It had felt more than holy to Anya.
The sand and the sky. The stars.
The two of them in a circle of fire while the elders sang over them.
Anya sighed now, remembering the stark beauty all around them. The press of the songs and chants against her skin, winding all around their clasped hands.
“If I hadn’t ended up in your prison, I never would have known,”she’d whispered to Tarek.“How much beauty there is in the world. Particularly here.”
Particularly you, she’d thought, perilously close to letting those words she shouldn’t say spill out to join the rest of the night’s magic.
“Tomorrow,habibti,”he’d said, his dark eyes gleaming.
Out on her favorite chaise, Anya waited as the sun rose. The city below her shook itself to life in preparation. Songs filled the air, alive with the sweetness of the coming day. She pulled her throw tighter around her, breathing in the desert air mixed with the palace’s usualbakhoor, a smoky scent that would always be Tarek to her. She sighed as the first tendrils of light and color snuck across the sky while she watched. Yellows and oranges. A glorious purple.
As the sun climbed, the air warmed.
Anya did, too.
And the light danced all over her, reminding her that she was still free. That stone cells were a thing of the past. That what lay before her might not look like anything she’d thought she wanted—or should want—but made her feel, finally, that it might actually be possible to be happy.
A revolution,she thought.
Only then did she get up and head inside to begin the long process of getting ready for her wedding. Her royal wedding that would be broadcast around the world as part of the press release portion of the bargain she’d made with Tarek.
And in Alzalam, wedding preparations were a largely public affair. Her seamstresses swept in and out. All of Tarek’s family returned, flooding in as if the dressing of the bride was a party they were throwing—more for themselves than her.
Once Anya was dressed in her finery and several thousand photographs had been taken, men were allowed in as well. Trays of food were brought in while the guests mingled all throughout the sprawling suite. Anya stood in one of the smaller salons, catching glimpses of herself in the enormous mirror propped against the wall while she thanked the guests for coming, one after the next, until it was all little more than a blur.
She looked like something out of a dream she hadn’t known she’d had. Her dressmakers had truly outdone themselves, somehow managing to fuse both Tarek’s world and hers into the sweep of the long white gown. She looked exactly as she should—like a beacon of a kind of hope.
Like the future she imagined here, bright beyond measure.
And then, perhaps inevitably, her father walked in.
She could tell by the way he marched into the salon, holding his body sharply and crisply, that he was still in high dudgeon from the other night. That he wasdeeply offendedhung around him like a cloud, likely discernible even to those who hadn’t spent a lifetime parsing his moods. The way he snapped the door shut behind him only underscored it.
That he wanted her to apologize to him—even though he’d had an entire day to get over what had happened at that dinner, having not been part of yesterday’s rituals—was clear by the imperious way he glared at her as he stood there, Charisma standing to one side and slightly behind him, as if he didn’t notice his only daughter on a dais before him.
In a bridal gown, with jewels in her hair.
Tarek’s sister Nur had teared up when she’d seen Anya.“You look like everything my brother deserves,”she’d said.
But her own father looked at her and saw only himself.
Anya kept herself from sighing, barely, because that wasn’t anything new, was it?
“It’s so nice of you to come and wish me health and happiness, Dad,” she said, and she imagined she saw Charisma wince a bit. “Thank you.”
Dr. Preston Turner did not wince. He hardly reacted.
“This is a low, even for you,” he told her, the force of his outrage making his voice even crisper and more precise than usual. “It’s not enough that you should humiliate yourself in this way and on such a grand scale when you are clearly in no fit state to make decisions of this magnitude. Look at the mess you’ve already made of your life. But that you should sit silently by and allow me to suffer such attacks...”
His voice trailed off. Anya mused, almost idly, that she had never seen her father at a loss for words in all her life. Not until now.
Point to Tarek, she couldn’t help but think.
Sadly, he recovered. With a furious glare. “I thought I couldn’t be more disappointed in you, Anya. Trust you to go ahead and prove me wrong yet again.”