Chapter 29 · Untitled Chapter

The morning sun cut through the tall, arched windows of the grand majlis, laying sharp slats of gold across the deep crimson wool of the carpets. The air carried the biting clarity of cardamom and the dense, resinous weight of oud rising from the silver mabkhara set at the room’s center.

This was not an informal gathering of disgruntled kin. The senior arbiters of both Al-Otaibi and Al-Dosari sat arranged along the perimeter in heavy carved armchairs, their white thobes pristine, their dark bishts edged in stiff gold thread. These were the men whose words governed inheritance, boundary lines, and ancestral pacts.

My uncle sat three chairs down from the central dais, his jaw clenched, his knuckles resting pale against the polished cane across his knees.

I remained in my seat, draped in my black abaya, the tarha secure around my hair. I did not avert my gaze, nor did I shift beneath the scrutiny of the elders. My place was beside the low ebony table—not hidden in the antechamber, not banished to the peripheral corridor.