CHAOS OF THREADS ||18+

◦•●◉✿Prorogue✿◉●•◦

I was halfway down the stairs when I stopped feeling my feet.

The harem corridors blurred past, painted lotuses, pillars, a servant flattening herself against the wall with a tray of figs, and then I was outside in the heat, running. My light brown hip length hair had come loose from its pins and bounced against my back with every step.And the worst was my boobs were bouncing too. I was sweaty from all the running, which make my outfit clung to my fair rosy skin, my face was flushed pink. I felt for a second I saw Grand General Dario Raelis,he is paternal Uncle and Loyal brother of the Pharaoh, but I didn't care if he or anyone saw me in such a ridiculous state and how alluring I look to the eyes right now. Behind me I could hear the slap of sandals, two of my ladies-in-waiting trying to keep up with me. Ella with the same rosy fair skin as mine but dark hair, was already gasping my speed. The other, dark skin with dark hair like a night beauty Mira was quicker on her feet, said nothing and just ran along.

"Princess Meret, please slow down, you'll fall!" One of them them spoke behind me. I didn't slow down,I am already late. My brother's bedchamber was at the end of the long colonnade, and I could see the doors were open.

I came through them with my chest burning.

Mother was there, standing near the bedchamber with her hands folded so tightly the knuckles had gone pale. Amon stood beside her, and next to him, his wife, her face tight and quiet, definitely not happy, how could she be happy to see her husband's Mistress giving birth. Last year she gave birth to my brother's first child. Nobody was speaking. From behind the curtained room beyond came a low, ragged sound I knew was not a scream, but was close to it.

I grabbed Mother's wrist. "How are they? Baela? Reina?"

"Still pushing." She didn't look at me. She was looking at the curtain. Or the first thing she would have told me is to change my outfit and how ridiculous I looked.

I nodded like I understood, though all I understood was that I couldn't stand still. I walked to the window. I walked back. Ella and Mira hovered at the door were catching their breath and I caught myself twisting the gold bracelet on my arm around and around until it left a red mark. Amon hadn't moved once. He was only seventeen, I reminded myself, and he is about to be a father twice over in the same hour.

Then we heard it, thin and furious, a baby's cry. A second one came right behind it, higher, as if the first had challenged it.

Amon's breath left him all at once.

Two nurses came through the curtain, each carrying a bundle. The older one bowed. "Two sons, my prince. Both healthy."

One baby had sandy blonde hair, just like Reina's. The other was dark-skinned, with a full head of black hair, Baela all over again. I laughed, a short, shaky sound,both looked like their mother and covered my mouth, but once they open their eyes they gonna have golden iris,a symbol of Royal family.

Then I saw the nurse's face pale and filled with sorrow, and the laugh died. What happened?

"The Lady Reina," she said, very softly. "She did not survive the birth."

No one moved. Mother's hand went to her throat. Amon's wife turned her face away. I stared at the blonde baby, wriggling in the nurse's arms with his tiny fists clenched, and thought of Reina laughing at breakfast only two days ago, complaining about her swollen ankles.

Amon crossed the room. He didn't ask for the dark-skinned boy. He took the blonde one, held him against his chest, and his hand, which I had seen hold a sword steady, was shaking.

"Sage," he said. "His name is Sage."

He turned to the nurse. "The other is Baleon."

But he didn't let go of Sage. Even as they carried Baleon to his own mother, even as the room slowly started to breathe again, my brother stood there with that pale little head tucked under his chin, and I looked away, because I felt I was intruding.

() () ()

Four days later.....

I was standing outside the Pharaoh's chamber.

I'd been there since morning. The guards at the door pretended not to notice me, which was how I knew I was allowed. My hands were folded in front of me the way Mother had taught me, back straight, chin level. A princess waits well. I'd learned that, too.

The door opened. A nurse stepped out carrying a small bundle wrapped in white linen, and the guards bowed so low that the spears nearly touched the floor.

"A daughter" the nurse announced to the corridor. "The Pharaoh has a daughter."

I looked down at her. She was tiny, red-faced, asleep, with a fist pressed against her cheek. Someone had already hung a gold amulet around her wrist, much too big for her.

*His daughter, His real one.*I thought.

I smiled, because that is what you do. Inside, something cold settled in my stomach. The Royal Family was cursed and because of that it became hard to have daughters but it wasn't impossibly, the new baby girl is the proof of it,because once in a century a daughter is born in the Royal Family.

And me? I wasn't born in this palace. I was born in a mud-brick room near the edge of the city, to a mother who woke every morning with bruises she called accidents. One night, she tied me to her back and walked out and never looked behind her. I was four back then. We slept in the old runaway house, the one with the broken roof where the poor ones without husbands went. I was small, but I remember it. I remember the hot desert.

And I remember the day the Pharaoh's procession passed. Mother was drawing water at the well, hair uncovered, dust on her face, and he stopped the entire line of his men just to look at her. By evening we were in the harem. By the end of the year I was a princess, wearing linen so fine I was afraid and curious to touch things.

Then Amon was born and I was five at that time and everything solidified.

The Pharaoh forgot my mother after few years. He forgot the daughter he decided to adopt. After all He had so many other women. But he couldn't forget that my mother had given him a son. That was what kept the doors open for us, what kept the servants bowing, what kept the other mistresses watching me from behind their fans without daring to say a word. Women with no children faded away in this place. Women raising someone else's child lasted a little longer. Even Pharaoh's real mother was dead, he was raised by a Mistress but she loved him like her own after all she didn't have any child with the late Pharaoh only the current Pharaoh, then a year ago she died too.

My mother had Amon But I knew better than to think that would be enough. The Pharaoh wouldn't live forever, and when he died, the crown prince would take the throne, and the crown prince had never liked my brother. The harem would be emptied out and rearranged. Women like my mother would be sent to the far wings, or worse. And a stepdaughter with no royal blood what would happens to her? Killed or thrown among men, passed from one to another? I shivered at that though.

The baby stirred in the nurse's arms and made a small, sleepy sound.

I looked at her one more time, then at the closed door of the chamber, then down the long corridor toward my brother's wing.

*Not the crown prince?* I thought. *Amon.*

I'd made it out of that mud-brick room once. I wasn't going back. And whoever sat on that throne when the Pharaoh breathed his last breath, I would make sure will be my brother.

I turned and walked away, slowly, hands folded, back straight.

I waits well. But I don't have to wait forever.

~~~