At first she thought the lack of sunlight would drive her mad. He reminded her that she no longer needed it. She could see just as clearly in the dark, now her natural element.
She did not sleep. Could not sleep, without the aid of his magic. He obliged her with nightly spells, and potions when he was away. She kept time with hourglasses that marked days and hours. She always awoke precisely after eight hours, completely alert, with no trace of dreams.
Food was no longer a necessity either, though she still forced herself to eat and drink. She would not become a ghost or like one of his undead servants. He saw her attempts to cling to her humanity and only smiled, studying her as one would a rare species.
Outside of the letters she received from Agrabah, he was her only company. She hated him, the indifference and amusement with which he treated the whole situation. She hated that she came to depend on his presence, waiting for the telltale signs of smoke when he would appear from somewhere else in the Citadel or the surrounding deserts, where there was sunlight and fresh air and reminders of life. She hated that she asked for no pity and he gave her none. Sometimes he was gone for days at a time and she was alone only with the books he had left her, wandering restlessly between the few rooms she could access and memorizing the patterns of the stones. Once he offered to summon a spirit for companionship. She was desperate enough to consider it, until she realized all the spirits he could control were of the netherworld or even darker places. He merely responded that she should not be so prejudiced against her own kind.
One day she asked him how she might die, to escape this half-life of torment. His smile faltered then. Full death would mean returning to the place where she had eaten the fruit, and that would become her new prison. He guessed that she would still prefer the Citadel and his dreary company over that. The horizon of her thought elongated into the future, to the years and years she had left to live here, not aging for half of each year, waiting for all her loved ones to die before her, only to face eternal separation from them in the end anyway. What difference did it make whether she died now or later?
"There is a chance things will change," he said, the first time he had ever admitted uncertainty in his abilities. There was a faint light of challenge in his eyes as he thought over the possibilities and the costs. She wondered again if this were all a game to him.
x.x.x
The worst day in those first six months was when dignitaries from Agrabah visited for the first time, the start of negotiations for settlements in the Land of the Black Sand.
He mentioned it casually over breakfast, which he more often than not took with her. She stood and demanded that she be allowed to see them, knocking over her plate and glass. He narrowed his eyes at her tone, the first sign of irritation he had shown since they had begun this arrangement.
"How many times must I tell you? You can have no contact with anyone from the living world."
"I just want to see them!" she cried. "There must be a way! Just let me talk to them, or at least see their faces somehow."
"Impossible," he said, and stood to leave. She took his arm and held firm.
"No. It can't be impossible, the way you're always going on about your powers. There is a way for me to see them, even to be normal again, and you're just not telling me." She was shaking, but her grip tightened when he tried to pull away. "This is your revenge, isn't it? This is the best kind of revenge for you. To separate me from Aladdin and my kingdom, to have us all beg you for mercy while you refuse to grant it!"
He pushed her away forcefully, regarding her with disdain. "I see that you're deaf to reason at the moment. Perhaps I've been too accommodating. Some time alone might remind you of your place."
He left with a curt spell and she screamed at the empty room until her voice broke. The flood of silence afterward was almost too much for her to bear. She climbed atop the table, pressing her ear to the ceiling in a futile attempt to hear any trace of sound from the rooms above, if her people were even in the Citadel. There was nothing, not even the sound of rats. Nothing lived here. Nothing moved without his consent.
She slumped down by the bed she did not need, an ordinary object she had taken for granted all her life, now wholly unnatural and a sickening reminder of the lies she clung to.
She wrote more in the next few days of isolation than she had in an entire month.
x.x.x
She kept those letters hidden, crossed out Aladdin and her father's names and addressed them to no one.
x.x.x
She lost count of the days she was alone. But she would catch the occasional mark of his presence. New books on the shelf, longer ones this time, histories of magic and ancient kingdoms renowned for their power and divine lineages. Sometimes she would walk into a room to find food on the table. She always left it untouched, and sometime later it would disappear.
The silence became a part of her. She read the new books to fill most of her time. Pored over every page that had something to do with death, the underworld, the magic he practiced. She understood little of it at first, but was determined to learn. Her goal of understanding the truth was an anchor. She was aware that he might have placed these books here precisely to convince her that he was right and nothing could be done after all. But she also knew not to overestimate his regard for her, that he would not spend so much time and energy fabricating lies in ancient tomes.
She found herself returning to an old foreign myth time and again. A man who had ventured into the underworld to retrieve his wife, and had come a hairsbreadth from succeeding when he turned back out of doubt and lost her forever. As a child she had merely thought it a tragic love story. Now she saw it as a warning against distrusting Death, the eventual master of all things.
She left a letter for him on the table one day, and went to lie down, eyes closed and sleepless. When she opened them again, he stood casually leaning against the wall opposite her.
"You have a week remaining. As far as I am aware, your long-delayed wedding is set to begin soon after your return to Agrabah." A faint smile. "I've sent a small present ahead of you."
Hope surged in her chest and she was on her feet, breathing hard as if she needed air. "A week? Is Aladdin coming for me?"
"No need for the waste of old-fashioned travel," he said, amused at her excited countenance. "As soon as the time comes, I'll send you directly to the palace."
One week until she could escape this prison. Six months had seemed an eternity. She only hoped that the next six months would be longer.
