It was hardly the first time Zahara had watched someone try to seduce her husband. You could always tell when a girl turned into a woman, when a woman decided to no longer be a victim, when a victim turned into a predator, and when a predator was out to hunt the biggest cat in the jungle. She had been that girl, that predator, and on that side of the peninsula there was no cat bigger than Ranveer Borkhan. It didn't matter where he was or what state he was in. People could sense power, and power was always useful.

To the girl––the woman––he was her savior, her ticket out of abuse, her guarantee that abuse would not happen again as long as she could gain his favor and use it. A farm girl could be a survivor. She could also be intelligent without privilege, without education. Zahara wondered, watching her stare at Muradi from afar, and then at the men who had violated her now being kept in line by Ghaul, if anyone knew the true extent of the damage done on that day. In this world of beasts, there was no beast more dangerous than one with nothing left to lose.

The girl––Rhani was her name––had been placing herself in his line of sight at every opportunity, had cleaned up her dress, her hair, leaving her presence here and there on purpose. She had, unmistakably and with care, noted and timed Zahara's every routine in the past week for a chance to be alone with him. From a distance, Zahara watched Rhani carry the supplies over to change his bandages, saw him take one glance at the girl and dismissed her before she'd made it within three paces near him.

"He's asking for you." Rhani dumped the sack of supplies on the ground, gave Zahara a look of obligated courtesy, and bristled away. It should have bothered her, except it didn't. In a way, it did offer Zahara the peace of mind she needed. Some damages were not to be undone, but the girl would survive. She had a fight in her still. Perhaps also spirit, maybe even hope. Even that.

Such things were important, her father had said. You could encourage monsters by allowing them to break you. The world needs more survivors, she thought, not victims.

She went to Muradi––Ranveer now, I must get used to that name––and sat down with the supplies. He said nothing as she removed the bandage, and she did so in silence, distracting herself with the task at hand. His injuries were beginning to heal. Soon enough he would be able to travel without pain, perhaps even train a little. Ghaul had taken over the camp and advised they stayed put to give his master a chance to recover. Despite patience never being one of his assets, Muradi had listened. He listened to Ghaul before, but more so now. Something had changed since they left the Tower. Muradi seemed calmer, quieter. He also slipped longer and longer into silence and solitude. She hadn't decided if it was a good thing.

He was also agitated about something at this very moment. The shape of his jawline changed when he did, so was the rhythm of his breathing. Since when have I gotten to know him so well?

Zahara shook herself free of that thought. It didn't matter now. The moment she left for Citara, such knowledge would become useless. That realization gave her a breath of fresh air, lifted away a weight long held in her chest. But somewhere in the place that once held it was a hole, an absence she hadn't quite prepared for. He had, without her consent, made a dent in her life that was both permanent and impossible to ignore.

And it changed the atmosphere around them, gave it an awkwardness akin to what a pair of long lost friends might experience when reunited. She knew him and yet she didn't, not from this position, not as a free woman, not as someone who shared his goals, his path. He felt that too. There had been, she noticed, too many pauses and words held back, as if he was uncertain of her reaction, and that it mattered a great deal to him.

Eighteen years, Zahara thought, and I finally have power over him.

The evidence was there, in the silence he displayed as he watch her tend to his injuries, in the tightness of his jaw line that told her holding such silence so was an effort. The Muradi she knew held nothing back––he hadn't needed to. This man, this Ranveer Borkhan, who seemed to be turning words over and over before he voiced them was a someone she didn't know.

Some time later in that agonizing silence, Ranveer Borkhan said, quietly, "When will you leave?"

She looked up from the bandage, saw a stranger staring at her, felt her heart skitter for no reason. "When I have the supplies I need, and a good horse."

He nodded, his expression switching back to the practical ruler she was familiar with. "Wait until we get to Samarra," he told her, instructionally. "When I can fight, take Ghaul with you as far as he can go. Take Arsha. He can outrun any horse and take a hard ride."

Ghaul and Arsha. His most important fighter and horse. She shook her head. "You will need them to take Samara."

He paused, seemed to turn words over in his mind again. "Wait, then," said Ranveer Borkhan, "until I take Samarra."

She breathed. She needed a breath. "I don't need them."

Muradi straightened, pulled back his shoulders. A gesture she recognized. "If you leave, you leave with them."

That, she knew how to handle. "I'm not your subject to command."

"No," he replied, "they are."

Zahara gritted her teeth, knowing exactly how easily he would do it. He would command them both to follow her whether or not she agreed. But because she did know him, she also knew they weren't really talking about her safety, far from it. "You could have asked nicely if you wanted me to delay."

"I am asking nicely." An anger there. A fist, holding it by a thin line. "Understand, Zahara, that there is nothing to stop me from tying you to a horse until I decide it's time for you to leave. I can do that, anytime, anywhere, at a snap of my finger, and it would still have been more considerate than you sending me another woman to fuck, however I look at it."

So, that's what this is about. She sat back and stared at him. The man she knew would have said those words, but he would have never admitted to being susceptible to manipulation. She decided it didn't matter, and reminded herself she no longer had to mind her words with him, whoever this man was. "You need a woman." Muradi or Ranveer, he was still a man, and one who had not taken a woman to bed for months. "She needs someone to protect her. She's also pretty, and willing. She can take care of you when I'm gone. I am being considerate."

