The Ruby Cage
A beautiful princess is forced to marry the evil Grand Vizier, who curses her to look hideous to all. Ahmad, whom she met during a brief escape, sees her for who she really is. But can he save her?
A Pulp Fantasy Adventure
By Astrid Hale
Chapter 1
I am beautiful.
This is not vanity speaking—would that it were. It is simply a fact, as immutable as the sun’s rising over the minarets of Basra or the tides that caress our harbor walls. My beauty is catalogued, inventoried, and guarded like the Sultan’s treasure. The arch of my brow has been praised in verse by seven poets. My hair, black as a moonless night and cascading like silk to my waist, has inspired merchants to name a new fabric in its honor. My eyes—ah, my eyes—are said to hold all the mysteries of the desert stars.
I am beautiful, and I am wretched.
The gardens below my tower shimmer in the afternoon heat, a paradise of fountains and flowering trees, of peacocks trailing jeweled feathers across marble paths. The scent of jasmine and orange blossom drifts through the latticed screens of my chamber, sweet enough to make one drunk. Beyond the palace walls, I can hear the distant song of the city—the calls of merchants, the laughter of children, the clip-clop of donkey hooves on ancient stones. A world teems with life just beyond my reach, and I am as separate from it as the moon from the earth.
I press my palm against the carved sandalwood screen, feeling the delicate patterns beneath my fingertips. How many hours have I spent here, watching life through these geometric holes? How many sunsets have I witnessed alone, the only witness to the sky’s nightly transformation?
“More wine, Princess?”
Leyla, my handmaiden, appears at my elbow like a ghost. She has been with me since childhood, yet I wonder sometimes if she truly sees me at all, or merely the vessel of beauty she is paid to maintain. Her eyes never quite meet mine.
“No,” I whisper, and she retreats with a bow, leaving me to my gilded solitude.
This tower, they tell me, is for my protection. The apartments are magnificent—walls adorned with intricate mosaics depicting paradise, floors covered in carpets so fine they might have been woven by djinn. I have silk cushions and silver mirrors, jeweled combs and golden anklets. I have everything, they insist, that a princess could desire.
Everything except freedom. Everything except choice. Everything except a life that is truly mine.
My father, Sultan Rasheed, loves me in his way. He loves me as a man loves a perfect ruby or a flawless blade—for what I am, not who I am. He displays me at feasts, veiled and silent, proof of his dynasty’s beauty and refinement. He posts guards at every entrance to my tower, twelve men whose sole purpose is to ensure that I remain untouched, unspoiled, and ready for whatever political purpose he deems fit.
But it is not my father I fear most.
As if summoned by my thoughts, I hear voices rising from the courtyard below—voices that make my blood run cold even in the sweltering heat. I recognize the first: my father’s boom, loud and jovial, the voice of a man who has never been denied. And the second...
The second belongs to Jaffar.
The Grand Vizier has been my father’s closest advisor for three years now, ever since he arrived in Basra bearing gifts and honeyed words. He is tall and elegant, with a pointed beard and eyes that seem to see through flesh to the soul beneath. There is something about him that makes my skin crawl—a wrongness that lurks beneath his cultured manner like rot beneath silk.
I should retreat from the window. A proper princess would return to her cushions, to her embroidery and her studied ignorance of the world beyond her walls. But something in the tone of their voices holds me frozen, and before I can think better of it, I am moving closer to the screen, straining to hear.
“—assure you, Majesty, the alliance will be most beneficial.” Jaffar’s voice is smooth as oil. “My holdings in the north, combined with your coastal power, will make Basra unassailable.”
“And you are certain of your ability to... manage my daughter?” My father’s words strike me like a physical blow. Manage. As if I were a horse to be broken or a wild bird to be caged.
“The Princess will find me a most attentive husband.” There is something in Jaffar’s tone that makes my stomach turn. “She is young and has been... sheltered. She will learn her place.”
Husband.
The word echoes in my mind like a death knell. I have known, of course, that marriage would come eventually. But I had harbored secret hopes—foolish, childish hopes—that I might have some say in the matter. That I might be given to a kind man, perhaps even a young one. That I might, against all odds, find something resembling happiness.
Not this. Never this.
“She is stubborn,” my father warns. “Like her mother was. Beautiful but willful.”
“Then it is fortunate that I have ways of... softening such resistance.”
The way he says it makes my skin crawl. There is a promise of dark things in those words, of methods I cannot fathom but instinctively dread.
“When will you make the formal proposal?” my father asks.
“Soon. Very soon. There are merely a few... arrangements I must complete first. Certain rituals that will ensure our union is blessed by powers beyond the merely temporal.”
