knew that the older woman with the wise eyes whom the others treated with a certain deference watched her more closely than the others did. She knew exactly when she’d gotten that woman to smile in the course of their shared labors, and she hadn’t been entirely sure why she’d felt that like such a grand personal triumph. Or why she’d laughed more with these women she’d only met this afternoon and only half understood than she had in years.
The night wore on, pressing down from all sides—the stars so bright they seemed to be right there within reach, dancing on the other side of the fire. It reminded her of that winter in New Zealand, but even there the nearby houses had cast some light to relieve the sprawl of the Milky Way and its astonishing weight up above. Not so here. There was no light but the fire and the pipes the men smoked as they talked. There was nothing but the immensity of the heavens above, the great twisting fire of the galaxy. It pressed its way deep into Amaya’s heart, until it ached as if it were broken wide-open or smashed into pieces. Both, perhaps.
“You did well,” Kavian said when he came to fetch her at last. He reached down and pulled her to her feet, making the other women cluck and sigh, in a manner that required no translation.
“They think you’re very romantic,” she said, and she didn’t know why she felt something like bashful, as if she thought so, too. Or worse—wistful.
“They think we are newly wed,” he corrected her. “And still foolish with it.”
“It’s the same thing, really.” She tilted her head up to look him in the eye as best she could in all the tumultuous dark. “Either way, it’s not expected to last.”
She thought he meant to say something then, but he didn’t, and she didn’t know why it felt like a rebuke. She had to repress a shiver at the sudden drop in heat as he led her away from the group, the flames, the laughter. She felt a sharp pang as she went, as if she was losing something. As if she would never get it back—as if it was so much smoke on a Bedouin fire, curling its way into the messy night sky above them. Lost in the night, never to return.
Amaya made herself breathe. Told herself it was the thick night, that was all, making everything seem that much more raw and poignant than it was.
There were lanterns guiding their way through the cluster of tents, and Kavian’s strong body against the impenetrable darkness that pressed in like ink on all sides, but that didn’t change the way she felt. It didn’t help that ache inside.
If anything, it intensified it.
“I am told you impressed the women,” Kavian said as he pulled back the flap and ushered her into the unpretentious tent that was theirs for the night. She felt as nervous as she had in the baths that first day in Daar Talaas, Amaya realized. She walked ahead of him, running her gaze over the bed flat on the floor but plumped up high and piled with linens, the serviceable rug that looked handwoven, the fine pillows scattered on the floor to mark a cozy seating area and a collection of lanterns that made it all seem deeply romantic. And she was astonished at how much she wanted it to be. “That is no easy task.”
“Did you imagine I would cower in the tent?”
“I accepted that was a possibility. You did once secrete yourself amongst my shoes.”
“One of the gifts of having moved somewhere new every time my mother felt like it, is that I’m good with groups of strangers,” Amaya said. She made herself turn and face him, and she was surprised at how hard that was with so much tumult inside her. “It’s that or no one speaks to you for months on end.”
“There is being friendly and then there is helping cook a meal for the whole camp.” Kavian still stood near the entrance, his gray eyes searching hers. “They are not the same thing.”
“You told me I was to act as your queen.”
“And you take direction, do you? How novel.” He eyed her, but she couldn’t let herself respond. Not when she had no idea what it was that held her in its grip. “Does a queen normally tend a cooking fire and sit in the dirt with strangers?”
“This one did,” she retorted, not sure why she was trembling. Why she couldn’t stop. His hard mouth crooked slightly. Very slightly. It didn’t help at all.
“I am a man of war, Amaya,” Kavian said softly. “I need a queen who can get her hands dirty. Who is not troubled by palace protocol when the palace is nowhere in sight. You please me, my queen. You please me deeply.”
Something turned over, deep inside her. “I’m not your queen.”
“Now you contradict yourself.”
“I think you’re confused because I cooked for you. Like a real person.”
That gleam in his eyes turned them a polished silver in the soft light. And she couldn’t tell him that what had really happened was first that she’d wanted to defy his low expectations—and then that she’d wanted to make him proud.
Here, today, she’d wanted to be his queen. She couldn’t say that. She couldn’t admit it to him when she could hardly accept it herself.
“Are we not real?” he asked. Almost gently.
Her throat felt too tight. “Things aren’t the same in the palace, are they? It’s a palace.”
“A palace is a building made of carefully chosen stone and the concentrated artisanship of hundreds of loyal subjects across decades,” Kavian said quietly. Intently. “It is a monument to the hopes of my people, their desire for unity and strength against all that might come at them. As am I. As are you, too. It could not be any more real than that.”
“But you said you grew up here, not there.”
He moved farther into the tent and she watched as he unwrapped his traditional headdress, then shrugged out of his robes, stripping down until he wore nothing but a pair of boxer briefs low on his narrow hips. He should have looked like a normal, regular, everyday man, she thought with something like despair. He was in his underwear in a tent in the middle of nowhere. Surely that should...reduce him, somehow.
But this was Kavian. And today, she’d wanted to please him. To be the queen he wanted. Looking at him here, she understood that suicidal urge.
He better resembled a god than any mere man. It was as if he’d been hewn from the finest marble and then breathed into life. His skin gleamed like old gold in the lantern light and she couldn’t read a thing on his face as he came toward her. Nor when he reached for her.
He unwound her scarves from her as if he was unwrapping a precious gift. Slowly. Reverently. He combed his fingers through her hair when it tumbled down, then helped her out of the long, traditional dress she’d been given yesterday by his dressmakers. When she wore nothing but her slip, a basic thing that wasn’t meant to be at all alluring, his gaze heated, but still he did nothing but gently rake his fingers through her hair.
It was almost as if it calmed him as much as it did her.
“My uncle was the king of Daar Talaas when I was born,” he told her, so softly she thought at first he hadn’t meant to speak at all. “He was a good ruler and the people loved him, but despite the wives he took and the many concubines he kept, he had no sons. So when he died, the throne passed to his younger brother. My father.”
He
