She was only a servant, and he was the most powerful man in the empire. That night, the sultan looked at her with eyes sharp enough to cut. He stepped so close she could feel his breath.
“No woman from the harem has ever been able to handle me,” he whispered. “Let’s see if you can.” Azra shivered.
What did “handle” mean? Other servants had run out in tears. One had thrown herself into the river. Another had lost her mind.
What happened behind the sultan’s closed doors? She was about to find out, and what she discovered changed everything. The sun had not yet risen over Istanbul, but death was already awake.
In the lower cells beneath Topkapi Palace, a woman lay on the cold floor. Her hands, once soft, were now raw from iron shackles. Her servant’s dress was torn, and her face was marked by the tracks of dried tears.
Her name was Azra, and by dawn she was supposed to die. Guards murmured on the other side of the bars. “They say she was with one of the soldiers,” one muttered.
“Inside the sultan’s palace. Foolish girl.” Azra said nothing. No one would have believed her anyway.
She closed her eyes and let memory carry her back, far back, to where it had all begun three months earlier. The slave market in Istanbul sweltered under the August sun. The heat was punishing, relentless. The air smelled of sweat, spice, and despair.
Azra stood on a wooden platform, the boards burning the soles of her bare feet. She was twenty years old, with black hair falling to her waist and honey-colored eyes fixed on nothing. She did not cry. She had no tears left.
A year earlier, her father had been a respected merchant who sold fine cloth, Persian silk, and gold brocade. Azra wore embroidered dresses and slept on soft sheets.
Six months earlier, her father had fallen ill. Doctors cost money. Debts piled up. Three months earlier, her father died, and the creditors came in like vultures.
“The daughter pays the father’s debts,” they said, and Azra was sold. Now she stood here in the market like livestock. “Young, healthy, untouched!” the trader shouted, showing her off like an animal.
“Perfect for service in any noble household!” Men looked at her with hungry eyes. Azra kept her chin up.
She would not give them the satisfaction of seeing her broken. Poverty had taken everything from her, but not her dignity. That was when the palace caravan arrived.
A heavyset eunuch in green silk stepped down from a gilded carriage. His name was Nasir, and he was responsible for purchasing servant girls for Sultan Selim. He moved past the other girls with a bored expression.
Too old, too thin, too frightened. That was what he thought until he reached Azra. Then he stopped.
She was not trembling. She was not begging. She looked him right in the eye with a calm he had never seen in a slave girl. “What is your name?” Nasir asked.
“Azra,” she answered. “Do you know where I’ll take you if I buy you?” he asked. “To Topkapi Palace, to serve the sultan.”
“And that doesn’t frighten you?” Azra almost smiled and shook her head. “A little,” she said.
“I’ve already lost everything I loved,” she said in a steady voice. “What else can fate take from me?” Nasir studied her for a long moment.
There was something about this girl, something different, something the sultan might find interesting. “I’ll take her,” he said. An hour later, Azra sat in a carriage headed for the most powerful palace in the world.
Through the curtain she watched the streets of Istanbul drift by like a dream. Mosque minarets pierced the blue sky. The Bosphorus flashed like molten silver in the sun. Merchants shouted, children ran, women in veils walked in groups.
It was beautiful, but it was still a gilded cage. “Listen carefully,” Nasir said from the seat across from her, his tone now serious. “There are rules in the palace.”
“Break them, and you die.” Azra nodded. “Never look the sultan in the eye”….
