‘What? Suddenly you can’t recognise it when it happens?’ Zara gave her a doubtful look. ‘Enough of that. I need to know what you saw.’
Everything Aisha was about to say would ruin all their plans. ‘I was on a ship. Sailing towards an unfamiliar place.’ She swallowed. ‘Tariq was there.’
Zara’s eyes widened a little. ‘You were on a ship? With the prince?’
Aisha nodded.
There was a long, thoughtful silence before Zara said, ‘We can fix this.’
‘What do you mean?’
Zara held on to her hips, turning in a circle as she worked through the implications. ‘You can go to Gruisea in her place.’
Aisha blinked, shocked. ‘What?’
Stopping, Zara asked, ‘You’re sure it was you on that ship?’
‘Yes.’ The word was a whisper.
Zara nodded, as though deciding on something. ‘Then you will take her place.’
Aisha stepped back from her sister’s words. ‘No. You’re putting too much faith in what I saw.’
‘Have they ever been wrong? These visions of yours?’
Aisha tried to think of one time they had been inaccurate in order to back herself but came up blank.
‘What about when Omar cut his foot,’ Zara continued, ‘and you saw the whole thing the day before it happened. Was any detail incorrect? The colour of his trousers, perhaps?’
Aisha exhaled. ‘No.’
‘Then this path has already been decided, hasn’t it?’
A thousand thoughts and feelings hit Aisha at the same time. ‘You heard what he said. He doesn’t want a wife raised inside walls.’
‘We already know he will want you.’
‘But why?’ Aisha shook her head. ‘He doesn’t know anything about me.’
Zara looked around as though the answer lay somewhere in the courtyard. ‘Well, Baba always said he knew from the moment he laid eyes on Mama.’
The comment threw Aisha. Zara never spoke of matters of the heart because it wasn’t practical. They had all assumed that part of her had been suffocated years ago.
‘I just know we need to take full advantage of this attraction before it wanes,’ Zara added. Then, softer, ‘We’re running out of time.’
That sounded much more like the sister Aisha knew.
‘So I’ll go back in there and get this deal done,’ Zara said, the strength returning to her voice.
Aisha glanced in the direction of the garden. ‘And if we’re wrong?’
‘I can be wrong.’ Zara took a slow step forwards, closing the distance between them. ‘But your vision can’t.’
Chapter 2
The Mad King of Avanid seemed surprisingly… sane. Yes, he sweated too much for the climate, and he gripped his robe as though it was the one thing keeping him upright, but the rumours of his mental deterioration had been somewhat exaggerated. He was more than capable of coherent conversation—even if he clearly wished he were elsewhere.
Tariq’s gaze drifted to Kaidon, his anxious bodyguard who was pacing nearby, then to Aisha and Zara, visible through the archway at the edge of the garden. It was abundantly clear that the eldest princess was the one making all the decisions.
