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“You could have called me a monster when I showed you who I am,” he said quietly. She jerked at that, as if he’d hit her. “Others have before you. Will you call the fact that you did not political, too?” He did not let himself think about what he might do if she did. But her eyes were slick with misery and she didn’t say a word. “Do you know what it is you want, Amaya? Or do you fear that you already know?”
“None of that means I want to marry you,” she whispered.
“Perhaps it does not,” he agreed. “But it does suggest that the chances are very good that you will anyway.”
“If you remove all the threats from this relationship,” she replied now, her voice revealingly thick, “we don’t actually have one.”
“I will keep that foremost in my thoughts, azizty, the next time I am deep inside you and you are begging me for your release.” Kavian kept his voice low, because it was the only thing keeping his hands from her, and his court waited for them even now. “I will hold you on that edge until you scream and then I will remind you that we have no relationship. No relationship, no release. Is that what you had in mind?”
He could hear her breathing, too loud and too fast. And her gaze was wild as it met his. But when she spoke, her voice was flat. Almost matter-of-fact.
“They are waiting for us in the throne room,” she said.
He didn’t believe her apparent calm for a moment. But once again, he admired her courage. The way she stood up to him, the way she gathered herself when he could see the storms in her. The more she kept trying to prove they did not suit, the more perfect he found her.
“They can wait a little while longer.” He raised his brows. “Until we arrive, it is only a very large room with a dramatic chair no one is permitted to touch. By law.”
“That I get to stand behind, yes,” she bit out. She moved then, sweeping past him toward the door, her spine rigid and her head high. “What a joyous experience that will be, I am sure. I can hardly wait.”
He let her go, following behind her as she made her way from their suite and into the grand corridor that led toward the public wing of the palace and the ancient throne room that sat at its center. His aides converged upon him as they walked, and it was not until they’d entered the room and taken their places on the raised dais that dominated one end of the ornate hall that he focused on her once more.
“You stand beside me, not behind me,” he told her. He could not have said what moved him to do so. That she was still pale. That her sweet mouth was set in a hard line no matter that defiant angle to her fine jaw. That she still seemed to imagine that this was something other than foregone conclusion. “A strong king holds the throne, Amaya, but a strong queen beside him holds the kingdom. So say the poets.”
He saw something flicker in her gaze then. “And do you rule with poetry? That doesn’t sound like the man who dragged me out of that café in Canada.”
“You walked out of that café in Canada of your own volition,” he reminded her. “Just as you walked into that encampment in the desert and just as you will walk down that aisle in a few days. My queen obeys me because she chooses it. That is her gift. It is my job to earn it.”
An expression he couldn’t define moved over her face then, as the guards stood at attention down the length of the long hall and announced the series of guests who awaited their notice, and her mother’s arrival. Kavian eyed her as her mother’s name rang out, taking in Amaya’s too-stiff posture. The way she gripped her hands before her, so hard her knuckles hinted at white.
“You are afraid of your own mother,” he murmured. “Why is that?”
But the great doors were opening at the other end of the hall, and she didn’t answer him. Because her mother was walking in and Amaya sucked in an audible breath at the sight, as if she couldn’t help herself. As if she truly was afraid.
Kavian turned slowly to gaze upon the person who could bring out this reaction in the only woman he’d ever met who had never seemed particularly intimidated by him.
Elizaveta al Bakri looked like every photograph Kavian had ever seen of her. She appeared almost supernaturally ageless. She was an icy blonde, her hair swept back into a ruthless chignon and her objectively beautiful face flawless, with only the faintest touch of cosmetics to enhance the high, etched cheekbones she’d passed on to her daughter. Her blue eyes were frigid despite the placid expression on her face, her carriage that of a prima ballerina. She looked tall and willowy and effortless as she strode down the long hall toward the throne, quite as if she hadn’t flown halfway across the world today, and yet as far as Kavian was concerned she was little more than a reptile.
