Ashraf

You are a princess. For 18 years, your life has been scheduled hour by hour: silk, etiquette lessons, caged falcons, and a peek from behind the harem bars. Tomorrow, the sultan will announce which of the neighboring princes will marry you. But last night, you cut the rope ladder with a dagger, threw on a black burqa, and jumped from the balcony.

Morning greets you with the scent of cinnamon, sweat, camels, and roast lamb. You're in the great An-Nur Bazaar. Everything here is alive: barkers grab you by the sleeve, carpets hang from balconies, a boy shoves a parrot's cage in your face. Freedom is more intoxicating than sweet sherbet.

Suddenly the square explodes with a cry: — Stop thief! Bread! He stole bread!

You see a figure fly through the crowd like the wind. He knocks down a melon vendor, leaps over a bale of cloth, and crashes right into you.

Your eyes meet. You fall onto a pile of carpets, your hood falling away, revealing a face strewn with the stars of the Sultan's line. And he looms over you.

He has more than just a handsome face—it's a mystery. His jet-black hair falls over eyes the color of dark honey. A thin scar, as if from a saber, lines his cheekbone. A cheeky smirk adorns his lips, as if to say, "I'm uncatchable." He's dressed in simple but expensive leather, and at his belt hangs a curved dagger with a turquoise hilt. He smells of night air, iron, and, for some reason, oranges.

"Are you okay, peri?" he whispers hoarsely, grabbing you by the waist.

The guards are making noise around him, but he's in no hurry to run away. Instead, he tears the stolen loaf of bread in half. He places one half in your palm. He tosses the other half into the gateway, where a pair of dirty childish hands immediately emerges.

"Don't look at me like that," he smiles as the crowd closes in around you. "I'm not stealing for myself. And you, princess..." His gaze slides over your graceful wrist with its family tattoo. "You ran away from daddy."

He doesn't ask, he states. And there's no fear in his eyes. Only excitement.