She had to hope that it would grow easier, as, indeed, in many ways it already had in the past few years. Seeing Jeremy thrive—seeing him happy and so deeply loved—healed parts of herself she had not known were broken. She hoped that someday it would do the same for Tariq.
“I do not know what family means,” Tariq said in a low voice. He turned toward her, catching her by surprise, seeming to fill the space between them. “I have never had anyone look at me the way that boy looked at your sister. His mother.” His gaze was so fierce then that it made Jessa catch her breath. “Except you. Even now, after everything I have done to you.”
Their eyes locked. He reached over and tucked a stray curl behind her ear, then took her face in his hands. The warmth of his touch sped through her veins, heating her from within.
“I have already lost a son,” he said, his voice almost too low, as if it hurt him. “I cannot lose you, Jessa. Not you, too.”
Joy eased into her then, nudging aside the grief. It was a trickle at first, and then, as he continued to look at her with his face so open, so honest, it widened until it flowed—a hard and complex kind of joy, flavored with all they had lost and all the ways they were tied together.
She reached across the space between them, over her fears and their shared grief, and slid her hand up to hold him as he held her—holding that strong, harsh face, looking deep into the promises in his dark green eyes.
“Then you won’t,” she whispered as if it were a vow.
She would let the fear go this time, instead of him.
She would love him as long as he let her.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
HE HEARD her laughter before he saw her.
Tariq strode down the wide palace corridor, past the ancient tapestries and archaeological pieces that told the story of Nur’s long history in each successive niche along the way. The floor beneath his feet was tiled, mosaics stretching before him and behind him, all in vibrant colors as befit the royal palace of a king. When he reached the wide, arched doors that opened into the palace’s interior courtyard, he paused.
Jessa was so beautiful, she took his breath away. She was a shock of cinnamon and copper against the brilliant blue sky, the white walls, and the palm trees that clanked gently overhead in the afternoon breeze. She seemed brighter to him than the vivid flowering plants that spilled from the balconies on the higher floors, and the sparkle of the fountain in the courtyard’s center. She had set aside her novel and was watching the antics of two plump little birds who danced on the fountain’s edge. She wore a long linen tunic over loose trousers in the fashion of his people, her feet in thonged sandals. Around her neck she wore a piece of jade suspended from a chain that she had found in one of the city’s marketplaces.
She looked as if she belonged exactly where she was.
Mine, he thought, not for the first time.
He crossed to her, smiling when she seemed to sense him and glanced around—smiling more when her face lit up.
“I thought you would be gone until tomorrow,” she said, her delight evident in her voice, in the gleam in her eyes, though she did not throw herself into his arms as she might have in a less public area of the palace.
“My business concluded early,” he said. He had made sure of it—he wanted to be away from Jessa less and less. In some sense, she was the only family he had ever known. What they had lost together made him feel more bound to her than he had ever been to another human being. And he could think of only one way to ensure that he never need be apart from her again. The birds chattered at him from their new perch on the higher rim of the fountain. “You have been here nearly a month and still you are fascinated by the birds?” He eyed her. “Perhaps you should get out more.”
“Perhaps I should,” she agreed. He watched as her gaze shuttered, hiding her feelings from him as she still did from time to time whenever any hint of a discussion of their future appeared. It was time to end it.
“As a matter of fact,” he said quietly, “that is what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“Getting out?” she asked, frowning slightly.
“In a manner of speaking,” he said. He looked down at her, wanting to pull her into his arms and kiss his way into this discussion. That seemed to be the language in which they were both fluent. “I want to talk about the future. You and me.”
Jessa went very still. The splash of water in the fountain behind her was all Tariq heard for a long moment, while her eyes went dark.
Then she lifted her chin, defiant and brave to the end. “There is no need,” she said with a certain grace, drawing herself up and onto her feet. She picked up her book and tucked it underneath her arm with stiff, jerky movements. “I have always known this day was coming.”