Malka pointed to a corner pillar. “Push the hidden door, it’s hidden in the secret compartment.” She explained.

Zhuel nodded. Since he began his studies into magic 3 years prior, he commissioned one of the palace’s mason and one of the carpenters to create a hidden compartment within one of the great, wide pillars in the library. Here, Zhuel hid his volumes of magic and ancient grimoires. Zhuel longed to have a study where he could practice with the elements and create the alchemical acts. He dared not bring any supplies through the palace.

But he contented himself with the few volumes Malka smuggled in from Prince Ardasha and the great sorcerer Veniamen of Kos, from across the river. 

Malka, for years, studied under the Prince’s wife, Ksenya, for her art of medicinal cooking, for Malka strove to charge the palace of its hosting, kitchen and larder. Malka desired nothing of her mother’s governance alongside the Queen, and yearned for the simpler station the palace could offer her. So here, Malka discovered the great magical studies of Ardasha and the sorcerer Veniamen, and here too, she received the volumes they imparted unto for Zhuel’s sake, and she smuggled each precious tome in her baskets or many skirts, and sometimes, her cloak.

Not one guard of page suspected this, so no one stopped and searched her. 

And thus, Zhuel had studied from the young age of 10 and 3 summers. 

Zhuel took a fierce pride in how magic granted him power, and he resented how foolish the Queen showed herself by denying such a power. Not only unto himself, but the prince considered what a flood of greatness could the kingdom benefit from. 

He would prove his mother wrong one day. Perhaps this tome, a tome he had long sought after, would hold the key to surpassing his mother in power and greatness. 

But he shook himself from this reverie of glory, and focused on the task at hand.

Turning the hidden panel aside, he dipped his hand into the compartment and pulled out the grimoire with a reverent, almost timid, care. Painstakingly, he treated the leather-bound and iron-clasped tome as though it were glass as fine as a lace, ready to break with a single touch. 

He knew the significance of this book. He knew Ardasha paid a hefty price of coin, and the book changed many a hand before Zhuel held it now. It was the oldest of all the young prince had studied. It hailed from far, from where the Prince’s people began from. 

It contained the magic of his forbears, the very stuff that made men gods unto themselves. The forbidden magic. 

Forbidden, in Zhuel’s resentful reason, because man grew to fear being a god. But Zhuel sought to shed off the weakness of man, and learn how he, like others before him, could be a god unto himself- and his people.

A chill emanated from the book itself. The coldness enveloped the book like a block of ice, but it felt as though it contained a vortex of icy wind that drew a person in, not blew them away. 

Zhuel felt his legs move ahead of his own volition, as though the force the book radiated drew him in. 

It uneased him, yet he was accustomed to the thrall of magic’s beckoning. He likened to mastering the sea- man was oft made the slave of the sea and its waves, and seldom could a man be its master. 

But when he gained mastery, his time was precious, and much could be achieved in the brief and sweetest of moments. As it was with magic-Zhuel understood his mastery stood brief, but he rendered each time all to his advantage, like wrenching every drop from the indigo for its treasured blue dye. 

In the shimmering glow of the lantern that rounded that corner in the library chamber, Malka studied her friend’s face intently as he hesitated to open the grimoire before him. 

A certain heaviness lined his otherwise healthy features with a weariness- there were half-circles shading under his eyes- eyes that now held, like an oil sheen set upon the tense surface of still water, a dazed glaze of uncertainty and resentful pride. Not the hard-earned scraps of dignity the prince held unto through his painful boyhood, but a growing hubris formed of a solemn pursuit of power. 

Malka, in that moment, pondered how the prince might be, divested of the magic. Would he not be weighed down by magic’s burden? Or did the burden lie not with magic itself, but the heaviness of the crown Zhuel soon would take on? She likened the crown on the head bore the same weariness like the iron collar fastened around a prisoner’s neck. 

Still, she remained silent. What wisdom or solution could she offer? 

Shifting her gaze downward, Malka caught sight of Zhuel’s hand- it shook with an unnatural tremor, as though he could not withstand the force from the tome laid before him on the table. 

The moon sliced a shaft of its silver light onto the table, spilling unto the prince, bathing him in its cool, dim glow. The ring on his finger glinted sharply with a glare that pierced the dull darkness in the outer recessed rung round the chamber. 

Without deliberate thought, Malka drew near and wrapped her hand over the prince’s hand. She blinked in surprise at how cold his hand felt, more like cold stone than warm flesh. Instinctively, she grasped her fingers tighter, an attempt at warming her friend’s icy hand- but she felt her own warmth drop from her own hand, too, yet she held on regardless. 

