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“We remember,” Edith said, smiling at her new fiancé, Michel.
“But when the babies were born...” Shaking his head, Omar gave a low chuckle. “A great end for the newspapers. Let’s just say the tourist board is very happy.”
“Tourist board?” Michel looked confused.
“Tourism is up a thousand percent,” Beth told him succinctly. Take that, Sia Lane, she thought.
“Oh.” The young man looked bewildered, but nodded. “That’s good.”
Based on her sister’s description, Beth had expected Michel Dupree to be a wild, sexy musician, but when Edith had brought him to their wedding and Beth’s coronation ten months earlier, she’d discovered a quiet young Haitian, kind and talented, who now worked as a music teacher by day and a musician at night, but whose full-time job was really taking care of Edith.
“He cooks for me. Every night,” Edith had confided. She’d giggled. “Then he cooks, if you get what I’m saying.”
Now, looking at the two of them in the palace garden, Beth saw Michel put his arm around Edith tenderly. Her sister had truly found happiness in love, as well as work, where, as she always liked to say, she was closer to a breakthrough every day.
There were breakthroughs of all kinds, Beth thought. When she’d been brave enough to tell Omar she loved him, everything else had fallen into place. Now, she had a life more wonderful than she’d ever dared dream.
Their royal wedding had been magnificent. Nothing quiet or restrained about it. It had been a full royal affair, with twelve hundred guests from around the world, held in the grand palace. Beth had arrived via horse-drawn carriage, her traditional gown covered with jewels. She’d left on Omar’s arm, the crowned Queen of Samarqara.
She still had the actual crown, kept mostly in the vault for special occasions. It was so heavy with diamonds, it hurt her head to wear it for too long. So she mostly didn’t.
Beth. A queen. She still couldn’t believe it.
The entire kingdom had come out to cheer that day. Even the nobles had cheered, if only to prove they hadn’t been part of the attempted coup. Later, three men had shamefacedly come forward and confessed they were the ones who’d been hired by the vizier to throw rocks at Beth.
“We only did it because he threatened our families. We made sure none of the rocks came close to hitting you. Please, we throw ourselves on your mercy, our queen!”
After Beth’s pleading, Omar had let the men go with nothing but community service as punishment. But Khalid and Hassan al-Abayyi weren’t so lucky. They’d been sentenced to prison for life, their money and estates confiscated. Laila, as an accessory instead of active participant, had received exile. But bereft of her family’s fortune, she screamed and begged to be sent to prison, too. “For what’s the point of living if I can’t live in a palace?”
It was ironic. Omar hadn’t wanted the throne. He’d taken it as a duty he was honor-bound to endure. Beth had never dreamed of living in a palace, either. Why would she? The demands of royalty had nearly torn them apart.
But the two of them, by loving each other, had somehow managed to make this gilded cage of a palace into the homey cottage of Beth’s dreams.
It was love that changed everything, she thought in wonder. Love could take even a palace and make it a home.
Love, and family.
They’d conceived their twins on their wedding night, in the same bed they slept in now. “I saved this bed only for you,” Omar had whispered in her ears. “To make love only to my wife. My queen.”
She blushed, remembering. He wanted a large family. He was threatening to get her pregnant a lot. Six, perhaps seven more times. And given the way he kissed her, the way he made her body come so alive, she didn’t think she’d be able to refuse. Fortunately, a large family sounded just fine to her.
As international media broadcast images of the popular King and Queen of Samarqara, so obviously in love, and now with newborn twins, there was some talk that bride markets—and groom markets—might be the best way to find true love after all. Reading an American newspaper the other day in thei
r bedroom, sitting together near the fire as their babies slept, Beth burst into a laugh. “This article says you’re a genius!”
“Of course I am,” Omar had told her loftily. “I know everything. That is why you must always obey me, wife.”
Then he’d said ooph as she smacked him playfully with a pillow.
Now, Beth looked at her husband in the dappled sunlight of the palace garden. As the two of them cuddled together on the shady bench, and her sister and almost-brother-in-law drank mint tea and exclaimed over their tiny sleeping babies, Beth still couldn’t understand how she’d been so lucky. What had she ever done to deserve a life like this?
Then she knew.
One thing had changed her life. When she’d found it, nothing could stop her. Not danger, not fear, not doubt. When she’d found it, she’d found her strength. Found herself.
Just one thing: love.
* * *
