Black Keys (The Colorblind Trilogy #1) - Rose B. Mashal Page 0,47
knowledge, and to make her suffer with said knowledge, too. But…I wasn’t cold-hearted.
It was such torture.
To have her on her knees. In front of me. All tears. All begging. All pain. It was such torture.
I hated it.
My own tears fell as I looked away from her kneeling-begging form. I pressed on my lips hard and then harder to hold in the words I wanted to tell her, but my heart wasn’t letting me do it.
“Please, Marie, please,” Janna begged. “I can’t take anymore, I can’t stand you hating me too. I have no one left,” she cried.
It broke my heart.
“I’ll do anything, please,” she sobbed. “Just, please, forgive me. I didn’t know. I swear to God, I didn’t know.”
I couldn’t take it anymore.
“I forgive you,” I whispered with a shaking voice.
“It’s just too much to take in,” Janna said, wiping tears. “I still can’t believe it.”
“Same here,” I sighed, resting my back on the arm chair.
After I’d told her that I forgave her, she asked if we could talk for a few minutes. Even if she didn’t beg with words for that, she did beg with her eyes–so much, at that. And I just couldn’t say no to her; she looked miserable enough.
So, we ended up sitting in the same spot where we’d met the Queen Mother a few hours ago. The prince also had closed the walls once again, giving us more privacy or whatever, while he stayed on the other side.
I wondered what he was doing.
My mind kept drifting back to the minutes I’d spent in his arms and how his embrace had felt. I kept thinking of all of the thoughts that roamed through my head then, the feelings that filled my heart and…the sensations caused by touching his body, that way.
I had no idea what had gotten me to do such a thing, to need such a thing, to feel such a thing. It was really strange, and I was so afraid of thinking about it, only because I already knew what my mind would come up with eventually as an explanation for my actions. It was scary. And not right. Wrong.
“It makes me wonder if anything he ever told me was true,” Janna sniffed, pulling me away from my thoughts. “I mean, did he really love me at all? Or was it all for who I was? But then again–he didn’t know about my family until after we found out about the pregnancy.” She touched her stomach. “It can’t be true that he played me that much, could it?”
I didn’t reply to her. I couldn’t. I didn’t know the answer, for I was a lot like her, feeling the same. I didn’t know him anymore, didn’t know what was real and what was a lie. I didn’t know how to find out if it was just a game of his, another way to deceive and betray, or just to fix mistakes and right wrongs.
“I can’t help but think that even his converting was fake. God, Marie. That would end me!” she wailed.
I bit my bottom lip and fought tears, shaking my head to shrug them away. Here she was, begging with all of her might for his change of religion to be sincere, honest; while on the other hand, I wished with everything in me for it to be just another lie of his.
I still hoped for anything. I still hoped at least for him to remain Christian–if he was still Christian, that is.
“Why did he have to convert to Islam, anyway?” I asked.
“We’re not allowed to marry non-Muslims,” she replied.
“Yeah, I heard,” I told her. “I mean, why didn’t I have to change my religion to be able to marry a Muslim?” I was still Christian and would forever be one: the cross on my chest told everyone here that. The queen knew that, so I didn’t think that my brother had lied about it. I wondered why it was different when a Muslim woman married a Christian, than a Christian woman marrying a Muslim?
Janna drew in a long breath and let it out in a heavy sigh, then she spoke. “It’s pretty complicated, I don’t know how to explain it,” she started. “I think it’s safe to say that the main reason is that the children follow their father’s religion. Another reason is that in Islam we do believe in Christianity and Judaism. We believe that we all worship the same God, that the three holy books were sent from him, the one