Each and every one of them a perfect bundle of dark eyes, dark hair, and a deep stubbornness they took pleasure in claiming came from the other.
“Behold your work,” Tarek had said one morning in the great courtyard, years back, shaking his head as his firstborn son and heir ran in circles. Naked. “This is the future of my kingdom.”
Anya had only laughed.
“That sounds familiar, doesn’t it?” she’d asked him one afternoon, years later, when their tiny, perfect eldest daughter was found in one of the palace’s public rooms.
And refused to leave.
“No,” she kept saying. “No.”
With all the consequence of a king.
Tarek had laughed too, but he’d also pulled Anya close and kissed her soundly.
They tended to their duties, they were deeply involved in the raising of their children, and at night they repaired to the King’s royal suite and set themselves on fire.
Over and over and over again.
Year after year. Whether Anya was big with child or not. Whether they had fought for days or not.
They might not have always agreed with each other. They might have spent hours shouting. She was too direct and he was too arrogant and sometimes those things left bruises no matter how much they loved each other.
But they kissed each other’s wounds, there in the dark of their big, wide bed. And when he moved inside her and she clung tight to him, they found their way back to each other. Sooner or later, they always found their way.
As the years passed, Tarek became a powerful new voice in the region. And Anya found ways to use the power he’d given her to truly do her best to make the world a better place. She and her sister-in-law Nur first became friends, then partners in a charitable initiative that promoted women’s health and wellness.
“Finally,” she told Tarek at the charity’s inaugural ball. “A use for all my medical knowledge.”
“You will always be my doctor, habibti,” he’d told her, there in the center of the ballroom where his gaze told her what his hands and his mouth would, later. When they were alone and naked and making each other fall all over again.
Anya thought of her mother daily and never did have another panic attack, as she’d known she wouldn’t. Instead, she pursued the dreams of that long-ago little girl. She danced often, because she was a queen and her husband was a king and there were an endless array of balls for them to attend. She had tried painting things as a hobby, but had found herself both terrible and bored.
Her true artistic genius was still in the medium of crayons, in her opinion—something she discovered by coloring things with her children and then festooning them about the bedroom for Tarek to find. Then find creative ways to both laugh at her and praise her at the same time.
Usually he chose to take her flying, without wings or a plane, as only he could.
The most surprising twist had happened back in Seattle. Charisma had left Alzalam a new woman. She had stopped fluttering and had laid down a series of ultimatums, the crux of which was that she no longer intended to be a lapdog of any kind.
Anya’s father and his latest, youngest wife were still together, ten years later. With twins Preston doted on.
“Part of me wishes he could have been a better father to me,” Anya had confessed to Tarek one night, after one of her father and Charisma’s annual visits—something else her stepmother had insisted on. “But if he had, would I be here now?”
“That almost makes me like him,” Tarek had growled.
She and her father were not close. He had never apologized and never would. She didn’t understand him and never would. But they tried, in their way. And she and Charisma had become friends out of the bargain.
It was hard to imagine a better outcome.
And now a whole decade had passed, laced with its own share of disappointments, certainly. But brighter with hope, all the same. Stronger by far for the tests they’d faced along the way.
“Life is good, Mama,” Anya whispered into the night. “Life is so good.”
She heard Tarek come out of the tent, then. They liked to come here whenever they could, but that didn’t mean he could always leave the palace behind. After their long, leisurely dinner in that bright and sprawling room where he’d once tried to put her in her place, he’d taken an urgent phone call.
Anya had checked in with the