They move away, their voices fading, but I remain frozen at the screen. My hands are trembling, and I realize I’m gripping the wood hard enough to leave marks on my palms.
This is it, then. This is to be my fate. Married to Jaffar, bound to that creature with his cold eyes and colder smile. Managed. Softened. Broken.
Something inside me cracks—not breaks, but transforms. The docile princess who has spent her life behind screens and veils dissolves like morning mist, and in her place rises something fierce and desperate. If I am to be caged forever, sold like a mare at market to a man who speaks of me as if I were property to be acquired, then I will have one taste of freedom first. One stolen moment of life before the bars close forever.
The sun is setting, painting the sky in shades of amber and crimson. In an hour, it will be dark. The evening prayers will sound from the mosques, and the palace will turn its attention to the evening meal. The guards will change their watch, and in that brief window of transition...
I move quickly, my heart pounding. From the depths of my wardrobes, I pull out a set of clothes I have kept hidden for years—the simple cotton dress and head covering of a merchant’s daughter, obtained through careful bribes to a sympathetic servant long since dismissed. They are plain and coarse against my skin, so different from the silks I’m accustomed to. I hide my jewels, scrub the kohl from my eyes, and pin my hair in a simple style.
When I look in the mirror, I barely recognize myself. Good.
The tower has a servants’ stair, narrow and winding, used by the slaves who bring my meals and empty my chamber pots. I have watched their comings and goings for years, noting the patterns, the timing. I know that at this hour, they will be preparing the Sultan’s dinner, too busy to notice one more figure descending the shadowed stairs.
My heart hammers against my ribs as I slip from my chamber. Every step feels like thunder, every breath too loud. But the corridor is empty, the guards stationed at the main entrance rather than this humble back passage. I move like a wraith, like a dream, down and down and down until I reach the servants’ entrance.
A slave girl is there, carrying a basket of bread. She glances at me, her eyes sliding past without interest. I am no one—just another servant on an errand. The realization is intoxicating.
And then I am through the gate, into the streets of Basra, and the world explodes around me.
Oh, gods above and below—I was not prepared for this.
The marketplace assaults my senses with the force of a sandstorm. Colors riot everywhere I look—bolts of crimson silk and azure cotton, pyramids of golden spices and mounds of purple dates. The air is thick with a thousand scents: roasting meat and fresh bread, cinnamon and cardamom, jasmine oil and leather and the salt-sweet smell of the sea. Voices rise and fall in a symphony of haggling and laughter, curses and songs. Children dart between the stalls like quicksilver fish. A monkey chatters from a merchant’s shoulder. Someone is playing a reed flute, the notes dancing above the crowd.
I stand paralyzed, overwhelmed, my senses drowning in sensation. From my tower, the city was a distant song. Here, I am in the heart of the music, and it is almost too much to bear.
“Watch yourself!” A woman elbows past me, barely sparing me a glance. The casual contact, the complete lack of reverence—it’s shocking and wonderful in equal measure.
I begin to walk, uncertain of my destination but drawn forward by pure need. I want to touch everything, taste everything, hear everything. At a fruit stall, I pause to admire the mangoes, their skins blushing red and gold. The merchant sees me looking and grins.
“Finest in Basra! Sweet as honey, juice like nectar. Only three dinars for the lot.”
Three dinars. I have no money. I’ve never needed money. I smile apologetically and move on, but even this small interaction thrills me. He spoke to me—to me—as if I were normal. As if I were real.
I wander deeper into the maze of stalls and shops, drunk on freedom. A storyteller has gathered a crowd, his arms sweeping dramatically as he recounts the tale of Sinbad’s voyage. I pause to listen, pressing close to hear. A woman beside me is nursing a baby, its tiny fingers curled in her headscarf. Somewhere nearby, someone is frying fish, and the smell makes my mouth water.
This. This is life. This messy, chaotic, beautiful tapestry of humanity. And I have been shut away from it, preserved like a jewel in cotton, protected from every experience that might make me truly alive.
I am so lost in the wonder of it all that I don’t see him until we collide.
“Pardon me—” he begins, his hands steadying me by my elbows.
And then our eyes meet, and the world stops.
He is handsome—devastatingly so, with dark eyes that flash with intelligence and humor, strong features, and a smile that could melt stone. But it is not his beauty that steals my breath. It is the way he looks at me.
Really looks. Not at my face, not at my form, but into me. Through me. As if he can see the person I have kept hidden beneath layers of silk and expectation.
“Are you hurt?” he asks, and his voice is warm, genuine concern coloring the words.
“I—no. No, I’m perfectly well.” My own voice sounds strange to my ears, breathless and eager. “I apologize. I wasn’t watching where I was going.”
