am living in a stagnant state already! The threat of death is far more exciting than this! I look like her; so what? Alona has her eyes; so what? The king rejected her and sentenced her to death; not us!”

“Mind your tone, Hadass.” Alona interrupted, shooting me a warning look. “You are speaking with our father’s wife, not an equal.” I bit my bottom lip, while Alona inclined her towering head to Beltis. “Forgive my sister’s impertinence. She will do better.”

Beltis’s voice lowered as she fought the tears that always accompanied her anger. “This is not about her doing better, Alona. This is about the danger she puts you and our entire family in each time she leaves!” She seethed, turning back to me me. “You think you can wander around your father estate and lands with the freedom of a gazelle. There is a reason we demand more caution from you than this.”

“I’d love to hear it,” I shot back; and received a warning glare from Alona that made me retreat.

Father placed a hand on Beltis’s shoulder while frowning at me. “I would like a word alone with my daughters, Beltis.” Tears glistened in Beltis’s furious eyes, and she opened her mouth likely to argue, but he squeezed her shoulder; his gaze soft. “You’ve been half mad with worry.” He murmured, wiping away a tear as it escaped her lashes to streak her cheek. “Go and rest, my love, while I speak with them. Please.” Beltis brushed her husband’s hand from her face, snatching Simon from my side and carried him whimpering from the kitchen.

Avigdor Lior’s gaze settled on me; his eyes uncommonly tired. I squirmed beneath the look. “Father…” I began, but he shook his head, and extend a hand to me. I crossed the floor to take it, my shoulder drooped in submission.

His eyes low when I settled in; it had been years since he had been able to meet my eyes at this distance, another result of my cursed completion. “My dear, Hadass,” He murmured, heavily. “We stand on a precipice—” I groaned and huffily leaned against his desk in preparation for the lecture I could recite from memory. “Enough, Hadass,” my father warned, but he did not continue with the usual lecture. “In two days, your sister will be presented to the king and his court—"

“I know,” I interrupted, dropping my chin to my shoulder.

He squeezed my fingers tightly and gave my hand a little shake. “Your actions tonight, just as every night you leave this house unattended, endanger the years we have spent protecting you and your sister from being taken from us and married into the palace, and risking the lives of myself and your mother who have who will be condemned for treachery for doing so I the kings learns you are Ava’s daughters.”

I knew this. It was why I had tried to hide my face from the strangers today; but was being known as Ava’s daughters really so bad? She had been relinquished from the king’s servitude when she was married of to my father. The king had summoned her back, but by the time of her death, he had no longer wanted her. So, why should he care that Alona and I resembled her? I knew better than to ask; the question only angered my father and Beltis. “I know, Father,” I whispered.

“I often wonder if that is true. Hadass—If all goes according to plan Alona will marry Captain Omner, who has vowed to keep your sister’s lineage a secret—” He was unable to continue with his usual lecture as the estate front-door-knocker banged loudly through the atrium. Alona stepped past us to crack the kitchen door wide enough for us to watch the estates guard, Calum, poked his head out of his booth situated between the front door and stairs that led to my siblings and I’s bedchambers on the second level. Rising, he stalked from his booth, past the atrium’s dry rainwater collection pool, and answered the door. Cold crept up my arms as I suddenly recalled the strangers I had met by the river, and dropping my father’s hand; my cheek flushing with guilt.

I didn’t hear the words that passed between Callum and the strangers, but something in their manner of speaking caused my father to pale. Abruptly, he pulled the kitchen door closed, before facing Alona. “Wait until my chamber door is closed, then go upstairs and hide,” he instructed in a rushed whisper.

“Father, what is wrong?” Along asked; suddenly concerned.

“I don’t know yet. Keep away from the door, wait until my chamber door closes, then hide,” he instructed; and left the kitchen. Alona and I looked at one another. What did it mean? Who were the strangers? I made to crack the kitchen door open, but Alona caught my hand and held it back; forcing me to listen to the mens voices that echoed off the atrium’s tiles. “I am pleased to receive such an honor. Please, this was, my chamber is here.”

The footsteps of several men stropped past us. The moment the door closed, Alona pushed her shoulder into the kitchen door and peeked out. Callum, who still stood in the atrium, looked around at us. “Quickly,” he whispered; motioning at the stairs that would lead us to the second level.

