ZANDIK/DOTTORE

How magnificent an empire could be, and how beautiful its bloom? The Ottoman Empire, powerful and sharp as a blade, concealed within itself harems filled with women, vast tables covered in lavish golden dishes, and the sweetest halva served in abundance. What more could be said of the Sultan himself, mighty, carrying an entire empire upon his shoulders and within his hands, watching it grow and flourish like a jasmine blossom? And what could be said of his beautiful children, born to concubines, who were already beginning to put knives behind one another’s backs, crawling closer and closer to the Sultan and to the possibility of placing their own sons nearer to the throne of their father? Every smile at court could hide a threat, every whispered compliment could carry the weight of a death sentence, and every banquet could conceal a cup of poison.

Yet somehow, all of it seemed to pass you by like a river following its own current. You watched the opposite bank, against the flow, while everyone around you busied themselves with deciding how best to marry their children off, whether to foreigners, powerful viziers, or influential families, so that their bloodline might remain afloat rather than be cast out of the palace alongside their husbands and wives. And God forbid you should ever think of some commoner, or worse, fall in love with someone beneath your station. It would be easier to have your head severed from your shoulders than to convince your parents and the rest of the palace to accept such a disgrace. A royal child could survive a hundred enemies at court, but a scandalous love was another matter entirely. Yet damn it all, there was one temptation that seemed far more dangerous than any blade.

Especially when a young man wandered through the palace who seemed to fit none of the rules of propriety.

The throne did not interest you. Neither did the endless games for succession, the whispered alliances, the poisonings of brothers and sisters, or the bloodshed required to satisfy the throne’s insatiable hunger. To survive within the imperial family sometimes felt like walking through the nine circles of Hell, each one demanding another sacrifice, another betrayal, another name erased from the family tree. No, none of that was for you. In this vast and blood-soaked empire, your attention was captured by something far more dangerous, a young man with crimson-red eyes and an oddly beautiful shade of pale blue hair, crowned with a name almost as unusual as his appearance. And, more importantly, with a mind sharp enough to make even the most experienced palace physicians pause.

You found yourself interested in that boy more than you should have been.

He was, after all, merely a young man from an ordinary family, sent to the palace to study beneath the court physician. He had no noble blood, no influential relatives, no servants following behind him, and certainly no place among the people who sat closest to the Sultan. He simply walked the palace corridors carrying books beneath his arm, learning everything he could, devouring knowledge as though it were something he could never have enough of. Some of the palace physicians had already begun to notice his potential. He was around your age, yet while others his age dreamed of titles, marriages, wealth, or influence, Zandik preferred shadows, lowered eyes, and books filled with knowledge most people would never even attempt to understand.

So why not help him acquire more?

At first, whenever you approached him yourself, the young man seemed distinctly uncomfortable. He accepted the books from your hands with the careful hesitation of someone who knew perfectly well that accepting too much kindness from one of the Sultan’s children could be dangerous. His fingers would close around the covers cautiously, his crimson eyes rarely lifting toward your face for more than a second, as though he were already calculating how likely it was that someone would see this interaction and decide that he had overstepped his station. He never asked for anything. He never complained. He simply accepted the books and old scrolls you offered with a quiet nod, murmuring his thanks before retreating back into the shadows.

Then, just as carefully, he would return them.

You began sending him to expensive tutors and arranging lessons that would otherwise have been far beyond the reach of someone of his station. You gave him rare instruments and materials for his experiments, some of which were so advanced that even the imperial physicians struggled to understand what exactly he was attempting. Whenever something unusual caught your attention, you found a way to place it in his hands. A foreign manuscript. An old medical treatise. A collection of anatomical illustrations brought from another land. Anything that might satisfy that insatiable curiosity of his.

And slowly, almost imperceptibly, something changed.

Zandik began to look up.

At first it was only for a moment. His crimson eyes would rise from the page and settle upon you before quickly returning to whatever he had been reading. Then those glances became longer. He became less tense in your presence, less inclined to immediately step away whenever you entered the room. With you, he had acquired something far more valuable than money or status: access. Access to knowledge that had never been placed upon the shelves of the ordinary palace library. Foreign books written in languages he had never been permitted to study. Medical texts far beyond the education of the palace physicians. Ancient manuscripts. Restricted archives. Records that were never meant to leave the hands of the imperial scholars.

And because you were the Sultan’s child, doors opened for you that would remain permanently locked to him.

Through you, Zandik gained access to all of it.

He could spend entire hours inside the archives, surrounded by dusty manuscripts and the scent of old parchment, copying passages into his notebooks by candlelight until the wax had nearly melted away. He became so absorbed in his studies that servants occasionally had to remind him that the palace had already fallen silent for the night. Meanwhile, everyone around you noticed.

Your relatives noticed.

Your brothers and sisters noticed.

The servants noticed.

The court physicians certainly noticed.

Everyone saw how often you found reasons to circle back toward the young assistant, how much time and effort you poured into him, how easily you managed to find some new book, instrument, lesson, or privilege to place within his reach. And everyone noticed the stolen glances you thought nobody saw.

But palace walls had ears.

The walls of the harem had even more.

Every servant carried a story. Every maid had a pair of eyes. Every whispered conversation could travel from one end of the palace to the other before the sun had even set. In a place where the smallest rumor could become a weapon, your interest in a young assistant to the court physician was hardly something that could remain a secret forever.

Still, you continued.

And on one particular evening, when the weight of the palace became almost unbearable, you decided to escape into the archives for a little while. Even your own chambers had begun to feel suffocating beneath the pressure of the court, the endless expectations, the carefully measured smiles, and the invisible game everyone seemed to be playing around you. The archive was quiet. It was one of the few places where nobody expected you to smile, marry, choose an alliance, or think about succession.

You pushed the heavy doors open and stepped inside.

The faint scent of parchment and dust immediately surrounded you. Several candles burned along the tables, their flames trembling gently in the evening air. And there he was.

Zandik.

He sat alone at one of the tables, completely absorbed in a book, one hand holding the page open while the other moved steadily across a smaller notebook. His pale blue hair caught the warm candlelight, making it look almost silver at the edges, while his crimson eyes remained fixed upon the lines he was copying. He did not seem to notice you at first.

Then the door clicked shut behind you. His hand stopped.

Zandik slowly turned his head toward the sound.

The instant he realized who had entered, he closed his notebook, rose from his chair, and bowed respectfully.

“Your Highness,” he said, his voice calm and almost completely devoid of emotion. “How may I… assist you? You appear troubled.”

He straightened, remaining beside the chair rather than sitting again. His crimson gaze traveled over you from head to toe with quiet precision, studying your posture, your expression, even the smallest details of your appearance as though you were some peculiar phenomenon he had yet to understand.

There was no fear in his eyes this time.

Only analysis.

And perhaps something else that neither of you had yet dared to name.

Because everyone in the palace knew how you seemed to orbit around him. Everyone had noticed the books, the lessons, the privileges, the endless excuses to appear wherever the young assistant happened to be. They had noticed the way your eyes lingered whenever you thought nobody was watching. And in the Ottoman court, nothing remained unseen for long.

Not affection. Not curiosity. And certainly not desire. The palace had ears... The harem had eyes.

And sooner or later, even the walls would begin to whisper his name alongside yours.