Khadijah Khatib

I’m hungry for kindness. Hungry for attention. I want and want and want.

He’s the kind of beautiful that makes people want to smash things.

“There are certain expectations of a prince in Court.”

“You cannot be serious,” I say. “You feel obliged to be in love?”

“I told you—I am a courtier, versed in all the courtly arts.”

“Ah, and now you laugh. It is my curse to adore cruel women.”

“No time like the present.”

I’m tired of being scared.

With him, I am forever a night-blooming flower, attracted and repelled by the heat of the sun.

The woman’s hand came against Wren’s cheek in a slap so hard that it sounded like a crack

Your sire and dam

My name isn’t Suren, she wanted to say. And this is a trick. That’s not me. But even as she thought the words, she heard how similar Suren was to her own name. Suren. Ren. Wren. A child’s shortening.