Love.
Irsa had all but confessed her feelings in the desert. And she thought Rahim at least returned a measure of her sentiments. Or at the very least cared for her a great deal.
But he had yet to say a word on the matter.
Irsa wet her lower lip with the tip of her tongue, her throat suddenly dry. “Was there—something you wanted to tell me?”
He took in a breath through his nose. “There was . . . and yet there wasn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s just it.” Rahim sighed. “When I’m around you, you make me forget.”
“Forget?” Irritation began to gather at the bridge of her nose.
“At the same time you make me remember.”
“You’re confusing me, Rahim al-Din Walad.” Irsa crossed her arms as though that would conceal the sudden thrum of her heart.
Grinning, he scrubbed a palm over his tightly marcelled curls, knocking loose a shower of sand. “I should want to say a great many things to you, Irsa al-Khayzuran. I should want to thank you for saving me today. To thank you for saving my best friend. But”—Rahim took a slow step toward her—“that’s not what I want to do.”
“What—what do you want to do?” she breathed.
Another step. Too close and yet still so far away. “I want to ask you something.”
“Then ask it.” The warm scent of linseed oil and oranges reached out to Irsa, beckoning her even closer. Asking her to stay.
When Rahim swallowed, the heavy knot in his throat rose and fell.
“May I kiss you?”
“Why are you asking permission?” Irsa murmured. “Doesn’t that—ruin the moment?”
“No.” He smiled, but its edges wavered with a deeper meaning. “Because it’s not just a kiss.”
“Why is that?”
“Because when I kiss you, I want yours to be the first . . . and last lips I ever kiss.”
“Oh,” she said for the second time. For the last time.
It was a sigh and an acknowledgment, all at once.
“So”—Rahim reached up to push the hair back from her face—“may I kiss you, Irsa al-Khayzuran?”
Her heart stopped, then started anew, faster and more fervent than ever before.
“Yes.”
His face solemn, Rahim bent toward her, tipping her nose upward with his. She felt him tremble as he brushed a tentative kiss to the furrow of her lips, so soft at first. Then he settled his mouth fully against hers, and Irsa finally understood.
Understood what it meant to feel at home wherever you were. To feel as though you belonged in any moment, at any place, in any time.
Because at that moment, with the press of Rahim’s lips to hers, with the touch of his tongue sending wildfire through her veins, she knew she would always be home here.
With this boy. In this moment. In this time.
And that her heart would never be lonely again.
Tariq had wandered the whole of the Badawi camp twice. Both treks had been completed in a trance. All the while, his emotions had been a flurry of remorse and resentment. Of anger and anguish.
He did not know what to do.
The last thing Tariq had ever wanted to see was the girl he loved more than anything fall beneath his arrow. Fall to the blindness of his own rage.
And Tariq had watched. He’d watched all of it.
He’d been unable to turn away.
Because it was his fault.
Tariq had realized it the moment he’d released the arrow. The instant he’d loosed it from the sinew.
He’d wanted to take it back.
Of course Shahrzad had leapt to save the boy-king. She had always been one to give all to those she loved. Just as she’d been willing to risk all to avenge Shiva. In the end, it should have surprised no one—least of all Tariq—that Shahrzad had reached for the Caliph of Khorasan without a second thought.
But Tariq had not counted on the boy-king acting in kind. He’d not counted on him putting his life before hers. Without a moment’s hesitation.
Yet Tariq had watched him move to shield her with his own body.
Just as Tariq would have done.
Tariq knew then—as he’d known when he’d read the letter Shahrzad kept tucked in her cloak—that this was not an ordinary love born of a passing fancy.
In truth, Tariq had known even then that he could not win. That this was not a battle to be won.
Only a fool would have continued to think otherwise.
Yet Tariq had chosen to be a fool.
And he knew it now, with a cold, unwavering kind of certainty. The same kind of certainty he’d felt beneath the Grand Portico when he’d first realized Shahrzad loved the boy-king. He’d ignored the truth that fateful afternoon. But now, despite all Tariq’s rash dreaming, all his desperate thoughts that, one day, if Shahrzad and the boy-king were parted from each other long enough . . . Tariq knew his wishes would never come to pass.
Shahrzad would never return to Taleqan with him.