She would forgive him for his deception if only he asked her to.
Her eyes welled with tears. She needed to leave before she made a scene. ‘I need a moment,’ she told her brothers. Irfan opened his mouth to protest, but she held up a hand. ‘Don’t come after me.’
She ran up the stairs, exiting out into the quiet hall, where she listened to the sound of her shuddering breath. The halls were dark save for the moonlight streaming in from the wide windows. Sonya moved over to one, clutching the windowsill, staring out at the cloudy night. She wished she could see the sparkling stars, but they were all hidden.
Taking deep breaths, Sonya tried to calm herself. A few moments later, she heard someone entering the hall, coming towards her. Irritation at her brothers burst through her.
‘I said not to follow,’ she snapped, turning to scold whichever of her brothers had come after her, but the words died on her lips when she saw it was Azam.
The corridor was empty save for the two of them, and her pulse quickened as he grew nearer, stepping into the moonlight.
He had fit in perfectly at the ball in his formal dress, yet he looked so out of place to her. He pulled at the collar of his jacquard waistcoat, looking uncomfortable. She missed his worn shirts, open at the throat and lazily tucked into his trousers when he came down for breakfast; his bare feet, padding around the cottage; his rolled-up sleeves as he helped her with chores.
His hair was brushed back, held together with some sort of gel, and she resisted the urge to go and ruin all that careful styling. She missed his messy, wavy hair.
She had felt his hair knotted in her fingers when he’d kissed her. The sweet memory was sharp and painful now, like fruit that had been poisoned.
Standing right in front of her, he stared, as if taking in every detail. She wondered if it was just as jarring for him to see her as a princess: the dress, the jewels, the crown. Her hair done up when he was used to seeing it down and wavy. The whole thing gave her a headache.
Azam worked his jaw, and she could see he was deep in thought, struggling to find the right words.
Sonya waited to see what he would say, but she was met with only continued silence.
Say something, anything.
She knew even now that if he did, if he just reached his hand out for her like he did that very first night, she would follow him anywhere. Which was dangerous. She should not trust him or want to be with him after everything, and yet, and yet…her traitorous heart still beat for him, only for him.
But he would not speak. There was something stopping him.
The Azam that had kissed her was gone. Which meant thatshe could no longer be the Sonya that he had kissed. She looked away.
‘Please,’ she said, voice a whisper. ‘Just let me go.’
She went, and this time, he did not follow.
26
Sonya cried herself to sleep after the ball and woke up with a puffy face. Elspeth spent half an hour pressing a cold cloth to her face. Sonya held her wrist, calmed by Elspeth’s presence.
She didn’t know what to do with herself, her heart hurt so very much. But she had a busy schedule; there was no time to wallow. Every hour of the day was packed with various activities and private time with each of the suitors.
Sonya put on a brave face, going through with all of it.
The day passed in a blur. Each man was nice, with good qualities, but she had no idea how she was meant to pick one to spend the rest of her life with. Why couldn’t it have been easy?
That night, after dinner, she and her brothers sat with her father in his room, drinking kahwa. The minty green tea was soothingafter a long day, and she was in her nightgown with a thick robe on top, her hair mercifully down.
As Sonya sipped her tea, she looked at her father, considering that perhaps she would simply let him decide, the way she always did. But a voice inside of her roared to life, protesting. She could not go back to the way she was. She was different now.
‘How did the day go?’ Shahmir asked, face kind. Her brothers had been more attentive now that she had spoken up, and she did appreciate that. It wasn’t fair of her to write them off as villains when she’d never told them how she felt, she saw that now.
‘Whose horse is winning the race?’ Irfan asked, tone teasing.
She wrinkled her nose at him. ‘Surely you ought not to refer to them ashorses.’
‘It seems apt to me,’ Mustafa agreed.
‘Well, there is no rush,’ her father said. ‘You still have a few weeks. You don’t need to decide until ten days before your birthday. A ten-day engagement is very reasonable. Why, your mother and I—’ He cut off, eyes wide.
