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Before she became an empress, she was a prisoner.
Before she was a prisoner, she had been a warrior.
//
In the land of sand and stone, sitting at the edge of the sea, Cruz finds herself at deaths door.
A sword had pierced her side and her friends, the warriors she had marched and fought alongside for years and years, left her for dead.
She still remembers the way her commander turned their aid away.
They should retreat and live another day rather than busy themselves with rescuing someone at the river’s edge.
Her soul would soon be carried down the Styx and all they could do was toss her twin coins and hope for the best.
Cruz had been taken while she tried to drag her body after them.
The trail of sand and blood led her captors from the battlefield to a hidden road in the woods where she was desperately trying to stuff leaves and cloth into her wound to staunch the bleeding.
Her body hung limply between their meaty hands as she was dragged through the enemy’s camp.
The stench of animal filth, cooking fires, and sweat made her feel sick.
Her blank eyes take nothing in of the bustling camp around her. Of the sparkling water nearby that glitters like diamonds and rubies every time the sun atop the sky lights it on fire.
If she had lost less blood, she might have been able to fight the men off.
If she had been a little less dizzy, she might not have been caught, like an animal, and shackled at the feet of the eastern emperor’s son.
//
Cruz had stopped counting the days.
They blurred together with the beatings and the questions.
She pretended she didn’t speak their language, they had switched to hers, the language of the western empire.
But it had been no use.
She spoke of nothing. Revealed no intelligence. Simply took the beatings until she passed out from the pain.
//
She saw the eastern emperor’s son again the same day she was saved.
She was being questioned by him. Instead of her usual captors.
Perhaps, he thought that she would be awed by his power.
That she would respond to his violence.
Instead, they had been interrupted by his sister.
She was a lithe and graceful woman who laughed like a melody and had clear-cut, composed features. These were further accentuated by her jet-black hair and sapphire eyes.
Eyes that widened as she saw the ghastly scene in front of her.
Forgetting about her complaints of being unable to go shopping while they were on campaign, she quickly dropped to her knees and gingerly touched Cruz’s battered face.
She asked her brother to explain why he was beating a prisoner instead of rendering aid.
He told her that it was not their custom to help those destined to die. He was merely speeding that process along.
The same way he had helped his brothers, former contenders to the throne, be on their way towards death’s door.
He told his sister, who he always saw too soft and kind, that if she was so willing to aid a prisoner, she can take care of whatever remained of this one.
Setting a trap for her.
If she chose kindness, the prisoner would recover and kill her, for she was her captor. Thus, leaving his hands clean of her murder.
If she chose to kill the prisoner, she would be seen as kind only when it was self-serving. Thus, her callousness would be exposed, and he could easily kill her, as he had done with the rest of the family line.
His sister was alive only because she was popular with the common people.
He was seen as excessively cruel. She softened his image. It was the only reason he brought her on military campaigns.
His soldiers loved catching glimpses of her kind smile. Their ears longed for her words of encouragement.
Even then, he never stopped looking for an opportunity to present itself so he could get rid of her.
With their father still at the throne, he was trying to bide his time before he would be named emperor of the eastern empire.
Aaliyah’s kindness was a weapon to keep the wolves at bay.
He thought she had outlived her usefulness on this particular day because he didn’t like being questioned in front of his men.
Not knowing that the day he turned his sister’s kindness against her, was the day he would truly cement his own downfall.
“If she is to be entrusted under my care, she can no longer be a prisoner.” Aaliyah responded. Carefully wiping the blood off of Cruz’s face with her own gown. A silk robe that was impossibly white until it started soaking up blood.
Her brother tried to claim that she was an animal and would bite her first before swearing fealty to someone like her.
Aaliyah ignored his words and opened the shackles that held Cruz back.
She could have used the last of her strength to kill any one person in that room.
Cruz knew it.
Her captors knew it.
The room was tense. As drawn swords waited for her next move.
Instead of killing Aaliyah or her brother, she gave Aaliyah a soft smile before bowing her head.
Aaliyah’s hands naturally cradled it against her bosom and Cruz knew she would gladly die at her touch than endure more torture.
For she was the first person in this camp to touch her without fear or hate.
