challenge this. They believe …’
‘Emir!’ That whooshing sound was back in her ears, ‘Emir, wait!’ Anguished eyes looked up to him. ‘I did enjoy today, every moment of it, and if I seemed distracted at times …’ Amy took a deep breath. ‘I didn’t faint from nerves.’ She still couldn’t take the news in, had been reeling from it all day. ‘Well, maybe a bit. But when the palace doctor examined me …’ She’d never thought she’d hear herself say these words. ‘I’m pregnant, Emir.’ Amy was crying now, and not just a little bit. ‘I had him retake the test and he is certain—it would seem that first night …’
‘But you said it was impossible.’ It was Emir who didn’t understand.
‘There was always a slim chance, apparently,’ Amy explained. ‘I just didn’t hear that and neither did my fiancé.And I never went back to the doctor to properly discuss things.’
Emir held her as she cried. The news was as shocking as it was happy, and it took a moment for it to sink in.
‘The rules might not need to change. I might have a son,’ Amy said.
And he held the bride whom he loved, come what may, and he loved her all over again.
‘Soon we will be able to find out what I’m having.’
‘There is no need to find out,’ Emir said. ‘For whatever we are given we will love. The rules will change.’ Emir’s voice was firm. ‘Clemira is a born leader, that much I know, and Nakia will be a wonderful support for her. It is right she be second in line.’
‘But the predictions!’
‘Are just that,’ Emir said, and he looked to the woman who had healed his black and tortured heart, the woman who had swept into his office and challenged his way of thinking, and he could not believe what he had. His instinct was to kiss her, to hold her and soothe her fears, and then he paused for just a moment as the news truly started to hit him. And he told her why the predictions were surely wrong. ‘They did not factor in that a king might fall in love.’
EPILOGUE
‘HE is beautiful,’ Emir said.
Amy could not stop looking at her newborn son—could scarcely believe that she was holding her own baby in her arms. Just feeling him there, she knew all the hurts of the past were forgotten, the pain of the last twenty-four hours simply deleted as she looked down into his dark eyes.
‘Are you sure he’s mine?’ Amy teased, because he was completely his father’s son. She looked up to Emir and he kissed her gently, and she was bathed in a happiness made richer because he loved her and his daughters, with or without the gift of a son.
He took the baby in his arms and held him for a long moment, and Amy could see the pride and also the pain on his strong, proud features, for he was surely remembering the bittersweet time when he’d last held a tiny infant.
‘I don’t want to miss a moment of his life,’ Emir said. ‘I missed way too much of the twins’ first year.’ He closed his eyes in regret.
‘Emir, there was a reason.’ She understood that now.
‘Every time I saw them, every time I held them, all I wanted was to do what was best for them, and yet I had the responsibility to put the future of my country first.’
‘It must have been agony.’
‘I was made better knowing they were looked after by you. When you left, when it was Fatima, when the ways of old were being adhered to, I knew I could not rule a country that rendered my daughters worthless. It worked in the past, but not now,’ Emir explained. ‘Yet it was a decision that required distance.’
‘It did,’ Amy agreed. ‘I wish you could have spoken with me …’ Her voice trailed off, because Emir was right. It was a decision that could only have been reached alone. ‘It’s all worked out.’ She looked at her sleeping baby. ‘The rules don’t even have to change.’
‘They do,’ Emir said. ‘For I never want my son to have to make a choice like the one I was forced to make. The predictors were wrong: the two countries are better separated. I am glad I have a son for many reasons, but it will prove once and for all that we are doing this because it is right rather than necessary. The people will love him as