Neither Alona or I waited for future instruction. Both missing our veils, she streaked for the stains and raced to the second-floor balcony that overlooked the atrium. “What do you think they want?” I gasped, a step behind my sister.

“You should be less concerned with the strangers, and more about your future comfort,” Alona warned; and when I frowned at her, she elaborated. “Beltis is going to corner you the moment father and I are occupied, and you will pay for both your rudeness and disobedience.”

I sighed, my sister’s words not an unexpected revelation and hurried across the balcony to our room.  “I hate her and her rules.”

Alona’s slowed as we reached the door. “Don’t make room in your heart for hatred, Hadass,” She advised, and pushed me inside.   

 “I wish you ran this household instead of her.”

Alona puffed; her breathing irregular due to our run. “If all goes according to plan, I will be running my own household soon. And you will assist me in setting up my household.” Walking past me, Alona climbed into our bed while I changed out of my dusty clothes, bathed with a cloth and was just donning fresh garments when there was a tap at the door and Beltis’s handmaid, Leah, entered. She bowed to Alona. “Your mother has asked you to join your father and the princes for breakfast.

“The men who arrived were princes?” She asked, surprised. The two riders had been richly dress, but I hadn’t seen the kings crest anywhere on them; nor had they worn his signature colors of red and gold.

Leah did not look at me. “She has also requested you to bring Hadass’s melons with you.”

“Why should I not bring them?” I interjected.

“Your mother says you are to stay in your room tonight.” The maid answered with an apologetic looks before bowing her head and backing out the way she had come. Alona hustled to ready herself for the day; dressing in pale green dress that had been embroidered with white petals that cascaded down her skirt, and a veil of the same color before rush to answer Beltis’s summons. Leaving myself to weigh the consequence of my next actions alone. I could stay in my room as commanded; I was in enough trouble that it was the safest option; or, since I was in so much trouble, I could sneak down to the kitchens, steal some food, and listen at the breakfast room door to the conversation happening with the princes inside. A horse whinnies outside my window, and I flew to my bed, climbed across it and threw back the shutters. Five of the princes’ guards and two servants stood by their horses, leaning against the posts the hoses had been tied to, or seated in the shade of the trees not far from them; yet only one had looked up at the abrupt opening of my window.  I waved to him, beckoning him closer, and the man hesitantly left his horses side to approach. Pleased by his obedience, I leaned out my window to quietly call down to him. “Are the riders from the river really princes?” I asked.

“Yes, lady,” he called back; matching my hushed call.

I frowned; my forehead deeply creasing. “But they why didn’t they announce themselves as such?” I asked.

He looked around him, from the other guards and servants surveying our conversation to the estated front door where he must have known Callum was standing guard. “Often it is safer for a prince to travel without revealing his identity until it becomes absolutely necessary,” he answered.

That was easy enough to understand. I myself kept my identy hidden from others for fear of risking discovery. It occurred to me then that my face was bare, and I pulled back into the shade of the window. “Do you live at the palace?” I asked.

The man squinted up at me; my adjustment making it more difficult for him to see and hear me. “Yes, lady,” he answered.

“How many gardens are in the palace?” I asked.

He puffed out his cheeks at my question, and shrugged. “There are over thirty gardens in the palace.”

 “Are there any with spiral paths?” I probed.

He stepped back, his eyes roving to trace the frame of my window before squinting at my face again. “There are two gardens with spiral paths, but they are not open to the court.”

 The king’s garden, surely. That made sense too. She had been close to the king, my mother; closer than anyone else, so I’d heard the servants of my father house whisper. There had already been little chance of me ever find the lovely garden the Skeletal woman had spoke of in the days before her death; but this solidified it. “Your horse is beautiful,” I called, hoping the change in conversation would distract the disappointment leeching into my bones.

He glanced back at the mare he had left. “She is a dutiful companion.”

“If I come down there, may I meet her?” I asked. He made a welcoming gesture of agreement, and I scrambled off my bed, threw a veil across my head, and not daring to use the main stairs that would take me past Callum’s booth, I used the servants’ stairs down to the kitchen, and when Sin’s back was turned, bolted for his back door. The man was back by his horse when I arrived. “Hello lovely,” I panted; walking quickly out to meet the beautiful mare.

