They whispered it in the markets.
They recorded it in hidden pages of forbidden books.
And in the highest towers of the Alhambra, the Malika never denied it.
The Malika was not born of ordinary blood.
Her father, a mystic from the coastal city of Qairawan, was known to speak to fire. He brewed tinctures that could heal or maim and was once accused of transforming salt into diamonds. Her mother, born of the mountain tribes near the desert edge, was said to walk the line between the living and the dead, called upon in births and burials alike.
Rana was their only female child. And her eyes gave her away.
One amber, like desert flame.
One cerulean, like ocean glass.
When she was born, storms ravaged the southern coast for three days. On the fourth, the skies cleared, and every tree in her village bloomed out of season. Her parents said it was the Earth recognizing one of its own.
As she grew, so did her power, not just of spell or salve, but of something more elusive: influence.
She could look at a merchant and have him halve his price without saying a word. She could glance at a weeping child and calm their cries with nothing but a hum. Ministers bowed deeper to her than to the governors they served.
Even the skeptics couldn't explain it. They learned to obey.
But her truest inheritance was not persuasion. It was alchemy.
She could read transmutation circles in texts older than her great-grandfather. She could blend mercury and vinegar to make metal sing. She could whisper to copper until it bloomed gold at the edges.
Her mother taught her the sacred rules:
- All magic must serve truth.
- All alchemy must cost something.
- Power must be sought for love alone.
This final rule was the most difficult and dangerous. It meant that power pursued for pride, greed, or fear would always collapse in on itself. But love, selfless, soul-deep, sacrificial love, could be a compass strong enough to wield the unimaginable.
Rana would eventually break all three.
-----
The Sultan was dying.
And with him, the certainty of the realm.
For forty years, he had ruled with steady hands. A believer in fate, tradition, and order. But now, his breath came in shallow gasps, and the weight of the crown hung heavy in the air above his two sons.
Crown Prince Rashid, the elder by six years, was a soldier, a scholar, and a tactician. He had quelled rebellions, drafted treaties, and bore the weary authority of a man long trained to rule. He saw the world as a chessboard and himself as its master player.
Prince Amin, by contrast, was a fire no one could contain. Brilliant in languages, strange in humor, prone to wandering into temples and marketplaces alike with dust on his boots and questions on his tongue. He was a second son, not meant for power, but born with passion instead of patience.
Both were prepared to bury their father. Neither was prepared for her.
------
They called her Rana of the Red Veil before she was ever the Malika.
Her existence was said to be an omen with the palace shaman professing that she was delivered to this realm as a blade of chaos, one that could destroy or create, based on who wielded it.
She was not made to serve but to deliver.
The brothers met her on the same night. Having been sent to find her during the Festival of Bloom, a spring celebration in the heart of the city. The night market was drenched in lantern light and heady with the scent of oranges and rose oil. Music spilled from the corners like laughter, and poets sang sonnets to women who rarely stopped to listen.
Rana did, as she stood beneath a row of fruitful orange trees, her long veil the color of fresh blood catching the wind like a flame. Her eyes were like beacons directing all to gaze upon her, and she knew she was being watched.
When Prince Amin saw her, he instantly felt something ancient stir within him. His heart, once dulled by duty, ignited in the recognition of their soul tie. He was sure he had known her for several lifetimes.
Their eyes met through the crowd, and in that moment, no one else mattered.
As the night went on, he found her again. And again. Until the world made no sense without her gaze in it.
But he was not the only one who looked.
Crown Prince Rashid found her too. Her grace. Her silence. Her danger. He saw not only a woman of beauty, but an opportunity.
She could turn councilmen to servants with a glance.
She could command attention with a whisper.
She was born of power and was destined to bring trouble.
A week later, Crown Prince Rashid invited her father to take residence in the Alhambra under the guise of cultural exchange, encouraging him to expose his daughter to the court. The brothers studied alchemy texts by day with her father and secretly courted Rana without the other knowing.
Where Rashid wrote strategy, Amin wrote poems.
Where Rashid offered her station, Amin offered her an eternal vow.
But only one would be chosen.
Rana did not choose immediately.
She dined with Rashid and debated governance. She walked with Amin in the gardens, and they spoke of stars.
To one, she was a future.
To the other, she was a mirror.
With the Sultan bedridden, succession loomed like a blade. Rashid, already positioned to take the crown, was determined to announce his engagement to Rana publicly before the council.
When he asked for her hand, her father warned him:
"She will not bow... even if she chooses to marry you"
"Who else would she choose?" Rashid laughed amused, unaware that he had already lost to his brother Amin.
At that moment, Amin and Rana entered the courtyard together. She stood beside him that day, an expression undeniable beneath her veil. She had already chosen.
Rashid became undone and confronted them both.
"Do you love me?" Rashid asked.
"I respect you," she said.
"And him?"
She looked into Amin's eyes and professed, "He… is mine."
In that moment, Rashid knew she would never be his.
By evening, Amin had claimed her hand.
The palace fractured in days.
Their father died in his sleep, never having named his successor.
Ministers chose sides. Soldiers whispered. Servants listened. Scribes stopped recording.
Thirteen days of quiet war followed, filled with assassins, accusations, and betrayal.
Crown Prince Rashid accused Rana of witchcraft.
"Her mother walked with ghosts," he spat before the high court. "She will end our line."
Amin responded not with words, but with his blade.
On the fourteenth day, Amin killed his brother in the courtyard of the royal library where they once learned to read together as boys.
When the dust settled, Amin emerged not just victorious, but transformed.
He took the throne.
He took the court.
And he took Rana for his Queen.
But he did not make her bow.
He crowned her himself, in a ceremony unlike any before. And before the watching court, he vowed: I will be the sword in your hand, the flame at your feet. My rule is yours to wield. My love for you will outlast even the stone of this palace in this life, and all that follow.
From that day on, the Malika ruled beside him.
And with her position came whispers...
That her family guarded a fragment of the Philosopher's Stone.
Or worse, that she knew how to create it.
They said her mother once turned salt to rubies.
That her father read stars as if they were letters.
That Rana herself had resurrected a dead dove with a kiss.
No one could prove it. But no one doubted it.
She bore the Sultan one child: a son.
Tariq, amber-eyed and silent. Inherited the eyes of her father and his love for alchemical texts. He spent more time in the library than in the barracks. Ministers called him soft.
But Rana knew better.
She taught him herself, not spells, but discernment. Not rituals, but rhetoric.
Not how to command men… but how to make them listen without ever raising a voice.
She whispered truths to him late at night about the weight of power and the danger of desire.
She did not say he was destined. She said he was chosen.
The empire shifted under her watch.
Foreign kings sent gifts, but never wives.
Emissaries came bearing questions they dared not put to paper.
Even the most devout imams hesitated to challenge her edicts.
And yet the people loved her because she saw them, and their enemies feared her.
Because they knew so long as the alchemist's blood remained in the palace, the old magic pulsed through the empire's veins.
But time does not care for myth, and now, years later, shadows and steel return as enemies gather strength. Her son stands at the crossroads of legends and drawn blades, armed with his mother's blood yet guided by his own heart. Some deny the Philosopher's Stone ever existed; others insist it's buried beneath the palace. Still others whisper it beats inside her son's chest, transformed not into gold, but into love.
Rana knows the truth. She always has.