become.
Because Tarek knew well the cost of forgetting himself.
Rafiq had been the only person alive Tarek had felt he could truly be himself with. They had been so close. Tarek had depended on him. And Rafiq had used that affection to stab Tarek in the back.
Literally.
“You cannot permit yourself the failings and petty feelings of common men,” his mother had told him time and time again. “In a king these are fatal flaws, Tarek. Remember that.”
He remembered her words too well.
What was he going to do?
CHAPTER NINE
THE DAY OF the wedding dawned at last.
Anya had been waiting for the sun to rise for hours, unable to sleep.
She had been ceremoniously escorted to her bedchamber the night before by Tarek’s sisters and aunts. It was tradition for the groom’s relatives to guard the bride and so they had, though the royal family’s version of “guarding” had included more laughter and abundant food. They had told Anya involved tales about Tarek as a child, omitting any mention of his treacherous brother. They had painted her pictures of what he’d been like as an adolescent, too aware of the weight he would one day carry.
All with a kind of easy, warm familiarity that Anya had never experienced before. She hardly knew what to call it.
It wasn’t until she’d gone and stretched out in her bed with only the moon for company that she realized it was...family. They were a family. More, they acted the way she had always imagined a family should. Teasing, laughing. Gestures of quiet support when more serious topics were addressed. The very fact they’d all gathered together to celebrate Anya when all they really knew about her was that she was Tarek’s choice of bride.
But they loved him, so that was all they needed.
Anya had stared out at the moon and accepted a hard truth. She had long told herself that she didn’t need the connections that other people took for granted. She had her chilly father, she’d told people when the subject came up, and that was more than enough family for her, thank you. She had friends, though she didn’t see them often enough.
But Tarek’s family wasn’t the Turner version of family. It was the version she realized now that she’d always imagined in her head—but had assured herself didn’t exist.
It left her something like shaken to discover that she was wrong.
More, it made her miss Tarek.
The solid weight of his stare. The sheer perfection of his body and the things he could do with it. The fire that burned so bright between them that she found she didn’t want to live without it, not even for a night.
She suspected she knew what words she could use to describe all the things she felt about the man she was marrying, and none of them were practical. None of them were appropriate press releases.
But they were right there on her tongue. Dangerously close to spilling out at the slightest provocation.
“Until tomorrow,” Tarek had murmured much earlier that night, out in the desert where they had taken part in rituals he told her his people had considered holy since the earth was young.
It had felt more than holy to Anya.
The sand and the sky. The stars.
The two of them in a circle of fire while the elders sang over them.
Anya sighed now, remembering the stark beauty all around them. The press of the songs and chants against her skin, winding all around their clasped hands.
“If I hadn’t ended up in your prison, I never would have known,” she’d whispered to Tarek. “How much beauty there is in the world. Particularly here.”
Particularly you, she’d thought, perilously close to letting those words she shouldn’t say spill out to join the rest of the night’s magic.
“Tomorrow, habibti,” he’d said, his dark eyes gleaming.
Out on her favorite chaise, Anya waited as the sun rose. The city below her shook itself to life in preparation. Songs filled the air, alive with the sweetness of the coming day. She pulled her throw tighter around her, breathing in the desert air mixed with the palace’s usual bakhoor, a smoky scent that would always be Tarek to her. She sighed as the first tendrils of light and color snuck across the sky while she watched. Yellows and oranges. A glorious purple.
As the sun climbed, the air warmed.
Anya did, too.
And the light danced all over her, reminding her that she was still free. That stone cells were a thing of the past. That what lay before her might