This man was hers, in this moment.
And she had chosen it.
Four months later
AMIRA TURNED SIDEWAYS and stared at her reflection in the gilt-edged, full-length oval mirror standing on clawed feet digging into the lush carpet on the floor. Everywhere around her was gilt furniture and priceless rugs and...it was all a cage.
A golden cage from which she had no freedom, a place where no one even knew the real her.
Her hands went to the swell of her stomach, utterly undetectable in the voluminous folds of her jeweled wedding gown.
Her wedding gown...her wedding day...and she was pregnant with another man’s child.
Adir’s child.
The thousands of gems sewed onto the tight bodice glinted in the mirror. Under the sun’s rays cast into the room through the windows, the glitter of the gems reflected everywhere, even catching her in the eye every time she looked up.
At least they made the tears in her eyes look like an illusion of light. Already, her friend Galila and the maid she’d been assigned had given her strange looks when she had insisted on getting herself into the dress that weighed a ton.
But maybe she should have let them see the evidence of her one night of freedom. Maybe it would have been better if the dress had showed her growing belly.
Her father’s rage when she’d told him had known no bounds. Until that moment, she hadn’t realized how much the powerful connection, the status of being the queen’s father mattered to him. Until that night, when he had roughly pushed her and locked her in her room, she had always made excuses for his autocratic, even sometimes violent behavior.
What did he think Prince Zufar would do when he discovered his wife was pregnant with another man’s bastard? A word she hated with every inch of her being, a word her father had used again and again to drill it into her that that was what her child would be called if she didn’t marry Zufar.
Ya Allah, she hated deception.
Zufar had never been interested in her, but he didn’t deserve this.
Her father meant to force her to give her child away. Like an unwanted package thrown onto the streets. A stain on her reputation to be swept away...
A growl emerged from her throat, startling Galila and the maid.
Despite her father’s threats, she had made every effort to see Prince Zufar alone last night. Somehow, she would have muddled through the explanation about why the wedding needed to be called off. But her father had caught her two steps away from the prince’s private study where he had agreed to see her.
He had dragged her back to her room and backhanded her with such brutal force that she had lost consciousness. And by this morning, it was too late.
Prince Zufar had already left for the parade walk with King Tariq and would meet her at the hall where their wedding ceremony was to be held.
In every guard, in every visiting dignitary, in every man she came across, she had searched for those broad shoulders, that serious face. That wicked, warm smile.
She had searched because she needed a way out of her predicament, she reminded herself. Because she desperately needed to stop this farce her father was bent on having played out. Nothing else.
But there had been no sign of Adir.
“Amira...is everything all right?” asked her childhood friend, Galila—Prince Zufar’s sister.
Fear made Amira’s mind leap from one useless fact to another. “Did you know that the money that has been spent on the future queen’s wedding dress throughout history could have fed and clothed Khalia’s poor more than ten times over? That it takes three hundred days and twenty women working from sunup to sundown to create a dress like this?”
Her gaze concerned, Galila took her friend’s hands in hers. “My brother might not be...the ideal man. But he’s not a monster, Amira.” Galila knew of her friend’s father’s temper and she must think that was why Amira was afraid.
Unable to meet her eyes, Amira pulled away.
Galila sighed. “The maid and I will bring the royal jewelry. Will you be all right for a few moments?”
“Yes, of course,” Amira answered automatically. But ten minutes later, her panic multiplied.
Could she run away before Galila and the maid returned with the jewelry? On the way to that vast throne hall, could she claim to be sick and then steal away somehow from the palace?
The gems on the dress itself would probably pay for a few months of food and shelter. Although how far would she go weighing a ton and seriously lacking in energy? For almost a week now, she had barely kept down anything she ate in the morning.
Also, the extravagantly expensive dress would be a dead giveaway. Which meant she would have to get rid of it if she meant to escape without being seen. And to shed the dress, she needed to...
Hysteria bubbled up in her chest as she dipped her head between her knees.
She would keep her baby somehow, no matter what. She wouldn’t let anyone separate them.
Just that promise to herself gave her a renewed purpose.
She was gulping down a glass of water when the catch on the huge window rattled. She frowned. It was not a windy day. In fact, Galila and the maid had both noted what a gloriously beautiful day it was to get married and she had snorted...
Her breath hitched as the top of a dark-haired head appeared outside the window. And then a hard, striking face—a face that had haunted her dreams for four months.
The intricately carved silver tumbler slipped from her hand, the loud clang of it softer than her thudding heart.
Broad shoulders. Tapered waist. Hard, powerful thighs that had straddled her hips when he had stroked himself into her, causing such indescribable pleasure that Amira was swamped with heat even now.
Amber eyes. A cruel slash of a mouth that was incapable of infinite tenderness. Adir landed on the floor with sure-footed grace.
“Salaam-alaikum, Amira.”
She reached for the back of an armchair, blinking rapidly to clear the fast approaching tears. It was only relief. Only relief. She repeated it like a mantra.
Adir’s presence meant help. Meant she didn’t have to go through with the wedding.
Why he was here didn’t matter. He had made no promises and she wouldn’t expect anything. But he would help her escape. And then she could make a life for her and the baby, a life that she designed for herself, a life that wasn’t ruled by anyone else but her. Once she had settled into a new life, maybe she could tell him. She would not force this on him. She would not change his plans for his own life.
Maybe he would agree to visit her child whenever he was between assignments, or in the country? Maybe they could reach some...
“Amira?”
She startled, her mind a jumble of thoughts. “I’m afraid to blink for fear you’ll disappear. It’s not rational, I know, because I see you. My body remembers your scent—horses and sandalwood and...you. And yet the mind is such a powerful thing, you know? It weaves such illusions. I used to see my mother like that, months after she was gone. Hallucinations are caused by...”
“How much time is left before you marry your prince?”
She flinched at the open rancor in the question. This was not the charming, laid-back man she had given her virginity to. Something was different. Something had altered.
He