“Yes,” his voice had a strained, faraway quality. “Their name means chorister, or something similar.”
She swallowed, and turned her attention back to the palace.
“What do you think?” Zamir realised that he cared a lot more for her good opinion than he wanted to acknowledge.
Were there eighteen or nineteen of those pretty little turrets? Did it matter? It was enormous. “It’s a palace fit for a King,” she said finally. She kept her features carefully neutral. “And his prisoner. How long do you intend to keep me here for?”
His eyes shimmered in his face. “Let us discuss that inside.”
A full set of servants had appeared outside the palace gates. One opened the door of the car, and the rest formed a sort of line.
Olivia startled as she looked at them, and Zamir, long accustomed to such trappings, had to remind himself that this was a whole other level of existence to Olivia.
Yet her awe served him, and so he did very little to ease her worry. “Just walk with me and don’t make eye contact with any of them.”
“I’m not allowed to look at your servants?”
“They’re not allowed to look at you,” he corrected gruffly.
“But why? I’ve looked at them before. They’ve looked at me. When we were in Vegas.”
“Nothing about this will be the same as then,” he muttered.
Her pulse was firing like a mosquito at a campfire. Her blood burned and her legs felt shaky.
The whole walk into the palace, a voice inside of her was shouting at her to stop. To demand to be taken back to the airport. But she didn’t, and she could have easily said why.
Despite everything that had happened, she trusted Zamir. She wasn’t sure she loved him now, or that she ever had. But she knew that deep down he was basically a good person.
If the exterior of the palace was awe-inspiring, then the inside was a whole new level of divine. The ceilings were vaulted and at least three stories high. The floors were marble and they shone like the surface of a beautiful lake. The walls were painted a rich blue, but there were swirls of gold that Olivia just knew to be real.
“This way,” he said, changing direction and moving down another corridor. This one was lined with plum coloured carpet, and here the walls were pure gold.
“The family’s wing,” he said unnecessarily. “I grew up here.”
There were paintings on the walls, and she slowed when she reached one of Zamir. It was a stunning likeness, though he had been younger when he sat for it. Beside it hung a full length painting of Ra’if.
She smiled to see them together like that. Two brothers, so much more alike than they realised.
Zamir saw her reaction and misinterpreted it. His frustration grew in leaps and bounds.
“Would you like me to have it moved into my room where you can study it full time?”
She whipped her head around and the pained shock was impossible to miss. “You’re behaving like a child,” she responded finally, her voice hoarse.
He turned away from her. She was right, and that only made him feel worse.
He walked quickly; she would have had to run to keep up. So she walked. Slowly, sedately and with as much dignity as she could mottle together, given the circumstances.
At the end of the corridor, he pressed a button on the wall, and two gold and glass doors swept inwards. The apartment beyond was clearly palatial in size and décor, but it also appeared to be private.
“My residence,” he confirmed with a curt nod. He stood back and waited for her to precede him.
Olivia moved inside with caution, and then finally, several metres in the door, she whipped around. “So?” Her breathing was ragged, her expression difficult to interpret.
Zamir stared at her as though she was something new and strange; a curio he could not quite piece together.
“So,” he repeated, evidently not experiencing any of the upheaval she was navigating.