“An easy mistake in this madness.” He gestures at the swirling crowd around us, but his eyes never leave my face. “You seem... lost. Are you new to Basra?”
I should say yes. I should play the part of the merchant’s daughter, new to the city. But something in his gaze makes me want to be honest, to give him at least one truth.
“I’m not new to Basra,” I say softly. “But I’m new to this.”
He tilts his head, puzzled and intrigued. “To the marketplace?”
“To freedom.”
The word hangs between us, heavy with meaning. His expression shifts, sharpens. I see his mind working behind those intelligent eyes, piecing together clues I hadn’t meant to give. But he doesn’t press. Instead, he smiles—a real smile, boyish and conspiratorial.
“Then you’ve come to the right place. There’s no freedom quite like getting lost in a Basra marketplace.” He offers me his arm with exaggerated formality. “Perhaps you’d allow me to be your guide? I know all the best stalls. The silk merchant who tells the dirtiest jokes, the spice seller who reads fortunes in cardamom seeds, the baker whose honey cakes could make a dead man weep with joy.”
I know I should refuse. Every moment I linger here increases the chance that my absence will be discovered. But when will I have another chance? When will I ever again feel this flutter in my chest, this electric awareness of another soul recognizing mine?
“I would like that,” I hear myself say, and take his arm.
His name is Ahmad, he tells me as we walk. He speaks with the confidence of nobility, though his clothes are fine but not ostentatious. There’s something in the way he carries himself—a natural authority that suggests he’s accustomed to being obeyed. Yet he treats me as an equal, asking my opinions on the wares we examine, laughing at my observations, genuinely interested in my thoughts.
We stop at the silk merchant’s stall, and Ahmad was right—the old man’s stories would make a sailor blush. We sample honey cakes that are indeed transcendent. We watch a puppet show that has us both laughing like children. And through it all, I am intensely, vibrantly alive in a way I have never been before.
“You have the most extraordinary eyes,” Ahmad says at one point, and I freeze, waiting for the poetry, the cataloguing, the reduction of me to my parts. But he continues: “They’re so full of wonder. As if you’re seeing the world for the first time.”
“Perhaps I am,” I whisper.
He looks at me then with such understanding that my throat tightens. “Sometimes,” he says quietly, “the walls that imprison us are invisible. But they’re no less real for that.”
I want to tell him everything. I want to pour out my story, my fears, my desperate, caged heart. But before I can speak, I hear the sound that turns my blood to ice.
“There! By the silk merchant!”
Guards. My father’s guards, their distinctive red and gold uniforms cutting through the crowd like knives through water.
Ahmad’s hand tightens on my arm. “Friends of yours?”
“No. Yes. I—I have to go.”
“Wait—” But I’m already pulling away, my brief taste of paradise crumbling to ash. The guards are pushing through the crowd, their faces grim. There will be consequences for this, I know. Severe consequences.
Ahmad catches my hand, just for a moment. “I don’t even know your name.”
The guards are almost upon us. In seconds, they will see, will know, will drag me back to my cage. But I hold his gaze for one heartbeat more.
“I’m nobody,” I tell him. “A ghost. A dream.”
“Dreams have a way of coming true,” he says softly.
Then the guards are there, surrounding me, their hands rough on my arms. They apologize to Ahmad for the disturbance—”a runaway servant, sir, nothing to concern yourself with”—and begin marching me away. I don’t resist. There’s no point.
But I look back.
Ahmad stands in the center of the marketplace, watching me go, and I memorize everything about him—the way the lamplight catches in his hair, the set of his shoulders, the intensity of his gaze. He raises one hand, not in farewell but in promise.
And then the crowd swallows him, and he’s gone.
The journey back to the palace passes in a blur of shame and defiant pride. The guards say nothing, their silence more damning than any words. Leyla meets me at my chamber door, her face pale with fear.
“Princess, what have you done?”
“I’ve lived,” I tell her. “For one hour, I lived.”
She helps me change, removing the common clothes and replacing them with silk. She brushes out my hair, reapplies my kohl. In the mirror, the Princess reappears—perfect, polished, and utterly unreal.
But something has changed. Behind my eyes, there’s a fire that wasn’t there before. I have tasted freedom, tasted genuine human connection. I have been seen—truly seen—by someone who looked past the beauty to the person beneath.
I am still in my ruby cage. But now I know what lies beyond the bars.
And I will not forget.
As I settle onto my cushions to await whatever punishment my father decrees, I touch my lips and smile. Let them lock me away. Let them sell me to Jaffar. Let them do their worst.
They’re too late.
I am already free.