After a moment, his attention got called to other matters and he soon forgot about his sister.
With that action, she went from prisoner to injured confidant.
//
The first couple of days, Cruz slept a lot.
She remembers gentle reassurances. Soft touches and those sapphire eyes that go from blue to green in torchlight.
//
She still had been unable to speak. Her throat was too sore from the shouting she did during those first days of captivity.
After a while, she is able to stay awake for longer periods of time.
So long that Cruz remembers secrets whispered at her bedside.
The loneliness of being held prisoner in a gilded cage.
A different kind of prison Cruz had resigned herself to dying in.
Cruz also remembers the sadness beneath sapphire eyes. Carrying the knowledge that she had saved Cruz only to condemn her to death because her brother would never let Aaliyah leave this war alive.
He had a throne to secure, and she was an obstacle.
Aaliyah knew more than she let on.
She spends lavishly on jewelry for herself, even if it meant nothing, because she needed a way to have enough wealth to run away.
It had been a foolish dream, thinking she could leave his war camp alive instead of as a martyr for his throne.
His war.
She apologized to Cruz, as if she owed her an explanation.
She told her that what she wanted, her freedom, was not factored into the equation.
It was then that Cruz spoke for the first time since she was captured.
She wiped at Aaliyah’s eyes and told her that she would protect her with what little life she has left in her. That she would always be here for her.
Aaliyah smiled and leaned into her touch. “Thank you, for being my friend.”
Cruz doesn’t want to be her friend. She wants all of Aaliyah. That kindness that is soft enough to drown her is healing all her wounds.
Even the ones she doesn’t remember receiving at the hands of others.
//
Cruz knows it is an unusual arrangement, to sleep next to Aaliyah. She is not to be trusted, for she is still a stranger in a foreign land.
But Aaliyah’s presence is the only thing that keeps her alive. Just like her company, the only thing not carefully selected for her, is what keeps Aaliyah happy on days that are hard.
Days when her brother is upset, and the gloom is cast upon all of the people within the camp.
//
The rhythm of her days had changed from when she was a warrior.
Her days had slowed but Cruz didn’t stop training.
She was not allowed to keep her sword and her armor was a spoil of war. Proudly sent back to the emperor as a show of strength by his son.
Cruz didn’t care.
Her body was the weapon. No bruising skin could hide that.
//
Cruz feels her strength return, slowly. And she is happy that now she can stand on her own two feet and follow Aaliyah as she goes about her day.
Often relegated to the shadows and sometimes brought on to the forefront as Aaliyah asks her opinion on things like jewelry.
Flattering Cruz with smiles and words that make her laugh and look away from Aaliyah’s bright eyes.
She never thought of herself as anything other than too tall and awkward.
For the most beautiful and graceful creature she had ever come across to think of her as pretty is inconceivable.
//
The day that changed things between them had started off like any other day.
They’re in a crowded market, when she hears the gentle suggestion come from Aaliyah. “Come, we can go across the market to find some cloth to bring out your eyes.”
Before they can go to the stall she mentioned, the one that sells beautiful cloth, a sputter is heard from one of Aaliyah’s guards.
The glint of a knife is coming in by her side and Cruz grabs for a powerful wrist.
“Cruz?” She hears a familiar voice say her name in surprise.
Cruz uses that moment of hesitation to redirect the force of the knife from going near Aaliyah to stabbing into an unarmored thigh.
Kyle is dead before he hits the ground, and she quickly pushes Aaliyah onto a chariot. Not caring whose horses and chariot she is stealing, only caring about keeping Aaliyah safe from more assassins.
The whip cracks across the sky and they speed away towards the camp they both call a prison and a home.
//
That night, in her excitement to be alive, Aaliyah kisses her.
Cruz doesn’t know if there is a better reason to fall at her knees and pledge herself fully to Aaliyah than to be kissed so softly while being eaten alive so hungrily.
She knows Aaliyah is both her first love and the love that made everything else before tonight irrelevant.
Cruz loves everything about Aaliyah, and it is why she sneaks away in the night.
So good is her heart.
So ethereal is her beauty.
So disarming is her smile.
That it is was an easy choice to make. Slicing the throat of a tyrant with the knife meant for Aaliyah’s heart.
