Stepping into the outer room, Zahara paused for her eyes to adjust to the sudden absence of light. The space was dimly lit, with only one hurricane lamp to illuminate the dark walls of gleaming obsidian. Expecting to find him in his bedchamber through the inner door, she walked past the round table, and paused to note the spilled wine on the white tablecloth. A goblet lay on its side by her feet, its content emptied onto the priceless carpet like a fresh trail of blood. She picked it up and placed it back on the table, pushing away the image her mind conjured as to how it had gotten there. It was always better not to know.

A shadow caught her eyes and drew her attention to the window. The moon, full and high in the sky, casted its golden light through the large opening where a dark figure lounged carelessly on the windowsill, as if unaware of the certain death its height promised should one were to slip and fall. As always, he sat daringly with his back against the frame, one leg extended lazily on the ledge, the other hanging loosely outside the window. The silver goblet in his hand glinted in the moonlight as he turned it back and forth absentmindedly. The wine had been gone a while ago, she could tell. He had a tendency to leave it unfilled and nurse the emptied cup for a long time, unwilling to break his chain of thoughts with such interruptions when his mind was too occupied by something important.

Without a word, Zahara headed to the window and replaced the empty goblet in his hand with a new one she'd filled from the table. He took it in silence, keeping his eyes fixed somewhere in the distance as she waited for him to initiate the conversation.

"Does it ever bother you," he drawled at length, sipping from the cup she'd given, "when they expect you to breed?"

The melancholy in his voice surprised her. She'd expected him to be in a different mood, to goad her over Amelia, and grin victoriously when he succeeded. Instead he'd asked her this, and he sounded almost tired.

"No more than being kept for entertainment, I assure you," she replied indifferently. She may have been born a bharavi, and had been expected to do nothing more than to breed more bharavis and oracles, but whatever her previous life had required, it was still far better than the life she was leading now.

He turned and regarded her appearance for the first time that night. The white gown she wore would be noted, of course, so would the moonstone on her neck—the same one she'd been given on her eighteenth birthday, as per tradition, to eventually bestow upon the man she chose to marry. It was a symbol of sorts. One that told him she would never surrender completely. He liked to be reminded sometimes of what she was, and that she still had some defiance in her. After a long absence, she knew it was what she needed to rekindle his interest and maintain her status in the Tower.

A grin appeared on his lips soon after. The dress and the necklace excited him, she could tell.

"Is that what you think you are? My entertainment?" He asked with a noticeable edge to his tone. "Am I so susceptible to pleasure, Zahara?"

She resisted the urge to swallow, knowing he would catch it in an instant. Reluctance made him suspicious, and indecision was seen as a sign of dishonesty. Assume too much and he'd find one a liability, too little and one appeared incompetent. Salar Muradi of Rasharwi allowed only competent, intelligent people around him, and if she were to continue to belong in that circle, her answers to these questions of many meanings had to be correct.

It just so happened that she knew how to do just that. From the very first day they'd met, it had been her direct, unpretentious ways she responded to his questions that captured his interest. He'd enjoyed these conversations with her, and she had come to realize the longer she could keep them going, the less his needs would be for her to satisfy him in bed. There had been nights when they'd simply talked, and those had been easier for her to bear, even though his intelligence had always stretched her thin and drained her completely of energy, leaving her mentally exhausted the next day.

"You like to play with your food. You always have, my lord," she replied sweetly. "In that sense, I do find you susceptible to pleasure, yes."

His mouth quirked into a smile, the same way he'd always done when he was pleased with her answer. "How very observant of you."

Catching the sharpness in his tone, she gave him a pointed look. "One has to be to stay alive around you, my lord. Ask Jarem."

He rose from the window and took a seat on the chair facing her, sinking his weight into the velvet cushion. The front part of his robe hung loose and disarrayed on his body, revealing a generous amount of skin below his collarbone. She wondered if he'd bothered taking it off when he took Amelia. The man sitting in front of her had never been one who enjoyed quick, casual pleasures. He took time, always, to savor every little thing he could take from rendering his opponent defenseless, tasting every hint and note of his victory the same way he tasted his wine in both sex and war. Whatever he'd done with the girl, considering the pace at which it had been executed and his mood at the moment, didn't please him.

"Jarem will tell you that I'm old and not as unforgiving as I once was."

The mood was, indeed, strange. Like a weight was pressing on him, judging from the stiffness of his shoulders and the way he seemed to breathe unevenly.

"Jarem will tell you what you want to hear and offer to produce you an heir if he could, perhaps even more willingly than Lady Amelia. You know this."

He made a sour face at the mention of that name, as if recalling something with a bad aftertaste. "She wasn't unwilling."

"She was crying on the way out." Zahara poured herself a drink, feigning disinterest.

