Hair! She’d forgotten the headscarf!
Heart in her throat, she bolted to the dressing room, snagged the black one, and raced back to the bedroom. No sooner had she returned and wrapped her head than the click of the lock sounded.
Asim pitched open the door and stepped in. Glanced around as if she could’ve possibly snuck someone into the room. “Let’s go,” he gruffed.
Swallowing, she stepped out, noticing an ominous quiet in the cavernous, columned marble passage. She took in the long hall that spanned right and left, with many elaborate arches and an endless array of plants and chandeliers. For the first time since being relocated to the bedroom yesterday, she realized she’d not heard anyone coming or going. Or talking. Only her guard and Zayna.
Asim stalked away from her. “Stay close,” he barked and banked right around a corner.
No windows or doors lined this narrow stretch of hall that led to a thin set of stairs leading down three levels. Servant’s stairs, she guessed by the lack of ornamentation and simplicity of design.
Once on the main level, he turned left and headed down a long passage. A few minutes later, they pushed through a door into a grand foyer that presented itself with the luxury expected of a royal palace. Ahead, twin staircases of white marble and bannisters trimmed in black and gold—literal gold—swung around and over a passage to another hall.
Asim strode beneath the flanking staircases. At double-arched doors, he veered toward the right one. Voices haunted the hall as they passed a dozen or more. A din of conversation grew and came to a crescendo, leveling as Asim stopped before a set of doors and tugged one open in a way that kept him out of sight.
Leighton glanced inside. Her heart climbed into her throat at the sight—the crowd. Roughly twenty people in there… Princess Daria, the bride-to-be, laughed hysterically at her fiancé, Hassan, who had an inch-wide beard that traced his jaw and upper lip.
Leighton felt her stomach tighten, recalling his barked command to her in the outer garden. She swallowed, her gaze colliding with Prince Nasir, whose eyes were sharp as daggers. He stood with another, taller man who seemed somehow more casual in the thobe and ghutra, which was held in place with the black igal. She did not recognize the tall man, though she guessed him to be one of the princes of the Central Kingdom. It was impossible to keep them all straight, and she could never learn all of the Saudi Arabian princes’ names since there were over fifteen hundred!
Stiffening as conversations fell away and all gazes found her, she felt a poke in her back, urging her forward. Even as she entered and shifted aside, she heard the door whisper closed behind her. Being painfully aware she was out of place forced her to lock her eyes on the intricate design of the cream-colored carpet with red-and-black foliage. Slowly, chatter rose, their Arabic not quiet. Clearly they assumed she did not speak the language. Fighting the urge not to react at the epithets and slurs hurled about her, she did not budge.
“Ah, Nouri!” cried Princess Daria in dramatic excitement. “You are here at last.”
Leighton shivered in the icy silence, only then detecting in her periphery that the princess was crossing the room, her shoes padding determinedly on the rug.
Daria clicked her tongue. “What in the world have they put you in?”
Gaze skidding around, Leighton allowed it to streak over the kohl-lined eyes of the one before her, relieved to find the princess peering back at the other royals.
Daria turned, took her arm, and drew her from the anonymity of the wall. “Family,” she said in English, dragging her into the fray. “This is Nouri. She’s…” Her near-black eyes assessed her, then swung to the gathered with a breathy laugh, “our cousin.”
A stern man in a white ghutra stalked closer and remonstrated the princess in Arabic, said it was inappropriate to call this American family.
Turning her gaze to Leighton, Princess Daria motioned to the man. “Nouri, have you met Maaz?”
The crown prince!
Leighton started, unable to hide her shock from the heir to the throne.
“Come, Daria,” another man—the only one without the ghutra but still in a long tunic and slacks—said with a laugh. “You are embarrassing the poor girl.”
“Rayan, that’s absurd!” the princess objected, taking Leighton’s hand and drawing her toward the table.
“If it is embarrassing to be with us,” hissed the princess’s fiancé in Arabic, “she should not be here.”
As if I had any choice.
“Personally,” the man continued, “I count it an honor?—”
“Enough, Hassan,” Daria groaned. Rolling her eyes, she turned to a woman next to her, who looked even younger than Leighton and wore a very flattering tan kaftan with beads and gems down the front. This could be Princess Aliyah, the youngest of the royal heirs in residence at Omnia, according to Zayna’s list.
Murmurs undulated around Leighton as the princess directed her to gilt chairs with brocade cushions.
“Here,” Daria said, indicating to one along the side. “You will sit by me and Hassan.”
“That is not possible, my sweet,” her fiancé said, hovering near his bride-to-be, “as you are seated next to Nasir, and I beside you.”
Daria moaned. “You are all being very dull.”
