Johara ran her fingertips over the water. It was sublime. She’d lost track of how long they’d been here. An hour? Less? More?
‘Almost four years.’
His brows drew together.
‘You’re surprised?’
He laughed. ‘Are you a mind-reader now?’
She pressed her face closer to his. ‘Yours is easy to read.’
‘Oh?’
‘For me, at least.’
‘Ah.’ His grin sparked butterflies in her bloodstream.
‘I should have thought your brother would object.’
She smiled indulgently. ‘Mal didn’t like the idea at first.’
She felt Amir stiffen at Johara’s use of the diminutive of Malik’s name. ‘But you changed his mind?’
‘We came to a compromise.’
Her smile became harder to keep in place. Her eyes shifted away from Amir’s.
‘And it was?’
‘That I should go. For a time.’
Amir’s features darkened. ‘For a time? You mean until it suited him to have you come back?’
She wanted to defend Malik but, in truth, the terms they’d struck—terms which had, at the time, seemed reasonable—now infuriated her. ‘More or less.’ She lifted her shoulders. ‘I’m a princess of Taquul. My place is in my country.’
‘Where do you want to be?’
Her eyes widened. No one had asked her that before.
‘Let’s pretend you’re not a princess,’ he said quietly. ‘Where would you choose to make your life?’
Johara’s heart turned over in her chest. The first answer that sprang to her mind was ludicrous. Too fanciful to say, much less give credit to. She’d spent five days in Ishkana, and it was a country that would never accept or welcome her. Why should she feel such an immense bond to this place? Her eyes ran over Amir’s face without her meaning them to. The answer was right in front of her. Wherever you are.
Stricken, she tried to smile and pulled away from him in the water, swimming towards the edge. He came after her.
‘You can’t answer?’
Oh, she could answer, but the answer would terrify both of them. She bit down on her lip, and strove for a light tone of voice.
‘I am what I am, Amir. I’m Johara Qadir, Princess of Taquul, and while I loved everything about New York, I always knew it was temporary. I knew that, one day, he’d ask me to return home and assume the responsibilities that have been mine since birth.’
But Amir was frustrated by that; she could read it in the terse lines of his face.
‘Don’t pretend that if you had a sister it would be any different,’ she teased, surprised she could sound so light when her heart was splintering and cracking.
He frowned. ‘I cannot say what it would be like,’ he agreed. ‘I understand that he wants you back in Taquul. But marrying Paris is part of the agreement, isn’t it?’
She dropped her gaze to the water. Tiny ripples moved from her fingertips towards the water’s edge. She watched their progress, thinking of how like life that was—a small action could have such far-reaching consequences. ‘Yes.’ Her eyes swept shut. ‘It’s what my brother intends for me to do.’