Captured For The Sultan’s Pleasure

Next? Roksolana thought. She was right about Lady Miriam since she had just heard about what she was doing next.

“We kill the king. This time, he won’t be able to escape since I already got everything into place.” The strange yet familiar voice Roksolana always heard from Lady Miriam’s room responded.

“Are you sure it will work this time?” Lady Miriam’s weak voice said to her lover.

“Very sure. The Sultan would be breathing his last before a week from now,” the man answered.

Roksolana got angry. At first, she wanted to open the door and confront the two lovers but she decided against it instantly. She knew that her confrontation would only stop the attack temporarily and Jamal’s life would still be in danger. If she wanted to help Jamal, she would have to let them act and stop them in the middle of their plan. That way, she would have stopped the threat once and for all.

With that decision in mind, she turned around from the house and walked away. When she returned to the kitchen, she gave the letters back to Hassan and told him that she didn’t see Lady Miriam. The man thanked her for her help, rushed his meal, and went out of the kitchen. Roksolana went to her friends and while they were there, they talked about things ladies would talk about whenever they were alone. Roksolana only half-listened to the conversation.

Her mind was centered on the discussion she had heard from Lady Miriam’s room. She thought about how she would know the time of the attack and how she would stop the attack to ensure the safety of the Sultan. Many options came to her mind but she kept discarding them as they came. First, she thought about confronting Lady Miriam about what she heard and her making the woman confess to the deed before the sultan but Roksolana knew that it was risky. From confronting the lady to confessing by force, she and her lover could capture Roksolana instead and threaten to kill her. They might even kill her if they feel she was a threat to their plan.

Her next option would be to confront Asleem over what she has heard and she could force the man over to Jamal if he refused to confess to the crime. But when she remembered how he had tied her in that old house back then, she decided against that also. A man that could have her tied would definitely kill her if he feels threatened. The relationship between them would not matter anymore and she could still be eliminated by him in one single breath.

The only solution would be to be with the Sultan at all times and help him defend everyone when the threat comes into play. This means that if she wanted to effectively defend the Sultan, she would have to go back to training as soon as she could so that she would be able to pick up her sword skill again. She dropped her spoon and stood up. Her two friends looked at her with puzzled looks.Original from NôvelDrama.Org.

“Where are you going?” the princess asked her.

“To the training ground,” she told them and went out of the kitchen room and out of the door.

She made her way to the training ground, almost lost in thoughts. The number one person who seemed to be the catalyst of the whole situation was Asleem. He seemed to be so obsessed with revenge that he had even driven other people into his verge for revenge. True, the Sultan had done something wrong to them and their sultanate but it doesn’t mean that they had to kill him to get their revenge. Besides, she was no longer driven by revenge to kill Jamal. If anything, she was grateful to the Sultan for giving her people new homes after the battles.

“Roksolana, where have you been?”

She heard a voice say behind her and she turned very quickly in fear. She was Asleem standing there, looking at her and her scared state like she was not emotionally stable.

“Why do you look so afraid? I’m not going to eat you, you know,” Asleem said with a chuckle that indicated he was teasing her.

If it were before, Roksolana would have shared in the joke and laughed but seeing him right then, her anger grew. Knowing that he was the reason why she could not be at peace or even act like the lady she was meant to be, she was furious at him. Without pausing to think, she slapped him hard across the face. The surprised look on his face gave her a little satisfaction.

“How dare you slap me, woman?” Asleem screamed at her.

She contemplated if she should let him know that she was aware of his plan to kill the Sultan or not. Her head reminded her that she could get killed for voicing such a thing out but she pushed it away. She needed to let him know that she was aware of the evil he was planning.

“I know you are angry with the Sultan but to let the anger get to the point of killing him?” she finally said.

“What are you talking about?” Asleem asked, looking like he was lost about what she meant.

“Oh, you are going to pretend? Then, why don’t you pretend like you didn’t go over to Lady Miriam’s house today to discuss your evil plan with her?” She retorted back at him. She wasn’t going to have any of his pretense at all.

“Lady Miriam? Why would I go to that wicked woman’s place?” Asleem asked and frowned deeply at Roksolana.

Roksolana took a step back when she saw the frown and discovered that it was a lot different from the one the assassin always bestowed upon her each time they crossed parts during a fight.

“Anyway, the king said I am your bodyguard from this moment on,” Asleem told her.

But Roksolana wasn’t listening anymore. It seemed to her that Asleem was not Lady Miriam’s lover, hence, he’s not the assassin. But, for all she knew, he could be pretending to convince her. She shrugged her shoulders and walked away from him. It doesn’t matter if he was the one or not, that wouldn’t stop her from training more so she can be of help to the Sultan.

