Falling for the Sultan Who Ordered My Death novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: The Seal
Sentenced to die at dawn, Nazira climbs the old scent vents into the Sultan's bedchamber, drinks her own perfume to prove it clean, and trades her death for her apprentice's life, then smells the poison on the Grand Vizier's sleeve.
The Sultan who had sealed my death that afternoon was asleep on his left side.
I stood over his bed in a prison shift, with soot from the vents on my knees.
The brazier still held a little of last night's oil.
Blue lotus. Cedar. The resin I never tell anyone about.
His fingers moved on the silk.
They slid toward the brazier, the way they had every night for a year.
Toward the scent. Toward the carved screen I used to sit behind until he slept.
Toward me.
This time his hand found my wrist and closed on it.
"Every night you reach for me," I said. "Tonight I came."
His eyes opened.
Tamir Sahran, Sultan of Qaresh, looked up at the woman he had ordered walked into the desert at dawn.
He didn't call the guards.
"How?" he said.
"Your great-grandfather's perfumer ran clay pipes into every royal room. Nobody's cleaned them in sixty years. I'm small."
He let go of my wrist and sat up.
His white robe hung open at the throat.
He had looked terrible for four months, ever since his father died.
"You shouldn't be here, Nazira."
"According to your seal, I shouldn't be anywhere."
That afternoon, in the Hall of Pillars, in front of three hundred people, his bride had fallen down.
Ruya Marun had lifted his gold goblet in both hands, the way a bride does, and drunk first.
Then she folded onto the carpet in a heap of green silk.
The royal physician knelt over her and pulled a little glass vial from her sleeve.
It had my mark on the stopper. Three petals.
He sniffed it and said, "Ash rose."
Ruya's father, the Grand Vizier, didn't raise his voice. Sadeq Marun never raises his voice.
"The perfumer has been in his bedchamber every night for a year," he said. "Think what she could have done, Majesty."
I stood between two guards with orris powder still on my sleeves.
Nobody asked me a single thing.
Only his half-sister, Laleh, stood up from her cushion and said, "Brother, wait."
Nobody listened to her either.
Tamir looked at me once across the hall.
Then he held out his hand for the black stone seal and pressed it into the red wax.
At the back of the hall, my apprentice Sahar screamed my name until a guard shoved her into a pillar.
Now I reached into my shift and took out a little glass vial.
Three petals on the stopper.
"The guards took my knife," I said. "They didn't take my tester. Same batch as the one in Ruya's sleeve. I poured them both yesterday."
He saw what I was going to do a moment too late.
"Nazira, don't."
I pulled the stopper with my teeth and drank the whole thing.
It tasted like a wedding. Rosewater, orris and amber.
I sat down on the edge of his cushions and waited.
He stood there and waited with me.
My heart kept beating. My breath stayed where it was.
"It's for her wrists," I said. "It wouldn't kill a moth."
"Then the physician lied."
"The physician sniffed a bottle. He never sniffed your goblet. I did, from twenty feet away."
I held his eyes.
"Burnt honey. That's ash rose. It was in your wine, Tamir. Not in my bottle."
He went very still.
"She drank first," he said slowly.
"She took a bride's sip. Enough to fall down pretty in front of the court."
"If it was in my cup..."
"Then someone wants you dead," I said. "And they needed me gone first."
"Whatever anyone puts in this room while you sleep, I'd smell it. Ask yourself who knew that."
For one breath I thought I had him.
"I sealed it," he said.
"So unseal it."
"No Sultan has ever unsaid a seal. If I unsay one for a perfumer, every seal I've pressed becomes a suggestion."
"I'm not a suggestion. I'm a person, and I'll be dead by noon tomorrow."
The door opened before he could answer.
Lamplight came in first, then the captain of the guard with his sword out, then the Grand Vizier in deep blue.
"Majesty," Sadeq said softly. "The prisoner is missing from her cell. I came at once."
His eyes found me on the Sultan's bed.
He didn't look surprised at all.
"And here she is," he said. "In your bedchamber. Again."
Four guards filled the doorway behind him.
Tamir stood with his robe open and his hands empty.
I waited for him to say one thing. Just one. Ask her.
"The seal stands," he said. "At dawn."
Something in my chest went quiet and cold.
Sadeq bowed. "And the apprentice, Majesty. The girl helped mix the vial. She walks with her mistress."
That woke me up.
I was on my feet before the guards reached me.
"Sahar is twenty-one and labels bottles," I said. "She can't tell orris from onion. Ask anyone on our street."
I turned to Tamir.
"You owe me a question you never asked. I'm not asking for my life. Give me hers."
The room waited on him.
He looked at me for a long moment.
"The apprentice goes free," he said. "Tonight. Out of the city, with her things."
"As you say, Majesty," said Sadeq.
A guard took my arm.
I shook him off and walked out by myself, barefoot, my chin up, past the Sultan.
I didn't look at him.
At the door I had to pass close to the Grand Vizier.
His sleeve brushed my shoulder.
Burnt honey.
Faint, under his sandalwood.
I stopped dead and looked up at him.
He saw that I knew.
He smiled at me, kind as a grandfather, and leaned in close.
"Enjoy the desert, perfumer."
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