His brows furrowed. “To gold?”
“This is silk, yes,” she explained, “but it’s silk woven witha gold-spun weft. The threads are, in some places, wrapped with gold fibers. And here”—she grazed the raised embroidery at the collar, at the lapels—“here it’s overlaid with yet more goldwork. These are real gold threads, did you not know?”
“No,” he said, but he was staring at her strangely; for a moment his gaze dropped to her mouth. “I didn’t know one might weave gold into fabric.”
Alizeh took a breath, stole back her hand.
“Yes,” she said. “The garment should feel heavy, and perhaps a bit rough against the skin, but it shouldn’t hurt you. It certainly shouldn’t feel like needles.”
“How do you know this?”
“Never mind that,” she said, avoiding his eyes. “What’s more important is that you are in pain.”
“Yes.” He took a step closer. “A great deal of it.”
“I’m—I’m sorry to hear it,” she said, nervous now. She began to ramble. “It’s quite rare, but I think you might have an aversion to gold. You should perhaps avoid wearing such textiles in future, and if you want a softer fabric, you might be more specific and ask your seamstress for silk charmeuse, or satin, and avoid georgette and certain types of, of taffeta or—or even—”
She stopped breathing when he touched her, when his hands landed at her waist, then moved down her hips, his fingers grazing her skin through the layers of sheer fabric. She gasped, felt her back sink against the marble column.
He was so close.
He smelled like orange blossoms and something else, heatand musk, leather—
“Why did you come tonight?” he asked. “How? And your injuries— This dress—”
“Kamran—”
“Say you came back for me,” he whispered. There was a thread of desire in his voice that threatened the good sense in her head, her very composure. “Tell me you came to find me. That you changed your mind.”
“How—how can you even say such things,” she said, her hands beginning to tremble, “on an evening you are meant to choose another as your bride?”
“I choose you,” he said simply. “I want you.”
“We— Kamran, you cannot— You know it would be madness.”
“I see.” He bowed his head and drew away, leaving her cold. “So you’ve come for another reason entirely. Will you not share that reason with me now?”
Alizeh said nothing. She could think of nothing.
She heard him sigh.
It was a moment before he said, “Then may I ask you a different question?”
“Yes,” she said, desperate to say something. “Yes, of course.”
He looked up, met her eyes. “How, precisely, do you know the Tulanian king?”
Thirty-Seven
KAMRAN SCHOOLED HIS EXPRESSION AShe waited, masking the pain that seized him now. Twin agonies assaulted his heart, his skin. The clothes he wore this evening had grown only more painful by the minute, and now this—this spasm—that threatened to fissure his chest. He could hardly look at Alizeh as he waited for her to speak. Had he misjudged her altogether? Had he become every inch the fool his grandfather and minister had accused him of becoming? At every turn she was a surprise, her intentions impossible to grasp, her actions confounding.
Why would she be so friendly with the sovereign of an enemy empire? How—when—did their friendship begin?
Kamran had hoped Alizeh might absolve herself of any objectionable suspicions by admitting she’d come tonight for him, to be with him; that she’d so easily dismissed this possibility had been both a blow and a confirmation—an endorsement of his silent fears.
For why, then, had she come at all?
Why would she sneak into a royal ball held inside his home, her injuries miraculously healed, her servants’ clothing miraculously gone? Why, after so many desperate efforts to cling to her snoda—to hide her identity—would she discard the mask now, revealing herself in the middle of a ballwhere any stranger might see her for who she was?
