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His vizier’s words suddenly floated back to him. What if all the kingdom united, and begged you to marry Laila al-Abayyi? Then you would do it?
Omar had never imagined it could happen. But now, seeing all his nobles watching with shining eyes as he danced with Laila, he realized the impossible had just happened. His nobles had united against having a stranger as queen—rejecting any woman who mangled their language like Beth, or who stretched the bonds of civility like Sia Lane.
He’d never thought it could happen.
But Khalid had.
“I am so glad you asked me to dance,” Laila murmured, her eyes lowering modestly as they danced together. “I was starting to fear you never would.”
Laila was different from her half sister, he thought. Ferida had been fragile, lost. But Laila had a flash of steel beneath her deliberately demure gaze.
Perfect for a queen, he thought. She left him cold. But if she was the best choice for Samarqara...
Omar danced with Laila, watched with delight by his newly united nobles. But against his will, all he could think about was the one woman he could not have. The unsuitable young woman with light brown hair, watching them from the corner of the ballroom with stricken hazel eyes.
* * *
This was what Beth had wanted, wasn’t it?
She watched as Omar and Laila danced, smiling together. He leaned forward to whisper something in Laila’s ear that made her laugh and her sultry dark eyes gleam.
And suddenly, Beth couldn’t bear it.
Turning, she fled the ballroom, rushing back through the deserted palace to her lonely bedroom in the vizier’s residence. Shutting the door behind her, fighting back tears, she looked out the window at the silvery moonlight frosting the palm trees. She’d never felt more alone.
Grabbing her phone from the nightstand, she dialed her sister’s number in Houston.
Edith had told her she’d stay hidden at the lab while Beth was in Paris, to make sure no one would realize they’d switched places. But Edith hadn’t answered any of Beth’s messages since she’d left Houston.
That wasn’t unusual. Edith never answered her phone. She was always too busy.
Even when their grandmother was alive, Edith hadn’t come back once for Christmas at the small dusty ranch in West Texas. Beth had been the one to visit from Houston, to call their grandmother every day, and arrange her funeral after she’d died. She’d been the one to agonize over the paperwork as the bank foreclosed on the ranch. Edith had ruthlessly put her work ahead of everything and everyone.
“I’m close,” her sister would always mutter. “So close to a breakthrough.”
And yet the breakthrough never came.
Beth always told herself she didn’t mind. Edith was a genius, and of course geniuses had to be treated differently from other people.
But now, as the phone rang and rang, for the first time, Beth felt something she’d never felt before. Angry.
All the times she’d been there for Edith—why couldn’t her sister be there for her, just once, when Beth’s heart was breaking, and she felt so alone?
Hanging up, Beth tossed the phone aside.
She slept badly that night, caught up in dreams. But the morning still came.
Beth was dressed in a traditional Samarqari gown, with long, brightly colored embroidered skirts, robes and headdress. Her eyes were lined with black kohl, her hands dyed with intricately patterned henna.
Following instructions, she left the vizier’s palace to find five elaborately carved and painted covered palanquins waiting, in a parade led by royal Samarqari horseguards, at front and behind.
Feeling too sad to smile at the other four brides, Beth climbed awkwardly onto the pillows inside her own palanquin. It was lifted with a lurch by the four burly, uniformed carriers. She grabbed the soft mattress beneath her for balance.
The vizier came to speak to her. “You must not open the curtains until you arrive at the royal palace,” he told Beth rudely. “Be silent. Be small.” Then he closed the curtains on her palanquin violently.
He didn’t seem to like her much, she thought dimly. But then, could she blame him, after the way she’d insulted the council yesterday?
Beth resolved to remain quiet and invisible from now on. As they left the vizier’s palace in a noisy, slow-moving parade, she resolutely tried to follow the rules, as silly as they were.
