There was a crease on her dress. Zahara grimaced as she smoothed it out quickly. She must have been curling her hand around it when she watched him approach the Tower. Such a detail would not be missed. She had known this from experience and had always made certain there would be none present when she was summoned. He enjoyed being able to read her as much as she dreaded being read by him. The man before whose door she was standing enjoyed many things, despite the grimness he displayed to the world at large. One had to be close enough to see it, or be the object of his entertainment to understand.

Next to her, Amelia was busy doing just the opposite. Just shy of eighteen years old, the youngest daughter of Zubin izr Mafouz, Rasharwi's most influential banker, had both her hands wound tight around the silk of her priceless crimson dress. On her expression was a strange mixture of stress, anticipation, and fear that wouldn't escape anyone's notice. It wasn't the first time she had seen such a reaction from those who'd been summoned to this room, man or woman. The salar had that effect on people, especially on those who hadn't been called often to his private chamber.

It had been a little over two months since the wedding. Amelia had been brought into the Tower only days before the salar's departure to Khandoor. He'd left almost as soon as the reception was over, and Zahara knew for a fact that he'd yet to bed her. Which explained why the girl was as anxious as she was.

She had, to everyone's knowledge, been looking forward to this moment, however. Being izr Mafouz's daughter, it was generally predicted that Amelia was to become the new figure of power in the Tower and not just a mere addition to his existing collection of wives, whether for her father or for her own ambition. To achieve such a power, she must capture his interest and raise her status above that of other wives, perhaps even the salahari. The effort to put her youth and beauty on display in the most extravagant way possible, therefore, had been done with no expenses spared by her father from the moment she set foot in the Tower.

Such an effort, however, had tripled the day she'd first knelt and kissed the signet ring on his finger. Zahara could still remember, watching from behind the throne with his other wives, how she'd blushed from her ears down to the cleavage she'd intentionally exposed through her dress' plunging neckline looking up at him. The fact that he was more than twice her age hadn't seemed to bother her any more than it bothered the other young women at court.

For one thing Muradi had been a strikingly handsome man in his youth who also happened to be aging like wine. For another, even at forty-two, he was still just as strong and capable as any young man at court, more so, in fact, than all his sons from the frequency at which he still trained. Even the ruthless, unforgiving reputation that should have given any girl a second thought seemed to be giving him an edge that glinted like a well-cut ruby. That said, the very fact that he had power—immense power—would have eclipsed all his flaws in any case had he possessed some.

It just so happened that he possessed none, which was why Amelia wasn't the first young girl to have fallen head over heels for him at first sight. Zahara, of course, had an entirely different view on this issue. Having had one's entire family slaughtered in a single day by a man tended to distort one's perspective of him to a certain degree.

Amelia's infatuation with the salar that had grown from ambition into something a lot more personal had caused quite a stir while he was away. Over the past two months she'd managed to interfere with not only the housing arrangements of the royal household but also the balance of power in the Tower. Alliances changed and loyalty faltered when enough coins were involved, and coins were what Amelia had in almost an unlimited amount. So far, she'd managed to win over the salahari's most favorite jeweler, and every new batch of silk from Makena now went to her before his other wives for the first pick. Her servants outnumbered that of the salahari's now, and the high-ranking officers at court surrounded her like flies, hoping to gain favors from the salar through his promising new wife and access to her father's gold. All the while, Jarem who'd been in charge of the Tower watched and did nothing, as though finding this influence a profitable one. The salahari and his other wives, as anyone might have expected, had turned their attention and talons from his Shakshi wife to Amelia instead.

Which would have been a good thing for Zahara had the salar not summoned her to his chamber instead of his new, young, promising wife right on their wedding night—an insult that conveniently landed Zahara on Amelia's list of people to urgently eliminate in the process.

Since then she'd suffered everything from minor humiliation to having parts of her own living quarter turned into the girl's personal space whenever she saw fit. Amelia knew what she was doing, had both the drive and the means to never stop until she got what she wanted, and what she wanted was an undivided attention from the man who ruled the peninsula.

Taking a glance at their reflection on the pair of gold-plated doors before her, Zahara could see the possibility of this being accomplished. The girl was tall, slender, and well endowed with fuller hips and a noticeably slim waist. Her long, jet black hair—the complete opposite of Zahara's silver—curled neatly on either side of her half-exposed, shapely breasts, offsetting the smooth, alabaster skin that nearly glowed in the dark—a complexion considered undesirable and sickly in the White Desert but highly celebrated in Rasharwi.

