too loudly, he might attack in all that ivory and gold. “Is there a difference?”
The man before her did not shout. She could see temper and arrogance in his gaze, but he did not give in to them. Though there were men all around him, many of them scowling at her as if she was nothing short of appalling, he did not do the same.
Instead, he held her gaze, and she could not have said what it was about him that made something in her quiver. Why she felt, suddenly, as if she could tip forward off of that cliff, fall and fall and fall, and never reach the depths of his dark eyes.
Then, clearly to the astonishment and bewilderment of the phalanx of men around him, Sheikh Tarek bin Alzalam held out his hand.
“Come,” he said again, an intense urging. “You will be safe. You have my word.”
And later, Anya would have no idea why that worked. Why she should take the word of a strange man whose fault it was, whether he’d known it or not, that she’d been locked away for eight long months.
Maybe it was as simple as the fact that he was beautiful. Not the way the men back home were sometimes, mousse in their hair and their T-shirt sleeves rolled just so. But in the same stark and overwhelming way the city outside these windows was, a gold stone fortress that was, nonetheless, impossibly beautiful. Desert sunrises and sunsets. The achingly beautiful blue sky. The songs that hung over the city sometimes, bringing her to tears.
He was harsh and stern and still, the only word that echoed inside her wasn’t pig. It was beautiful.
Anya didn’t have it in her to resist.
Not after nearly three seasons of cold stone and iron bars.
Before she could think better of it—or talk herself out of it—she rose. She crossed the floor of her cell as if his gaze was a tractor beam and she was unable to fight it. As if she was his to command.
Almost without meaning to, she slipped her hand into his.
Heat punched into her as his fingers closed over hers. Anya was surprised to find them hard and faintly rough, as if this man—this King—regularly performed some kind of actual labor that left calluses there.
Snips of overheard conversations between guards echoed inside her, then. Tales of a king who had risen from his bed and held off the enemy with his own two hands and an ancient sword, like something out of a myth.
Surely not, Anya thought.
She saw a flicker of something in his dark eyes, then. That same heat that should have embarrassed her, yes, but something else, too.
Maybe it was surprise that there was this storm between them, as if a simple touch could change the weather.
Indoors.
You have been locked up too long, Anya snapped at herself.
He did something with his head that was not a bow of any kind, but made her think of a deep, formal bow all the same.
Then, still gripping her hand and holding it out before him—like something out of an old storybook, wholly heedless of the way sensation lashed at her like rain—the King led her out of the dungeon.
And despite herself—despite every furious story she’d told herself over the past months, every scenario she’d imagined and reimagined in her head—as they emerged from the steep stone steps into what was clearly the main part of the palace, Anya was charmed.
She told herself it was as simple as moving from darkness into light. Anyone would be dazzled, she assured herself, after so many months below ground. Especially when she’d been brought here that terrifying night they’d been captured, hustled through lines of scary men with weapons, certain that the fact she’d been separated from her colleagues meant only terrible things.
Today Anya still had no idea what she was walking into, but at least it was pretty.
More than pretty. Everything seemed to be made of marble or mosaic, inlaid with gold and precious stones or carved into glorious patterns. It was all gleaming white or the sparkling blue water of the fountains. There were splashes of color, exultant flowers, and the impossibly blue sky there above her in wide-open courtyards, like a gift.
She found herself tipping back her face to let the sun move over it, even though she knew that gave too much away. That it made her much too vulnerable.
But if he was only taking her from one cell to another, she intended to enjoy