She was a deep brown, and looked like my fathers’ horses that were breed for their agility and stamina; both of which I guessed would serve a princes’ guard well. “This is Citrine, named for her yellow eyes,” the man replied; stroking the beast’s neck in long slow motions. “You may stroke her if you wish.” I raised my hand to let the horse smell me, and when she turned her head, I gentle dusted the dirt from her silky coat. The man’s eyes tracking my motions with a hunter’s eye. “What interest have you in the kings’ gardens?” he asked.  

“Someone close to me spoke of them before she died. I wasn’t sure if they were an illusion of her fever mind, or real. Even now that I know they exist, I doubt I will ever be blessed to see them,” I replied; forcing my voice to sound light, as if my curiosity wasn’t as deep as the truth.  

“Do you aspire to join the kings’ harem?” he asked.

“Gracious, no,” I replied, failing to conceal my horror. “I simply wish to stand where she stood. A silly wish of a girl is all. Excuse me, I will be missed if I do not return.” I had barley returned to my room ten minutes before Alona returned. “How was it?” I asked.

Alona pulled the veil from her face, and her dress over her head to slip into her light linen nightgown of sunset orange. “It was a very pleasant evening. Beltis and father were tense; but I think that is to be expected. A member of the royal family has not graced their household since mother died and father was forced to retire.” She answered; focusing on the strings at the neck of her dress as she padded to our bed.

I heard the sound of horse hooves out our window, and riders directing the mounts forward. The princes were leaving. I flew back to the window to watch them leave, but their backs were already to me. “How were the princes?” I asked turning back to my sister.  

She climbed onto the bed next to me. “Prince Ammoron is a very pleasant man, with kind eyes and an inviting smile. He was the more talkative of the two. He also thoroughly enjoyed your melon. Father wasn’t nearly as welcoming to him as he was Prince Coriantumr…. Father speaks almost reverently to him. If I had not known better, I would have thought him the heir to the throne…He was very quiet at dinner, solemn almost. He keeps his lips in a firm line, and there’s something about his shaved head and face that is unsettling.” She climbed into the bed beside me.

“How do you think they felt about you?” I asked; a teasing tug at the corner of my mouth.

I missed the opening of our bedroom door. “Don’t even joke about that, Hadass!” Came Beltis’s shrill reprimand as she left the kitchens and crossed the atrium to join them in the garden. I grimaced and faced the glowering woman. “Better you cut out your tongue than speak words that could summon a deadly fate upon your family!”

“She meant nothing by it, moth—” Alona spoke up.

Beltis cut her off. “Then she should have remained silent.”

Alona opened her mouth to argue, but I shook my head, stopping her. “You’re right,” i relented and bowed repentantly to Beltis. “I should not tease about such dangers.”

Beltis didn’t look like she believed me. “Princes, Hadass. You were seen by two princes. Two princes who arrived her surprised to discover your father no longer resides in the capital as it is written in the royal registry and with a daughter of marriageable age. It was a miracle they didn’t arrest your father, and drag him before the king. It will be an even bigger miracle if we are not done so tomorrow; or the day after that! Do you have the sense to understand the danger you have put your family in today, at the price of four melons? I am ashamed to even look at you right now. How could you do this to us? How could you do this to Alona?”

“I don’t understand,” I whispered looking between the woman and my sister. “I messed up, but what does Alona have to do with this?”

Beltis stormed toward the bed, hovering over me with the vengeance of a lioness. “She is of marriageable age,” She repeated. “The last eighteen years

have been spent protecting you both from the king and his courts notice. Now they know she exists, there nothing we can do to keep from them.”

The ominous words made my stomach sick. An invitation from the king arrived nine days later, informing us of the upcoming presentation of maidens to king and court, and requesting—commanding—Alona’s attendance.

Back in the carriage, Alona’s hand was suddenly on mine. Startled from my revery, I quickly flipped my hand over to receive her fingers between my own. “This too shall pass,” she whispered, squeezing my hand tightly beneath Beltis’s owl-like scrutiny. I glanced up at her, my chest tightening with envy at the ease in her expression. This too shall pass, she said; but would it?