“Roksolana…” She heard Asleem call.

“Don’t follow me,” she told him, cutting into his speech.

She got to the training ground and met some men practicing. She got into the fighting ring and told the men that she was her to train also. At first, they all laughed at her but when she jabbed the man in the ring with her on his jaw and he fell flat on his face, the rest of the men took her seriously. Two men got into the ring and took the unconscious man away.

“Lady Roksolana, we can’t fight with you. First, you are a woman. Second, you belong to the Sultan. We are afraid that if a single hair on your head is hurt, the Sultan would kill us all,” one of the men told her and bowed to her.

“Cowards. That’s what you all are. You, cowards,” Roksolana screamed at them. They all bowed their heads before her and not a single sound could be heard from anyone.

“I’ll fight with you, Lady Roksolana.”

She heard a voice say and looked in the direction the words came from. She saw general Sodeeq already moving to the ring she was in. She smiled at him as she thought that he probably remembered when she had fought with him on the ship and injured him. Perhaps, he wanted to take revenge for that, she thought to herself. When he got into the ring, he smiled at her in a cocky way before he bowed.

“Can you fight in that?” he asked her.

Roksolana looked down grimly at the flowing skirt and top that she wore. She raised her head back to general Sodeeq and saw that the general was so close to laughing at her. He was right, the dress would hinder her but there was nothing she could do about it. She would just have to make do with the clothes like that.

“Well, you should know that this is not an obstacle to me, general.” She told him with a smile of her own.

“Get the lady and me some blunt swords, would you?” Sodeeq said to one of them.

In five minutes, two swords were brought to them in the ring. Roksolana took a warrior stand and Sodeeq grinned at her in amusement. Before he could get what she wanted to do, she slashed his left arm slightly. Sodeew looked at her surprised and then back to the arm. The sword had cut through the clothes he wore but it hadn’t given him any serious mark because it was blunt. She smiled at him when he looked at her again.

When she lifted the sword you strike again, Sodeeq was ready and easily dodged her attack. She drew the tip of the sword and hit the general on the back with it. The general grunted at the impact and she gave him another slash on his back with the sword. She heard the surprise gasps from everyone watching the fight and she thought that that would teach them a lesson never to underestimate her again.

Jamal stood silently at the back of the soldiers watching the match. He had gone over to the harem to see her and ask if she had breakfast already, only for the princess to tell him that she had said that she was going to the training field. Of course, he had been very worried and had rushed over to the training ground. But from what he was seeing now, he relaxed visiting since he was sure that should take care of herself. Even though her skill was a little rusty, she was still good at it.

Sodeeq looked at the woman in front of him and winced. He couldn’t believe that he had underestimated her because she was a lady. He had thought that she just meant to exercise herself but it turned out she was a warrior. Before he could break out of his thoughts, Roksolana slashed his upper shoulder and Sodeeq looked at his shoulder to see that the sword had slashed his clothes away and his scar was visible to the world.

He looked around to see if anyone noticed the scar and he saw the Sultan at the end of the crowd. Thankfully for him, it doesn’t seem to him like the Sultan can see the scar from where he stood. Nevertheless, he dropped the sword in his hand and quickly covered the scar with the pieces of the torn clothes. His glance fell on the lady he was practicing with and saw her frowning at him while staring at the scar he had already covered.

Roksolana stared in shock at the burnt scar her sword had mistakenly made visible. Her thoughts went back to the night that she had stabbed Jamal and an assassin had also attacked and she had seen the burnt scar. The scar she was looking at now looked the same as that scar. Before she could be truly sure about the scar, the general covered the scar up. She saw him looking at her and she released the harsh line etched on her voice. But she still needed to be sure about the scar she saw, so she raised the sword again.

Jamal gasped when he saw Roksolana bring up her sword again. The army of men that acted like his protector all looked at him and every one of them bowed when they saw that it was him. He ignored them and focused on his woman and the general. He knew that if he let Roksolana strike the general with that sword, then the general would have lost the little competition between them.

“Roksolana, drop that sword,” he said at the top of his voice.

Roksolana nearly screamed at the voice and the command she heard. She looked at the general that had already bowed to the sultan who had issued the command. She contemplated between obeying the Sultan’s command or confirming her thought. Jamal took the decision away from her hands when he climbed into the ring and took the sword away from her. Before she could protest, he dragged her out of the ring and away from the soldiers. Roksolana turned back to look at the general but she couldn’t find him anymore.

Well, until next time then, she thought grimly.