“What you make of this marriage, whether you view it as a cage or your freedom is, as always, up to you.”
Saira came bursting into the room, pink high in her cheeks. “He’s arrived in the Throne Hall.”
Zohra didn’t need to be told again who it was that was waiting for her.
Her gaze anxiously shifting between Zohra and their father, Saira handed Zohra the bouquet of white lilies. Her palms were clammy as though she were walking to her execution rather than her wedding.
As the sweet scent of the flowers tickled her nose, Zohra took her father’s offered hand. For a moment, she couldn’t get her legs to move, couldn’t shake off the sudden fear that descended over her.
In the next, she was standing at the entrance to the Throne Hall, a vast chamber with a high, circular dome ceiling. The moment Zohra and her father crossed the threshold, traditional Dahaaran music blared to life from their left and right. The festive sounds set her heart thumping in tune.
A gasp fell from her lips. The whole setting could have been torn out of her worn-out copy of One Thousand and One Arabian Nights. Back when she had still been enchanted enough to believe the magical stories spun by her father, before the reality of duty and obligation had shattered her world, before the truth of a princess’s life had forced her to grow up too fast.
The hall was huge with at least a thousand gold-edged chairs on either side, leaving a carpeted path between for her to walk. The floor was cream-colored marble with inlaid jewels.
The carpeted path was strewn with red rose petals. Zohra followed the path with her eyes to the other end of the hall, where there was a wide dais. Sheer gold-and-beige-colored fabrics draped across the dais which was built of steps leading to a gold-edged throne, wide enough for two. Thousands of cream-colored roses, with bloodred roses here and there, adorned every step and surface of the dais.
And standing next to the throne, his navy uniform contrastingly starkly against the richly romantic background, a blur to her panic-stricken gaze, was her bridegroom.
Never for a moment had she imagined such a lavish wedding, or such a forbidding-looking man waiting for her at the end of it. She had imagined the same day with Faisal so many times. A simple wedding free of obligations and duty with the man she loved, both of them able to live the life they had wanted.
How had such a simple dream turned into dust?
Her heart thudded hard against her rib cage, her chest incredibly tight.
Across the vast hall, her gaze met Prince Ayaan’s. And held.
She had expected him to be just as isolated from her as he had been through the parade. And yet, she could swear he was tuned to her every step, every breath, as if they were the only two people in the huge hall.
Her nerves stretched tight at the intensity of that gaze. It burned hot, alive, intense and she realized she was the cause of it. That awareness between them, it had a life of its own across the vast hall.
Was he anchoring her or was she anchoring him onto a path neither wanted to go on?
Sucking in a breath, she severed the connection, and focused on something beyond his shoulder. An uncontrollable shaking took root in her.
She did not need his strength, imagined or real, nor did he need hers.
The setting of the wedding, the festivities and joy around her, it was all getting to her.
This marriage will be whatever you make of it.
For once, Zohra agreed with her father’s practical advice and she intended to set the tone for it from the beginning. And that meant remembering the prince and she were nothing but strangers brought together by duty.
* * *
Ayaan heard Zohra’s answer to the imam’s question, her voice crystal clear with no hesitation in it. The second time and then the third time, she gave her consent to the wedding.
Whatever doubts she’d had, no one would detect even a hint of it in her voice right then.
Or that she was, in any way, not fit to be the future queen of Dahaar. After she had left that night, he had wondered not only at his father’s decision to choose a woman with tainted birth—even if it wasn’t her fault—but even more, someone as impulsive and hotheaded as her.
But had his father seen the strength and poise she radiated with her very presence as she did now? Had he seen the assertiveness, the intelligence that shone from her gaze? Had he thought Ayaan needed an educated, even an unconventional wife to compensate for...
Suddenly it was his turn to give consent and the imam’s words washed over him.
He gave his consent, his promise to cherish, protect and love Zohra Katherine Naasar for the rest of his life, the words sticking in his throat.
Protecting her—that was the only promise he could keep and to do that, he needed to keep his wife as far from the reaches of his darkness as possible. He slipped an emerald ring, seated among tiny diamonds, onto her finger. And extended his own hand for her to do the same.