her long skirts as she descended the wide stairs. And the way this woman who was meant to be her mother looked at her as she waited, her expression still something like serene yet with nothing but calculation in her chilly gaze as far as he could tell.
The hug was perfunctory, the highly European double-cheek kiss a performance, and Kavian wanted to throw the older woman across the room. He wanted her hands off Amaya, that surge of protectiveness coming from deep, deep inside him, and it took all of his considerable self-control to keep himself from heeding it.
“I’m so glad you came,” Amaya said to her, quietly.
And Kavian reminded himself that this was still her mother. Amaya actually meant that. It was the only reason he did not throw this creature from his palace.
“Of course I came,” Elizaveta replied, bright and smooth and still. It wedged beneath Kavian’s skin like a blade. “Where else would I be but by your side on your wedding day?”
“Your maternal instincts are legendary indeed,” Kavian interjected, like a dark fury from above, his gaze the only thing harder than his voice. “The world is a large place, is it not, and you have explored so many different corners of it with Amaya in tow. An unconventional education for a princess, I am sure.”
Elizaveta inclined her head in a show of respect that Kavian was quite certain was entirely feigned. Amaya stared back at him, stricken. And he could not hurt her. He could not.
“But I welcome you to Daar Talaas,” he said then, for the woman who would be his wife. His perfect queen. He waited for the older woman to raise her head, and then he nearly smiled. “I do so hope you will enjoy your stay in my palace. What a shame it will be so brief.”
* * *
“He is rather Sturm und Drang, isn’t he?” Elizaveta asked Amaya when they were alone hours later, after a long day of formal greetings and diplomatic speeches. She sounded arch and amused and faintly condemning besides. As if this were all a terrific joke but only she knew the punch line. “Even for a sheikh. I’d heard rumors. Is he always quite so...commanding?”
Amaya was certain commanding was not the word her mother had been about to use just then. They sat in the charming little garden that adjoined Elizaveta’s guest suite with hot tea and a selection of sweets laid out before them. Amaya shoved an entire almond pastry into her mouth with a complete lack of decorum, because it was far safer to eat her feelings than share a single one of them with her mother.
“He is the king of Daar Talaas,” Amaya replied once she’d swallowed, aware that her mother had probably counted every calorie she’d just consumed and was mentally adding them to Amaya’s hips. With prejudice. She can’t help who she became, she reminded herself sharply. This isn’t her fault. It probably took her more to come here than you can imagine. “Commanding is simply how he is.”
Elizaveta leaned back. She held her tea—black, no sugar, of course—to her lips and sipped, never shifting her cold gaze from Amaya.
“Tell me what you’ve been up to,” Amaya said quickly, because she could practically see the way her mother was coiling up, readying herself to strike the way she always did when she felt anything, and Amaya didn’t think she could take it. “We haven’t talked in a long time.”
“You’ve been so busy,” Elizaveta said, in that light way of hers that wasn’t light at all. “Traveling, was it, these last six months? One last hurrah before settling down to this marriage your brother arranged for you?” She didn’t quite frown—that would have marred the smoothness of her forehead, and Amaya knew she avoided that at all costs. “I hope you enjoyed yourself. You must know that a man in your betrothed’s position will demand you start having children immediately. As many babies as possible, as quickly as possible, to ensure the line of succession. It is your foremost duty.”
“There aren’t any lines of succession here,” Amaya replied, because concentrating on dry facts was far preferable to thinking about other things, like the total lack of birth control she and Kavian had used in all this time. Why hadn’t they thought about that? But even as she asked herself the question, she was certain that he had. Of course he had. He thought of everything. She trained her gaze on her mother, because she couldn’t fall down that rabbit hole. Not now. Not while Elizaveta watched. “Not in the classic sense.”
“Every man wants his son to rule the world, Amaya, but none so much as a man who already does.” Elizaveta smiled, which only made a chill snake its way down Amaya’s back. Had Elizaveta always been so obvious a barracuda? Or was this simply her reaction to being back in this world again—when she’d avoided it all so deliberately since leaving Amaya’s father? “You are so very, very young. Are you certain you’re ready to be a mother?”
“You were a mother when you were nineteen.”
“I was not nearly so sheltered,” Elizaveta said dismissively. She shook her head. “I cannot fathom how you could end up in a place like this, with all the advantages I provided you over the years. I had no choice but to marry your father when he appeared like some fairy story to spirit me away. You have nothing but choices and yet here you are. As if you learned nothing.”
Amaya should not have felt that like a noose around her throat. It shouldn’t have mattered what Elizaveta said. It shouldn’t have hit her so hard, right in the gut.
“You told me my father swept you off your feet. That you were in love.”
She sounded like the child she had never been, not quite. She couldn’t help herself.
“Yes, of course I told you that,” her mother replied, arch and amused again. “That sounds so much more romantic than reality, does it not?”
“Anyway,” Amaya said tightly, because she didn’t believe Elizaveta’s sudden nonchalance on this topic after years of wielding her broken heart like a sword, “there’s no point having this discussion. I’m twenty-three years old, not nineteen. I’m not even remotely sheltered. And most important, I’m not pregnant.”
You can’t possibly be pregnant, she told herself ferociously.
Her mother turned that cool blue gaze on her, washed through with something enough like malice to make Amaya’s stomach clench. Despite herself, she thought of the things Kavian had said about her. That she had lived off Amaya. That she had lied about that—and who knew what else?
“That’s clever, Amaya. Once you are you will be trapped with him forever.”
Trapped was not the word that came to mind, which was more than a little startling, but Amaya frowned at her mother instead of investigating that. “Luckily, it’s not up to him.”
But Elizaveta only smiled again.
Stop making her out to be something scary, Amaya snapped at herself. She’s not a demon. She’s nothing but an unhappy woman. This is her hurt talking, not her heart, and anyway, you don’t have to respond.
“Of course not, darling,” Elizaveta murmured. She leaned forward and put her teacup back on its saucer with a click that seemed much too loud. “I’ve never seen you in traditional attire before. Not even when we still lived in Bakri.”
Amaya had to order herself to unclench her teeth. To curve her lips in some rendition of a smile. “I am not in traditional attire. You can tell because I am not wearing a veil.”
“I wonder if this is merely a stepping stone toward a more traditional arrangement.” Elizaveta’s shrug was exquisite. It somehow conveyed worry and a kind of jaded weariness at once, while also making her look infinitely delicate. “A sleight of hand, if you will. He lures you in by pretending to be a modern sort of man and then—”
“Mother.” It was so absurd she almost laughed. “There is not one thing about Kavian that is the least bit modern. If that’s the lure, he’s already failed. Spectacularly.”
Elizaveta moved to her