He drew himself a little higher, would have puffed up his mane if he had one. "I am perfectly capable of finding a woman on my own if I need one. You, above all, should know it."

"Not in this state, you aren't."

"Now you're overreaching to win an argument."

"And you're just trying to pick a fight because you're sexually deprived and you can't take it that I'm leaving. This is you throwing a tantrum over something you have no control over. Now, sit back, keep your mouth shut, and let me get this done or I will break another rib myself and let her tend to it. Your choice."

It came out of her before she could stop herself, before she even realized she no longer had to stop herself. He stared at her, wide-eyed, mouth slightly opened as if wanting to say something but had suddenly misplaced the beginning and end of the sentence. A moment passed between them, and out of nowhere Muradi, or Ranveer, or whoever it was sitting in front of her burst out laughing.

"What?" She drew a breath, readied her tongue for another round.

The laugh died down, leaving behind a smile she thought she recognize but couldn't place when or where. "I was just thinking," he said, didn't try to get rid of that smile as she expected him to, "that after all this time, we might have had our first fight just now."

It froze her right on the spot, made her feel like being stripped down in front of a crowd, and now she stood naked, unprotected and unarmed in front of the one man she couldn't afford to be vulnerable with. For the first time in her life, she felt the need to leave, to run.

He reached out a hand, snatched her wrist before she could act on that thought. "It's all right, Zahara," he told her, calmly. "You need not carry it with you where you go." The hand she knew guided her back, brushed softly on the underside of her wrist. Muradi liked to do that. She remembered. "But I needed that before you leave." A pause. A look of uncertainty. A firmer grip on her arm. "Perhaps, also, a kiss or two, if you will not lie with me again. If that is possible."

It burned like fire, that hand around her arm, and its smoke was making it difficult for her to breathe. "What stops you?" she asked, without awareness, without thought, without understanding why she did. "What stops you now, from taking what you want? What's different?" It wasn't his injuries. He hadn't tried to touch her that way, not once, not when they had been in the cave, not after, not now. Her heart, she realized even as she said those words, was beating too fast, too loud.

He drew a breath, an unnaturally long one. "I don't know," said Ranveer Borkhan. "I've been stripped of my title, my power, everything I've fought to achieve all my life. It occurs to me, that if I must do it all over again, then there are things I would do differently this time." A hand, curling around her heart, gripping it tight. "Not making my wife hate me is among them."

"All your wives hate you," she said. She needed something to say.

"There is only one, Zahara." He played with her hand. He liked to do that. Muradi had. "But yes, she hates me."

She wanted to pull away from the contact. She didn't know why she hadn't. "I will always hate you, that will not change." That much she was certain. She had to be.

"I know." Another pause. A recollection of something said, something that wounded, something he'd settled for. "There are things I cannot have in this world, and your heart is among them."

A promise made so long ago, before she'd even voiced it out loud. "I will always hate you," she traced those words, etched them in her heart, made sure it stayed. "But I don't know a Ranveer Borkhan. I have yet to decide how I feel about him."

He heaved in a breath and froze at those words, as if being stabbed by a knife he didn't see coming. She had done that, hadn't she? In a place, at a time not so long ago. She had slipped a blade between his ribs, and he had asked her a question. A question she had been too terrified to answer.

'Would it have been different...had we met sooner or some other way? If we had been someone else? Two farmers or camel herders maybe?'

In another place, at another time, and given different circumstances.

Too late for that now. Too late, for two lives born on different sides of the desert, for the roles they had been given, for the time they had left to change these circumstances. Too late to undo the lies, to take back words that wounded, to say what should have been said so many times and yet they never did, or could. Perhaps never would.

Not too late, she thought, for this one small gesture. Maybe.

She didn't know why she did what she did or what she wanted from it. Sometimes an understanding didn't matter. The human heart beats or bleeds whether or not we asks for it, and sometimes for someone it shouldn't.

He stiffened when she leaned over, and when their lips met and she could feel him tremble at the barest touch. Soon the barest touch turned into something more painful, more desperate. Painful, because she could feel the taloned hands of time sinking into their hearts, could feel the newly made wounds being formed as they kissed.

Wounds, she thought as a sharp pain exploded between the back of her shoulders. She opened her eyes and saw Ranveer staring at his hands, a dagger buried halfway into the tree he was leaning against, missing his ear by a hair. They were red, those hands. It was blood. Whose blood?

The rest came to her in a blur. Somewhere in the distance Ghaul was running, chasing someone between the trees. Muradi clutched her against his chest, dragging her off somewhere, calling her name, yelling at somebody. Something about an assassin, a dagger being poisoned. She thought about the girl, Rhani, and her little brother... if they managed to run and hide somewhere in all this commotion. She thought about the dagger in the tree, if it did catch Ranveer on the cheek, or on his earlobe. Is there someone who knew how to deal with poison?

And then she thought of Lasura, of how small he had been when she had him in her arms, how large a room in her heart he had occupied then and thereafter, and how she never told him any of these things before darkness swallowed her.

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P.S. If you have time and enjoy this book, please rate and/or leave your reviews at goodreads for book one. Searching with my name (Sienna Frost) will get you to the book. Thank you so much.