There was no oasis to cool off in here, because it was another fifteen minutes or so farther north, fiercely guarded and zealously protected for the use of this tribe alone—but Amaya couldn’t know that. The women who clustered around the fire, beginning their preparations for the evening meal, eyed them as their party approached but made no move to welcome them, and Kavian imagined how they must look to Amaya. But he knew what she could not—that their seeming poverty was as feigned as the rest.
Nothing was ever quite what it seemed. He came here as often as he could to remember that.
“I have come a very long way to have a conversation,” Kavian told his betrothed, and that, too, was only a part of it.
“To settle a dispute?” Amaya asked. She didn’t wait for him to confirm or deny. “The king himself would hardly ride out to discuss the weather, I suppose.”
Kavian pulled on the horse’s reins, bringing the Thoroughbred to a dancing stop in front of a line of stern-faced elders, all of whom bowed deep at the sight of him. He inclined his head, then swung down from the horse’s back, leaving his hand resting possessively on Amaya’s leg as he stood beside her.
He greeted the men before him, introduced Amaya as his betrothed queen and then they all performed the usual set of formal greetings and offers of hospitality. It went back and forth for some time, as expected. Only when the finest tent belonging to the village’s leader had been offered and accepted, as was custom, did Kavian turn to Amaya again and lift her down from the horse.
“That wasn’t the Arabic I know,” she said, in soft English that sounded far sweeter than the look in her eyes. “I caught only one or two words in ten.”
He didn’t laugh, though he felt it move in him. “Let me guess which ones.”
“Did you accept the man’s kind offer of a girl for your use?” she asked, and though her voice was cool, her eyes glittered. “They must have heard you’d gone from seventeen concubines to one. A tremendous national tragedy indeed.”
He could have put her mind at ease. He could have told her that the girl, like so many of the girls he was offered in these far-off places that never advanced much with the times, was little more than a child. He had taken many of them back to the palace, installed them in his harem and given them a much better life—one that had never included his having sex with them. He could have told Amaya that such girls accounted for most—though not all, it was true; he had never been a saint by any measure—of the harem he’d kept. He could have told her that there had never been any possibility that he would take a young girl as his due tonight and more, that the elders had known that, hence the extravagant effusiveness of their offers.
But he did not.
“They approve my choice of bride and have offered us a place to stay,” he replied instead, his voice even. “More or less. It will not be a palace, but it will have to do.”
She blinked as if he’d insulted her. Perhaps he had.
“I’m not the one accustomed to palaces,” she reminded him, her voice still calm, though he could feel the edge in it as if it were a knife she dragged over his skin. “I keep telling you, I was only ever a princess in name. Perhaps you should be worried about how you’ll manage a night somewhere that isn’t drenched in gold and busy with servants to cater to your every need. I have slept under bushes while hiking across Europe, when it was necessary. I’ve camped almost everywhere. I will be fine.”
He wanted to crush her in his arms. He wanted to take that mouth of hers with his, and who cared what was appropriate or who was watching or what he had to prove? He wanted to lose himself inside her forever. But he could do none of those things. Not here.
Not yet.
“I will also be fine, azizty,” he said, his voice blunt with all these things he wanted that he couldn’t have. Not now. “I grew up here.”
* * *
Kavian strode off and left Amaya standing there, all by herself in what was truly the middle of nowhere, as if he hadn’t dropped that bomb on her at all. He didn’t look back as he disappeared into a three-sided tent structure with a group of stern-faced men. He didn’t so much as pause.
And for a wild moment, Amaya’s pulse leaped and she thought about running again now that she was finally out of his sight—but then she remembered where she was. There had been nothing, all afternoon. Nothing but the great desert in every direction, which she’d found she hadn’t hated as she’d expected she would. But that didn’t mean she wanted to lose herself in it.
She had no idea how Kavian had located this place without a map today, just as she had no idea what he’d meant. How could he have grown up here? So far away from the world and his own palace? Her brothers had been raised in royal splendor, waited on by battalions of servants, educated by fleets of the best tutors from all over the world before being sent off to the finest schools. Amaya supposed she’d thought that all kings were created in the same way.
It occurred to her, standing there all alone in the middle of the vast desert that Kavian was clearly bound to in ways she didn’t understand, that she didn’t know much about this man who had claimed her—even as he seemed to know her far too well. And better every day whether she liked it or not.
You do like it, a small voice whispered. You like that he notices everything. You like that he sees you. But she dismissed it.
Kavian had marched off with those men as if he was a rather more hands-on sort of king than her brother or father had ever been. Amaya assumed, when she shifted to see the women watching her from their place by the central fire, that she was meant to be the same sort of queen. No lounging about beneath palm trees eating cakes and honey, or adhering to the stiffly formal royal protocols in place at her brother’s palace. No disappearing into the tent that had been set aside for them and collapsing on the nearest fainting couch. All of those options were appealing, and were certainly what her own mother would have done in her place, but she understood that none of them would win her any admirers here.
You run, she reminded herself. That’s who you are. Why not do that here? Or do the next best thing—hide?
But she hated the notion that that was precisely what Kavian expected her to do. That he believed she really was some kind of fluttery princess who couldn’t handle herself. It was so infuriating that Amaya ignored the waiting tent, ignored what her own body was telling her to do. Instead, she made her way over to the group of women and set about making herself useful.
When Kavian finally returned to the center of camp with that same cluster of men hours later, Amaya found she was proud of the fact that the evening meal was ready and waiting for him, as the encampment’s honored guest. It wasn’t the sort of feast he’d find served in his well-appointed salons, but she’d helped make it with her own hands. There was grilled lamb, a special treat because the king had come, and hot, fresh flatbread the women had made in round pans they’d settled directly in the coals. There was a kind of fragrant rice with vegetables mixed in. There were dates and homemade cheeses wrapped in soft cloths. It was far more humble than anything in the palace, perhaps, and there was no gold or silver to adorn it, but Amaya rather thought that added to the simple meal’s appeal.
The men settled down around the serving platters and ate while the women waited and watched from a distance, as was the apparent custom. It was not until the two old men who sat with Kavian drank their coffee together that the village seemed to relax, because, one of the women Amaya had come to know over the long afternoon told her in the half Arabic, half hand gestures language they’d cobbled together as they’d gone along, that meant the king had settled the dispute.
Amaya ate when the women did,