"You are welcome, princess." Amina said, wiping away Kara's tears, and when she was done with the cloth she returned it to its place. She soon moved to another chair and set it across from Kara, and sat facing the young woman.<br/><br/>"Perhaps, to an outsider, Janna may have always seemed this way. But I tell you truthfully that it was once a better place. There was life in Janna, and the people had better lives. A desert is not devoid of life, and Janna was no different. There were many different living things - plants and animals that drew sustenance from the land, which was enriched by the Eternal Flame. Rains were infrequent but enough, and there were many oases where water rose from underground lakes. There were rose gardens in this palace, once." Amina said to Kara. She sat with her hands folded in her lap. "And many other plants besides. There used to be many orchards filled with palm trees. I remember taking your father to them and watching him play among them for hours."<br/><br/>She let out a nostalgic sigh and looked at Kara. "Your father was a better ruler than Kaseem. No man is wholly good or evil, but your father had more good in him than evil. I know this in my heart. He was an idealist, and that blinded him to faults in other men. Kaseem wanted to repeal isolationist policies that his father put in place, but he did not account for how deeply seated fear of outsiders and the other realms was in some of the other nobles. And he did not see how much Kaseem hungered for power. Kaseem managed to turn enough of the nobility against Jamal to cause a civil war, and in fighting that war, Jamal died. There are several accounts that detail Jamal's death, but I do not know which is true and which are false. I never saw his body - I do not think his remains were given proper funeral rites." Amina said bitterly.<br/><br/>Amina glanced at the ring on Kara's finger, and she gave the simple gold band a sad expression. "Jamal could not understand, even with the past strife between djinn and vampire, why his mate was so divisive among his followers, and he could not conceive of how deeply some of the hardliners hated her. He was not alive when the djinn and vampires went to war, but there were those who were still alive from those days in power, particularly in Janna's military. Kaseem played to those old hatreds to gain support from several generals, but in the end, Kaseem betrayed them too. He took their heads and the palace whispers that Kaseem deals regularly with outsiders in private while publicly denouncing outsiders."<br/><br/>Amina reached over and gripped Kara's hand, gently turning it to see the ring from different angles. "They killed the male who gave you this, didn't they? Did he fight bravely when they told him he would not be permitted to make the journey to Janna?"