He sneered at that. Guilt was not something that fit him or a thing one could force him to wear. "There is only now and what you do next. That is how a leader is made and change is accomplished," her father had said to her brother one night. Muradi was a ruler before all else, and the entire peninsula could change at the end of his sentence, or at the beginning of one. Guilt had no place in his decision making.

"As a result of her own false presumption, I assure you."

"For expecting her newly wed husband to be gentle and affectionate when he beds her, my lord?" She didn't like Amelia, but that statement bothered her.

"For expecting more than what was on the contract," he replied with a stone cold expression, one he normally used when discussing business and matters of state. "I agreed to take her as my wife and give her a son in exchange for a loan from her father at a small interest rate. A son he plans to put on my throne so he can manipulate to grow his profit and eventually take control of the Salasar. I see no reason why I should be required to shower her with gentleness and affection when they're out to suck my blood, father and daughter both."

Put that way, he did have a point, Zahara thought. The projects he'd been putting into action to build dams and better roads in Rasharwi had been draining the Tower's gold reserves, forcing him to take out a huge loan from Zubin izr Mafouz to support them. The marriage must have been Jarem's idea of minimizing the interest, judging from how much it was grating on his patience.

"So you hurt her on purpose."

"I don't like being muscled."

"By using me as a weapon," she said pointedly.

"You sound angry."

She had been angry, and still was, but for a different reason now. "You will forgive me, my lord, if I don't enjoy being used."

"I thought you might have appreciated it," he said, taking a sip of his wine as he regarded her expression, "considering what she's been putting you through these two months."

That startled her. "What has Jarem told you, my lord?"

He watched her quietly for a time, considering, of course, how much she needed to know regarding his awareness of things that had happened in the Tower while he'd been away. It was in these moments that she could measure how much he trusted her, how far he was willing to discuss things when she chose to press for it. When his eyes flickered to something else on the table, she knew the answer to that instantly.

"Enough," he said.

It didn't come as a surprise. She'd always known for some time that his walls weren't going to come down easily. Eighteen years of being in this room and she'd barely made a dent in it, Zahara thought bitterly.

"And you want me to believe you've done this to humor me? Truly, my lord?" She wasn't born yesterday, or naive enough to even consider that a possibility.

"Why not, Zahara?" he asked casually, only his eyes would tell an entirely different tale. They fixed upon her like a hawk waiting for the right opportunity to strike, its sharp, deadly talons opened wide and ready. "Surely you are aware of how everyone considers you my favorite."

This is it, Zahara thought. This was the weight that had been pressing down on him when she'd entered the room. The very idea that he had a favorite was a threat, a spark he had to put out immediately and decisively. She should have been killed that night to put an end to it and to set an example, but he needed her alive just to prove his point made eighteen years ago. He could throw her into a dungeon and treat her as a prisoner the way she deserved, but she also knew he was enjoying her company too much to dismiss her entirely.

Now he was presented with the problem of having to show them she wasn't one, and he was testing her now how much she was aware of her power over him, how far she might go to manipulate him with that knowledge. To see if he should continue to let her remain so close as she had been.

It must have been Jarem, she was sure of it. That man could always dig up something to make her life difficult.

She looked straight at him and smiled, praying that he wouldn't see how much the subject was unnerving her. "Everyone is usually wrong, my lord."

"Are they?" The tone he used sent a chill down her spine. His deep, penetrating blue eyes pinned her in place like a spear to the throat. "Have you not been trying to hold my interest after all these years?" He said slowly, turning the wine in his hand as he observed her every move, every expression. One breath held, one twitch of her eye, or one small sign of discomfort would all be noted, she was certain. "After all, you have picked that dress for a reason, have you not, Zahara?"

She had picked it for a reason, Zahara thought and suddenly regretted her decision. Had she known Jarem would bring it up to him that day she would have chosen differently. Deny it and he might find it an insult to his intelligence. Tell him the truth, and she would be accused of trying to manipulate him, or for believing that he could be manipulated. Her reply, if she were to survive this conversation, had to do more than convince him that she wasn't a threat as Jarem had proposed her to be.

Or she could do something else entirely, based on how well she knew this man.

"Of course, I did," she said, holding his gaze as she did. "Is it working, my lord? I haven't noticed."

A promise of danger worked best with Muradi. It was why she was there after all.

I am trying to cross the line. Are you afraid?

Something changed in his expression then, as if he'd just been reminded of something he'd nearly forgotten, and Zahara knew in an instant she'd hit the mark.

Keeping his eyes on her, he drew a long, sharp breath as he uncrossed and recrossed his legs in the opposite direction, and then exhaled with an uneven, ragged sound of someone who'd suddenly been brought to the height of pleasure. The outlines of his muscles grew alarmingly tensed underneath the silk robe, all the while his predatory blue eyes stared at her with the same intensity they had on the first day they'd met.

"Is it working?" He repeated almost breathlessly, tasting each word as if they reminded him of a rare delicacy. "I wanted to rip it to shreds and take you by that window when you came in."