“Does it truly matter, Your Highness, when I already know you will choose for me whomever you think is best?”
King Zaal went quiet at that, and Kamran’s heart wrenched at the confirmation of his fears.
“Even so,” the king said finally. “You might at least act as if you are at a ball and not a funeral, dire though the circumstances may be. I want your engagement announced before the week is out. I want you married before the month is done. I want an heir before the year is finished. This night is not to be disturbed before its purpose is fulfilled. Are we clear?”
The prince tensed his jaw and studied the crowd, wondering how their numbers seemed to bloat before his eyes. “Yes, Your Majesty,” he said quietly.
Kamran’s gaze landed unexpectedly on the Fesht boy, who stood idly by, wringing his hands. The child stared often at the entrance, and with obvious anticipation. His eyes were red from sobbing, but as he’d been expressly forbidden from crying at the ball—under threat of expulsion—he only bit his lip and flinched every time a name was announced.
Kamran frowned.
He could not understand what the child was searching for. Certainly Omid knew no one else here; he had no family to name. No friends.
Why then, did he seem so eager?
A finely dressed older woman came suddenly forward, and the prince, distracted, did not at first discern the familiar face of his aunt—and then, disarmed, could not hide his relief. Kamran was so pleased to see Duchess Jamilah that he took her outstretched hand and bowed before it, paying the woman an undue level of respect that attracted a number of unwelcome stares.
A beat too late, he realized his aunt was not alone.
“Your Highness,” said Duchess Jamilah, flushing slightly under his attentions. “It is my great thrill this evening to introduce to you the daughter of a dear friend of mine.”
Kamran felt—and heard—the king straighten in his seat. The prince steeled himself as he turned, studying now the young woman standing beside his aunt.
“Please allow me the pleasure of formally presenting Lady Golnaz, daughter of Marquess Saatchi.”
Kamran nodded, and the girl fell into a graceful curtsy, rising before him to reveal clear brown eyes and an uncomplicated smile. She possessed ordinary, familiar features neither remarkable nor plain. Her brown waves were pulled back from her face in a loose chignon; she wore a nondescript gown with little to recommend its color or shape. Intellectually, Kamran understood that the girl was an approximation of pretty, but he felt nothing when he looked at her, and would never have noticed her in a crowd.
Still, she seemed self-possessed in a way he appreciated. Of all things, Kamran thought he could never be married to someone he didn’t consider his emotional equal, and he struggled always to respect young ladies who only simpered, never holding up their heads with conviction. Dignity was, in his opinion, an essential quality in a queen, and he was at least relieved to discover that Lady Golnaz appeared the owner of a spine.
“The pleasure is mine,” he forced himself to say to the young woman. “I trust you are enjoying yourself this evening, Lady Golnaz.”
“I am, thank you,” she said in a bright voice, a smile touching her eyes. “Though I think the same cannot be said for you, Your Highness.”
The prince stilled at that, studying the young woman now with a renewed appreciation. “My pride would insist that I disagree, though I—” Kamran paused, blinking up at a blur of a girl in the distance, there and gone again.
“I . . .” he said, returning his eyes to Lady Golnaz, struggling now to remember the original purpose of his statement. “I cannot . . .”
Another flash of color and Kamran looked up again, wondering, even then, why he should be so distracted by a single movement when the entire room around him was a madness of motion and—
Alizeh.
The prince was transfixed. Blood rushed from his head without warning, leaving him light-headed.
She was here.
She was here—just there—incandescent in shimmering waves of lavender, obsidian curls pinned away from her unmasked face, a few loose tendrils glancing off her cheeks, which had gone pink with exertion. If he’d thought her breathtaking in the drab garb of a servant’s dress, he could not think how to describe her now. He only knew that she seemed apart from this mundane world; above it.
The mere sight of her had paralyzed him.
There was no linen at her throat, no bandages wrapped around her hands. She seemed to glow as she moved, float as she searched the room. Kamran lost his breath as he watched her, felt his heart hammer in his chest with a violence that scared him.