Someone kindly pointed out that it's been two years since my last update! Well here it is. The final one! I hope everybody likes the ending.

Thank you all who have reviewed. I am indebted!

I am the second wife. I live in the lap of the luxury with many servants around me, obeying my every whim. I have everything that I need and should want for nothing.

I don't.

Three years ago Prince Dastan married me in political manoeuvre to secure my house's support and to save me from an arranged marriage to a disgusting man. A large man with a purple face and chubby, wandering hands. My marriage to Dastan was a welcome alternative which I took without question. For the first few months I was happy. Happier than I had ever been. I found a friend with the first wife, Tamina and with Bis. I found conversation amongst Dastan's men. Most of all I found acceptance as a more... 'forward' thinking woman of Persia in my husband Dastan. He taught me to fight. He taught me to speak aloud my thoughts without fear of an angered reaction. I could follow the dreams I had only ever told my brothers as a little child who knew nothing of the world.

Yet for all of this I grew unhappy.

Only some of my dreams were realised. The full extent could never be had. The love of a husband was just beyond my reach. Nothing was ever fully tangible. Like it was all on the tip of my tongue but the taste couldn't be recalled. Finally though, two years later, one dream was finally realised. I was to travel with my Prince Dastan. It had been discussed but the opportunity never arose until then. It changed everything.

"Here it is Princess." He had said to me upon our arrival in Persia's fair capital and the royal seat. This is where King Sharaman spends his times when not visiting his sons in their various strongholds. I very much enjoy King Sharaman's company. When I am not around Dastan he enlivens the banquets. We sometimes walk the libraries of Alamut together when he visits us and discuss literature at length. I hoped that would hold true here. I barely had a chance to see the great Babylon before we were taken into the carriage. I wasn't allowed to ride on horseback. This was my concession to Dastan. If I were to travel with him I must travel as safely as he would allow it.

Inside the palace was beautiful. We were to spend three weeks here to give Tamina time. Tamina had a child. A beautiful one year old girl who was to begin her training in the religion of Alamut soon. I was not allowed to know what this would entail but Dastan knew. He understood although he did not like being away from his first child. We were welcomed with open arms and there was a feast held in our honour that night. It was this first night in Babylon where Dastan took me aside and announced that if I still wanted a child it could be mine. Having encountered many wives of Persia whose only option was to bear children I felt, and still feel, blessed.

That night was the first night Dastan touched me as a man would his wife. It would not be the last. I could not ask for someone better than Dastan. I sometimes imagine what my first night with my other suitor would have been like. My fat, miserable, selfish suitor. And I smile because it never happened. We were together every night after that, making up for lost time. By the end of those three weeks I was with child.

But before then Dastan gave me a tour of the slums in which he used to live before King Sharaman saved his life and raised him as his own. There was a wistful air about him and a certain nostalgia. What I saw, however, made me weep. It made me question all of my previous unhappiness. I saw life as I had never seen it before. All of the raggedy children, the bone-thin people and the derelict living spaces. My entire life I had been sheltered from the world. I had known of poverty but I had never seen it, felt it, known it. Dastan was excited to run the rooftops, reliving his youth. I wasn't able to share in his joy although it was certainly interesting to run somewhere new. Alamut was no longer mystery as Babylon was.

It was not only the slums that made me question my previous unhappiness. The politics of Babylon were so different from Alamut and my old life. In my old life I wasn't privy to the politics of men, just a pawn in their plans, and with Dastan and Tamina I had no interest. But politics was everywhere in Babylon. It was dangerous and it was brutal. How King Sharaman could handle all of the poison I will never know. By the end of the three weeks, despite the beauty of the city, the libraries, the wonders, I was ready to return. My thirst for travelling had not been quenched as I knew there were other places to see. Dastan was most pleased by this.

He loves me. I know this now. It is in everything he does. Naturally he does not love me like he loves Tamina, with passion like a great fire. But he does love me and in a way that I can hold onto. In the way he touched me, in the way he looked after me and in very much the way he reacted to my being with child. There had been a great excitement, a very many questions on my certainty and very much excitement amongst the men.

My experiences in Babylon had changed how I felt about Alamut. I had never known poverty, hunger or pain. For once in my life I was grateful. How long this will last I do not know but there are three things I know with certainty.

I am Princess Farah. I am the wife of the Lion of Persia. I am the mother of his son.