moment I knew of your imprisonment, you were released.”
She blinked again. Tarek wondered if he was watching her think. And sure enough, her gaze sharpened even further in the next moment. “Wait. My imprisonment is your crisis? Not my presence. But the actual fact that I’ve been locked away for eight months.”
There were so many things he could have said to that. He entertained them all, then dismissed them, one by one.
“Yes.”
Anya’s lips quirked. “What level of crisis are we talking about here?”
“I have not had time to study it in any detail, I am afraid. As I was more focused on removing you from the dungeon as quickly as possible.”
“Your mercy knows no bounds, I’m sure.”
These were extraordinary circumstances and she was the victim in this, so Tarek ignored the insolent tone. Though it caused him physical pain to do so.
Or perhaps you only wish for an excuse to touch her, something insidious and too warm within him whispered.
“My understanding is that your imprisonment is considered a humanitarian crisis in many Western countries. And as our papers have only recently begun discussing the outside world again, after this long year of unrest, it has gone on far longer than it should have.”
Anya nodded. “And I’m not a thoughtless tourist smuggling in drugs in a stranger’s teddy bear, am I? That can’t look good for you.”
Tarek unclenched his jaw. “As a token of my embarrassment and a gesture of goodwill, I will throw a dinner this very night. We will invite your ambassador. You can assure him, in your own words, that you are safe and well.”
That little smirk of hers deepened. “And what if I’m neither safe nor well?”
Tarek wanted to argue. She had eaten, she was sparring with him—him—and a glance at her cell had told him that she had not been suffering unduly while in custody. There were far greater ills. As a doctor, she should know that.
But he thought better of saying such things. What did he know about Americans? Perhaps the harm she’d spoken of was real enough. She could not possibly have been raised as hardy as the local women. Equal to sandstorms and blazing heat alike, all while keeping themselves looking soft and yielding.
It was only kind to make allowances for her upbringing.
“Then you may tell the ambassador of your suffering,” he said instead of what he wanted to say. Magnanimously, he thought. “You may tell him whatever you wish.”
“You will have to forgive me,” Anya said, sounding almost careful. It was a marked contrast to how she’d spoken to him before, with such familiarity. “But I can’t quite wrap my head around this. I expect to be seized again at any moment and dragged back to the dungeon. I certainly can’t quite believe that the King of Alzalam is perfectly happy to give me carte blanche to tell any story I like to an ambassador. Or to anyone else.”
Tarek made his decision then and there. The plan that was forming in his head was outrageous. Absurd on too many levels to count. But the more it settled in him, the more he liked it.
It was simple, really. Elegant.
And while bracing honesty was not something he had ever imagined would factor into his usual relationships with women, such as his betrothal, this woman was different. If she wasn’t, she would not have ended up in his dungeon. She would certainly not have been here, telling him to his face that she doubted what he said to her. His word, which was law.
He ought to have been outraged. Instead, he accepted that he had to treat his doctor...differently.
It wouldn’t be the first time in this long and difficult year that he’d had to change strategy on the fly. To set aside old plans and come up with new ones, then implement them immediately. Tarek liked to think he’d developed a talent for it.
The kingdom was ancient. Yet the King could not be similarly made of stone, or he would be the first to crumble. His father had taught him that, his mother had tried to warn him, but Tarek had lived it.
“Of course I wish that I could control what it is you might say about your time here,” he told her, and watched the shock of that hit her, making her fall back in her seat. “I have no wish to be thought a monster, and I would love nothing more than to present your emancipation...carefully and in a way that brings, if