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Tarek was her husband. This was her marriage.
And Anya was brave. She was fierce. She would make their lives exactly what she wanted.
All she had to do was be the Queen he had chosen her to be, at last.
CHAPTER TWELVE
TAREKSTOODBYthe ancient pools, looking for wisdom in the water that men of his blood had long called holy, but seeing only himself.
And the monster he had become.
He despised weakness, and yet it had taken hold of him. It had eaten away at him, leaving nothing behind but the hunger he could no more control than he could feed enough to sate himself.
Making it impossible for him to leave tonight, when he knew that’s what he should have done.
To prove to her that what he said was true.
That there was nothing between them but duty. Because that was all thatshouldhave been between them.
He heard the rustle of her dress first, sounding like the desert breeze. Like the date palms that danced overhead.
And then she was there beside him, reflecting back at him from the water’s surface. Tarek turned to look at her, expecting to find her in pieces and already kicking himself for breaking her, no matter how necessary.
But his heart did the kicking, hard against his ribs, because this was Anya. She did not look broken in the least.
“I did not expect you to come after me,” he said.
When he could.
“Why?” Her tone was arch, and she did nothing to conceal the evidence that she’d been crying from him. She stood beside him as if it was her place, her right, and made him wonder why he thought she should conceal anything. “Because women of your acquaintance are more likely to fling themselves on the mercy of foreign countries than confront you personally? I apologize. I never did learn how to cower.”
He admired her, and that was only one of the problems. That was only one of the ways she was tearing him apart, and all she was doing was standing there, watching him calmly.
As if she could see straight through him.
And had every intention of doing it forever.
Something in Tarek...broke.
It was not the duties and responsibilities that marked his life. It had not been the losses he suffered. His mother when he was twelve. His father last year. Worse still, the brother he had loved unconditionally, until the night he’d come to kill Tarek. And had laughed while he’d tried, betraying not only Tarek in that moment, but all of Tarek’s memories of their childhood.
As if Rafiq had died that night and killed Tarek, too. Yet both of them had to live with it.
He had survived all of those things, if perhaps more scarred and furious than the cheerful boy he’d been once. He’d had no choice but to survive.
But he didn’t know how he was meant to survive this.
It was this. It was her.
It was this woman he never should have met in the first place.
And it was something about being here, far away from the civilization of the city, the dampening influence of the palace, where he could never forget for a moment that he was the King. And what, therefore, he owed everyone around him, all the time.
But out here in the desert, he was only...a man.
With her he became the things he should not whether he wished it or did not.
With her he broke into pieces when he could not break. He tore open, when he needed to remain contained. Himself above all.