“Here,” she whispered gently. “Let me warm your hands- they’re cold. Too cold.” Malka now grasped both hands over Zhuel’s, and bending her head down slightly, blew a huff of her own warm breath over his fingers. Urgently, she rubbed her fingers and palms vigorously, trying to rouse blood and color into the prince’s hands.

 A vestige of warmth returned. Satisfied, Malka remained infront of the prince, holding his hands in a looser grasp, stroking her small, slander thumb over his sharp knuckles. 

Zhuel, held in the sway of the great magic which taunted him in its temptation of taking, and roused by his friend’s kind gesture, remained still and silent. He gazed upon Malka in a daze, but blinked and focus returned as he noticed she still held his hand. He savored her touch, her warmth, her gentleness. The tendrils of desire took root long before this, but now Malka’s caress awoken the tendrils to move and climb. By his own choice, he returned her grasp, now switching his hands over hers, and rubbing his stronger thumb over her fingers. 

Their heads bowed closer, their foreheads, unknown to them, drawing nearer. 

“Zhuel- do you need all this?” Malka breathed. Her eyes looked up from her bowed head. 

She set her eyes unto Zhuel’s dark eyes, now passing through the darkness like the moon slipping out from the clouds in the sky above them through the latticed window. 

Now Zhuel, emboldened by her concern for him, slowly raised his hands and cupped her face into his palms with a touch solid and urgent in its gentleness. He craved that he could convey all within his own vision for the future, what he needed, what he intended to become, to enact. 

Drawing a deep breath, Malka’s nostrils flared somewhat, and she relaxed her head into his hands. She leaned her one cheek, tilting her head, to lean deeper into the cup of his palm, taking in the tenderness she knew he held. 

She too craved- but she craved to move her lips onto his palm and kiss it, and kiss her lips deeply upon his skin, that her urgent desire could soak through the tremble of her lips onto his skin. 

But she dare not- It would break the stillness of this moment, a moment they carefully built up spontaneously in the library. She knew Zhuel resisted the fissures of passion- he feared its uncontrolled nature. She did too, but she knew, in a mix of resentment and longing, she could control it- and he could too.  But instead, they remained, suspended on the precipice of all things. 

Zhuel finally spoke. Allowing a gesture to calm his companion, he stroked his thumb over the bridge of her soft cheeks. 

“Malka, I am beset with a fate no other man in this land is set with. I am to be a king of a vulnerable nation.” he began. “I know my mother boasts we are proud, we are favored by the gods before us, but we are small, too. What misstep could my rule bring then we are back to what our mothers suffered? We did not see it, but do you not remember the suffering our mothers lamented in their past? How can I allow that to happen again? I am not great like the Queen-” here, Malka noted how Zhuel addressed his mother as ‘the Queen’ and not his mother, “ nor am I favored with any gifts as a fitting ruler should. I am less than most men, save my mind.”

“A mind is all a good ruler needs, Zhuel. What is man without a mind?” Malka insisted. Her voice was quiet, but a hardness of retort, not against her friend, but against the ideas that the world of men forged into Zhuel’s mind. 

“A mind alone is not enough to protect a kingdom. Govern, maybe. But not protect.” Zhuel returned, his voice growing harder, and his dark brow furrowing a bit. 

Malka questioned his ambitions, she questions his means to his ends, and while her mind flooded with these questions, her mouth remained empty, like a bare earthen vessel, for Zhuel’s dark eyes silenced her voice. 

Shifting her cheek in his palm, Malka let boldness works its quiet way, and kissed his palm, letting her lips press firmly into his skin. Her lips grasped again, seizing another firm kiss, sucking scent and warmth from his skin as it were a precious element being gleaned carefully. 

Zhuel, astounded by her deliberate act, remained fast in his hold, and drew her nearer. He leaned down, his face drawn close. He placed his lips on her cheek, feeling her warmth, her beaded headdress clicking and rustling against his forehead and hair. He slid his lips down, in a desiring trail, down to her lips, where his lips carefully found where her lips parted, and his lips grasped hers softly, his breath entering her breath. He opened his mouth, and kissed again, this time, firmer, almost reproaching himself for such an act, but wanting to taste her gentleness as a calmness to the fear that grew within him. He let go. His eyes pricked and blurred with he hoped were not tears, and he then placed his chin on top of her head, as a barrier between their faces and lips.

Outside, the window afforded a view of the city’s outlay, a row of roofs and streets, declaring its richness and greatness. It seemed a cruel taunting, for this is what consumed him and drove the wedge between and he and Malka. 

For a moment, he almost hated the city before him. He narrowed eyes as he casted a cold, hard glance of resentment towards the city, and he rested his chin heavily on top of her hair nestled out from her headdress. 

“You will understand in time, Malka.” he quietly murmured.