Kalila shook her head and pushed the bowl away. Her nerves, jumping and leaping, writhing and roiling, had returned, and she knew she would not manage another bite. ‘I’ll just have coffee,’ she said, smiling to appease her nurse, and took a sip of the thick, sweet liquid. It scalded her tongue and burned down to her belly, with the same fierce resolve that fired her heart.
The bridal preparations took all morning. Kalila had expected it, and of course she wanted to look her best. Yet amidst all the ministrations, the lotions and creams and paints and powders, she couldn’t help but feel like a chicken being trussed and seasoned for the cooking pot.
There was only Juhanah and a kitchen maid to act as her negaffa, the women who prepared the bride; the Zaraquan palace had a small staff since her mother had died.
First, she had a milk bath in the women’s bathing quarters, an ancient tradition that Kalila wasn’t sure she liked. Supposedly the milk of goats was good for the skin, yet it also had a peculiar smell.
‘I wouldn’t mind a bit of bath foam from the chemists’,’ she muttered, not loud enough for Juhanah or the kitchen maid to hear. They wouldn’t understand, anyway.
As Juhanah towelled her dry and rubbed sweet-smelling lotion into her skin Kalila felt a sudden pang of sorrow and grief for her mother, who had died when Kalila had been only seventeen. Her mother Amelia had been English, cool and lovely, and it would have been her loving duty to prepare Kalila for this meeting with her bridegroom.
She, Kalila acknowledged with a rueful sorrow, would have understood about bath foam. They could have teased, laughed, enjoyed themselves even with the pall of duty hanging over her, the knowledge of what was to come.
Still, she reminded herself, she could be modern later. She could be herself later, when she and Zakari were alone. The thought of such an occurrence turned her mouth dry and set her nerves leaping once more.
Yet they would not be alone today. Today was for the formal meeting of a royal king and his bride, a piece of theatre elaborately staged and played, and she was merely a prop…one of many.
‘No frowns,’ Juhanah chided her gently. ‘Only smiles today, my princess!’
Kalila forced a smile but she felt a pall of gloom settle over her like a shroud. The future loomed dark and unknowable ahead of her, a twisting road with an uncertain destination.
She hadn’t seen or spoken to Zakari since she was little more than a child. There had been letters, birthday presents, polite and impersonal inquiries. Tradition demanded there be no more, and yet today she would meet him. In two weeks she would marry him.
It was absurd, archaic, and yet it was her life. The rest of it, anyway. Kalila swallowed the acidic taste of fear.
‘Look.’ Juhanah steered her towards the mirror, and even after the hours of preparation Kalila wasn’t expecting the change. She looked…like a stranger.
The red and gold kaftan swallowed her slight figure, and her hair had been twisted back into an elaborate plait. Heavy gold jewellery settled at her wrists and throat, and her face…
Kalila didn’t recognise the full red lips, or the wide, dark eyes outlined in kohl. She looked exotic, unfamiliar. Ridiculous, she thought with a sudden surge of bitterness. Like a male fantasy come to life.
‘Beautiful, yes?’ Juhanah said happily, and the kitchen maid nodded in agreement. Kalila could only stare. ‘And now, the final touch…’ Juhanah slipped the veil over her head, the garment of feminine pride, the hijab. It covered her hair and a diaphanous veil spangled with gold and silver coins covered her face, leaving nothing but those wide, blank, kohl-lined eyes. ‘There,’ Juhanah sighed in satisfaction.
Gazing at her exotic reflection, it seemed impossible that only eight months ago she’d been in Cambridge, debating philosophy and eating pizza with friends on the floor of her student flat. Wearing jeans, completely unchaperoned, living a life of freedom and opportunity, intellectual pursuit and joy.
Joy. She felt utterly joyless now, standing, staring there, utterly alien. Who was she? Was she the girl in Cambridge, laughing and flirting and talking politics, or was she this girl in the mirror, with her dark eyes and hidden face?
Eight months ago her father had come to England, taken her out for a meal and listened to her girlish chatter. She’d thought—deceived herself—that he was merely visiting her. That he missed her. Of course there had been a greater plan, a deeper need. There always had been.
Kalila still remembered the moment she’d seen her father’s face turn sombre, one hand coming to rest lightly on hers so the spill of silly talk died on her lips, and her mouth went dry. ‘What…?’ she’d whispered, yet she’d known. Of course she’d known. She’d always known, since she had been twelve, when she’d had her engagement party.
She and Zakari had exchanged rings, although she barely remembered the ceremony. It was a blur of images and sensations, the cloying scent of jasmine, the heavy weight of the ring, a Calistan diamond, that Zakari had slipped on her finger. It had been far too big, and she’d put it in her jewellery box, where it had remained ever since.
Perhaps, Kalila thought distantly, she should wear it again.
‘I know the wedding has been put off many times,’ Bahir said, his voice surprisingly gentle. It made Kalila’s eyes sting, and she stared down at her plate. ‘Family obligations on both sides have made it so. But finally King Zakari is ready to wed. He has set a date…May the twenty-fifth.’
Kalila swallowed. It was the end of September, the leaves just starting to turn gold, flooding the Cambridge backs with colour, and the start of her term. ‘But…’ she began, and Bahir shook his head.
‘Kalila, we always knew this was your destiny. Your duty. I have already spoken to the registrar. Your course has been cancelled.’
She jerked her head up, her eyes meeting his, seeing the implacable insistence there. ‘You had no right—’
‘I had every right,’ Bahir replied, and now she heard the hard implacability, felt it. ‘I am your father and your king. You have received your degree—the post-graduate course was merely a way to pass the time.’
Kalila swallowed. Her throat ached so much the instinctive movement hurt. ‘It was more than that to me,’ she whispered.
‘Yes, perhaps,’ Bahir allowed, his shoulders moving in a tiny shrug, ‘but you always knew what the future held. Your mother and I never kept it from you.’
No, they hadn’t. They’d spoken to her before that wretched party, explained what it meant to be a princess, the joy that lay in fulfilling one’s duty. Propaganda, and Kalila had believed it with all her childish heart. She’d been dazzled by the crown prince of Calista, although now she didn’t remember much of Zakari, no more than a tall, charismatic presence, a patient—or had it been patronising?—smile. She’d only been twelve, after all.
‘You will come home with me,’ Bahir finished, beckoning to the waiter to clear their plates. ‘You have a day to say goodbye to your friends and pack what you need.’
‘A day?’ Kalila repeated in disbelief. Her life was being dismantled in an instant, as if it had been meaningless, trivial—
And to her father, it had.
‘I want you home,’ Bahir said. ‘Where you belong.’
‘But if I’m not getting married until May—’
‘Your presence is needed in your country, Kalila.’ Bahir’s voice turned stern; she’d worn his patience too thin with her desperate, fruitless resistance. ‘Your people need to see you. You have been away nearly four years. It is time to come home.’
That evening, packing up her paltry possessions, Kalila had considered