But here and now, he stopped wasting time, and kissed her.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
TENYEARSLATER, Anya waited for her husband near the pools at the oasis, on a night so like their wedding night that she found she couldn’t stop smiling.
This time, she wore a shift dress and little else, sitting on a rock with her feet in the silky water. No bulky wedding gown that had required both of them to remove.
Eventually.
They had kept their promises to each other. There had been press releases and publicity tours, but that fell under the mantle ofduty. They were both deeply dedicated to doing their duty.
But when they were alone, they were something more than a king and a queen, the embodiment of a kingdom’s hopes and dreams.
They made their own hopes and dreams, together.
He told her stories of Rafiq and the childhood they’d shared, learning how to grieve what was lost without letting what had happened tarnish the good that had happened first. And because he’d trusted her with that, she told him about her panic attacks and her mother, and how she was reclaiming her own memories of the happy life she’d had when her mother was alive.
Because grief was love. And because they were together, there was no need to fear love, no matter how it presented itself.
Loving each other was the best antidote to fear that Anya could have imagined.
And it only grew with time.
Anya gave birth to Crown Prince Hakim before their first anniversary. She stood beside Tarek on the balcony called the King’s Overlook where he’d taken her to announce their engagement, showing off the next generation to the crowds below.
“You look so happy,”she’d whispered, brought nearly to tears at the sight of this tiny creature they’d made tucked up safe and sound in his father’s arms. And she didn’t think it was entirely due to her new mother hormones, either.
It was him.
Tarek had turned to smile at her—the smile that was only for her, no matter where they happened to be.
“I have long dreamed of this moment,”he’d told her.“But I find that now it is here, what I care about is you, by my side. My Queen outside these walls. My wife within. But most of all, mine.”
“Yours,”she’d agreed.“Always yours.”
They’d made two more princes to keep Hakim company, then a brace of princesses. Each and every one of them a perfect bundle of dark eyes, dark hair, and a deep stubbornness they took pleasure in claiming came from the other.
“Behold your work,”Tarek had said one morning in the great courtyard, years back, shaking his head as his firstborn son and heir ran in circles. Naked.“This is the future of my kingdom.”
Anya had only laughed.
“That sounds familiar, doesn’t it?”she’d asked him one afternoon, years later, when their tiny, perfect eldest daughter was found in one of the palace’s public rooms.
And refused to leave.
“No,”she kept saying.“No.”
With all the consequence of a king.
Tarek had laughed too, but he’d also pulled Anya close and kissed her soundly.
They tended to their duties, they were deeply involved in the raising of their children, and at night they repaired to the King’s royal suite and set themselves on fire.
Over and over and over again.
Year after year. Whether Anya was big with child or not. Whether they had fought for days or not.
They might not have always agreed with each other. They might have spent hours shouting. She was too direct and he was too arrogant and sometimes those things left bruises no matter how much they loved each other.