walked through the palace halls, surrounded by Tarek’s sisters and aunts. It was as if her mother was holding fast to her hand all over again, her simple presence making Anya feel safe. Happy.
And absolutely certain that there was nothing wrong with her. No psychological damage from her time in jail. Just hope.
Anya knew, then, that every step she took was right and good, and better still, her mother was beside her for all of it.
She waited outside the great ballroom, open today to the even grander courtyard beyond, and she knew something else, too. As surely and as fully as if the words were printed deep into her own flesh. As if they were scars like Tarek’s, angry and red at first, then fading into silver with the passage of time.
But scars all the same.
Because her heart was pounding at her. Her stomach was fluttery. But she knew that none of that was panic.
She thought of her long-lost mother and the things she’d said so long ago. That Anya was brave and fierce, capable of choosing any life she wanted. Anya had believed her.
Anya believed her so hard, so completely, that when she was gone it was as if she’d taken all of that with her.
Without her, Anya had never felt brave. Or anything like fierce. And she hadn’t known what she wanted, except her mother back.
But that was never on offer.
And without her mother there, there was nothing to temper her father’s coldness. Back then, he’d been a different man. She could remember him, too. Never as warm as her mother had been, but he’d smiled then. He’d laughed. He’d danced with her mother in the backyard on warm summer nights, and held Anya between them, her bare feet on his shoes. In every way that mattered, she’d lost both her parents when her mother died.
Anya almost felt sympathy for him, in retrospect. But back then, as a little girl awash in grief, all she’d known was that she didn’t want to cause her father more pain. She’d wanted him to love her. She’d wanted him to gather her up in his lap, tell her stories, and make her feel better. Dance with her in the yard while the summer night stretched out above them, warm and soft. But he didn’t.
He never did.
So she’d made herself cold instead, to please him.
But she was not cold, no matter how hard she tried. And maybe, Anya thought, as she waited for a panic attack to hit her when surely it should—poised to walk down an aisle to marry a king in the full view of the better part of the planet—the panic attacks had been her actual, real feelings trying to get out all along.
The doors opened before her, then. And then it was happening.
She was walking toward Tarek. She could see him there, waiting for her at the end of the aisle, magnificent in every way.
But best of all, looking straight at her. Into her.
As if this thing between them was fate and they’d been meant for each other all along.
When she finally reached him, he took her hands and they began to speak old words. Ancient vows. Sharing who they were and becoming something else.
Husband and wife. King and Queen.
And so much more.
But inside, Anya made a different vow, there before the assembled throng. That she would not be cold another day in her life. That she would never again be buried in stone or locked away behind iron. That she would not allow herself to feel dead while she was alive.
Not with him. Not with this man who had freed her from a cell first, and then from the life she’d never really wanted.
So she married him, and then she lived.
She danced at the reception. She smiled until her cheeks hurt. And when Tarek finally stole her away, bundling her into a helicopter that raced across the desert, suspended between the shifting, undulating sands beneath and the heavens above, she loved him so much that she thought it might burst out of her like a comet. Another bomb, and a better one this time.
Anya didn’t know how she kept it inside.
The helicopter dropped them in an oasis straight out of a fairy tale. The water in the many pools was an indigo silk, lapping gently against the sand as the breeze hit it. Palm trees rustled all around, while waterfalls tumbled over rocks like a song.
And a glorious, sprawling tent blazed with welcoming light, beckoning them in.
“Welcome,