The camp wakes up in chaos the next day.
The men that had been guarding Aaliyah at the market recognize the blade.
They know that another assassin was sent.
This time, he did not fail.
Aaliyah should return to the palace. She should be kept safe. Let the barbarians have this piece of land if it meant she remained alive.
Instead, Cruz tells her to stay.
The secrets they couldn’t torture out of her, fall easily from her tongue. As long as Aaliyah is there to comb her fingers through Cruz’s hair, she doesn’t care how they are used against her old friends.
The family that left her for dead.
//
It would be easier to remain neutral and uninvolved in these matters, for she was no longer under any obligation but her own to act.
Except, she couldn’t leave without being sure that a debt was paid in blood.
With the sky at her back and sweat running down her face, Cruz feels alive again.
The hot sands beneath her whispered with the cries of fallen men. Disorienting her. Making her feel as if she was back in former battles and not cleaving her way to victory against those she came to this kingdom with.
Her old friends see her at her most dangerous.
Her sword slices through them as they try to surrender.
Soon, the battle becomes disorganized as Joe calls for a retreat.
That voice breaks her concentration. The cries of men and women reach her ears and Cruz is running.
Avoiding blows and shields from hitting her body as she ducks down. Rolls out of reach
Soon, the bodies give way to a small clearing where Joe and her attendants are trying to mount a panicking horse.
An arrow shoots out and buries itself into one of their hands. The reigns slip out of reach and the horse is galloping away from everyone.
Cruz doesn’t shout at them; she merely charges ahead and takes the first man by surprise.
He doesn’t make a sound as she cleaves him nearly in half with her sword.
The second man tries to swing at her, but he can barely manage to lift a sword with his injured hand.
Cruz quickly cuts his arm off and buries her sword in his neck at the same time an arrow hits him square in the chest. Pushing him into the ground in front of her feet.
She should turn back to see if there is any danger from those arrows. Instead, Cruz plunges her sword into Joe.
She kneels by the dying woman, who smiles and tells Cruz this doesn’t hurt at all.
Cruz places a bloody hand on her face and tells her that it’s good it doesn’t hurt, because she learned how to be kind while Joe expected her to die.
//
After Aaliyah’s triumph in battle, through the hands of her lover, she can return home a victor and the only legitimate heir to the Amrohi legacy.
//
Aaliyah’s home is more beautiful than Cruz imagined a castle in the desert could ever be.
Blue heaven stretches above and the deep sea that touches the port she calls home is almost as dark blue and green as Aaliyah’s sapphire eyes.
The sun is low in the heavens and her people are casting long shadows as they cheer and shout her name.
The emperor is only taller than Cruz by an inch or two.
He has kind eyes, lines around them show that he is used to the merriment life has to give. While his brown, scarred face shows that he is just a formidable a warrior as Cruz has ever been.
A man like this does not stay in power by being weak. Yet, favoring his son’s violent tendencies led to an uncertain future for his country.
The princess he saw as a mere bargaining chip. A gift for an alliance with the right kingdom. Is suddenly the only person who can safeguard his legacy.
She delivered him a victory at the edge of his empire and prevented him from having one giant loss spiral into revolt.
The people are celebrating her return with the same fervor they honor her prowess in war. The soldiers she encouraged with soft smiles and kind words swore fealty to her.
Not his kingdom.
Not her warrior.
But his daughter.
//
He crowned her empress-in-waiting, along with the warrior from the west.
//
Their wedding was not a quiet affair.
It was held at the temple of the sun god. Crowds of people gathered on rooftops and hung out of their windows. Desperate to see the lovely face of their future empress.
Cruz smiled at the sight of her bride. The deep purple silk robes made her eyes stand out in the flickering flames within the temple walls. Blue and green sapphires shone in delight as she stared back at Cruz.
The sound of Aaliyah’s voice sent such a thrill of joy that bubbled up in her heart.
She had to look down at her feet, avoid Aaliyah’s eyes, so she would not shout in sheer happiness during this solemn occasion.
Aaliyah’s heart of gold shone brighter than any jewels she could have bought during her travels to the farthest corner of her father’s empire.
Especially now, when she was in love.