Any man, by nature, would appreciate the changes Amelia could offer, and he seemed to have realized that now to have summoned her as soon as he'd returned. In a way, it would be a good thing for her if the girl could indeed capture his attention. She would then be excused and soon forgotten, left to her own elements to live out the rest of her days without having to endure his cruelty. He might even allow her to relocate to one of the Shakshi quarters in the city if she was lucky.

If only life was that simple.

By then she knew better than to expect such a miracle. The moment she became no more than one of his boring wives, her life and that of her son would be expendable. They wouldn't last in the Tower for more than a season, her having been a pebble in the salahari's shoe for the past eighteen years and Lasura in all the princes' for almost as long. The two of them were the excess of the Tower, kept there only because its master required it so.

It couldn't be allowed to happen, not if she was to save her son and keep the promise she'd made a long time ago. His interest in her had to be kept going. His desire to conquer and reconquer a bharavi—a living symbol of the White Desert he'd yet to claim—had to be stretched and rekindled for as long as she needed to stay alive. Her future and that of her son hung on his decision tonight, and whether Amelia's plunging neckline would get the job done. Most men succumb to desire when enough flesh was displayed and the woman inviting. Sometimes just the invitation was enough.

The man Amelia was trying to catch, however, wasn't most men. Anyone who had been close to the salar knew he liked to hunt and preferred his game hard and challenging—the kind that pushed him to the limit, and then extended it afterward. Which was why Zahara had chosen a high-collared, traditional white gown that clearly stated her origin––to remind him of what he couldn't get his hands on.

Still, it depended on who would be called into that chamber first. It wasn't unreasonable to think a man might decide to enjoy a wife he hadn't unwrapped for the rest of the night and disregard his own summon for the old one, especially when the new wife was young enough to be his daughter.

The door to the inner chamber clicked open. Ghaul who'd been guarding the entrance turned abruptly to watch the two handmaidens carry a basket full of worn clothes from the room. He must have just finished his bath, Zahara thought, registering the familiar fragrance of sage and mint that escaped through the opened door. She'd come to hate how much that scent could unnerve her over the years, and was often amazed that she hadn't gotten over it by now.

"The salar has called for you, my lady," one of them turned to Amelia and curtsied as she spoke. "The Lady Zahara is to wait here for the summon."

A numbness spread through her then, like being stripped naked and left to stand in the snow. It had, at long last, come to this after seventeen years of enduring endless, pride-swallowing torture. She'd been aware of the possibility of being cast aside for some time, having reached an age that was no longer considered young, but nothing was ever enough to prepare one for such a fall, especially when so much was at stake. The pain she felt was shocking, considering that her heart wasn't a part of what had been inflicted, or shouldn't have been.

"Of course," Zahara nodded and stepped aside, putting on her best mask of indifference as Amelia flashed a victorious grin before entering the chamber.

Where he would be standing now, in nothing but the black silk robe he always wore after a bath, grinning—she was sure—in amusement at the thought of her being made to wait by the door as he entertained himself with his younger, more eager bride, believing that he'd found a brand new way to torture her all over again for the mistake she'd made eighteen years ago.

And it was working. Oh it worked beautifully, tremendously. The defeat, the humiliation, the searing pain of being put aside like a toy he'd grown tired of rushed through her veins like a paralyzing venom, on top of the frightening knowledge that the reality she'd long feared was knocking on her door.

"You might want to sit down," Ghaul said as he closed the door. The satisfaction on his face obvious and unrestrained. "It may take the whole night."

She resisted the urge to glare at him, despite the need to find an outlet for the rage she was feeling. Ghaul despised her. She had known this from the first day they met when he struck her down in that tent. Tonight, her patience was running thin, but she wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of thinking he could get under her skin, on top of what his master had just done.

"It usually does," she said, smiling back sweetly. "The salar's appetite can be," she paused, drew a breath as if recalling a certain memory too explicit to be put into words and waited for it to reach his imagination, "quite exhausting in bed."

It never ceased to amaze her how the trick still worked after all this time. Ghaul, flushing like a ripened tomato, turned his attention abruptly to admire everything in the hall from the carpet to the Khandoor vase by the door as though they hadn't been there for the past twenty years. He would retaliate for that, some other time, she was sure of it.

For how much Ghaul despised her, she might have even thought him jealous if the salar had also been taking boys to bed. Then again, there were many forms of jealousy. Ghaul was the most trusted man among those closest to him in the Tower, and she shared that position now, not as the most trusted one, but definitely as the one closest to him where proximity and time spent in his chamber were concerned.

A position that was being threatened at that moment, Zahara thought, grimacing as her mind wandered off to imagine what might be going on behind that door.

To her surprise, the door opened before she'd finished that thought. Zahara looked past Ghaul's gigantic form to see the slender figure of Amelia nearly limping out from the chamber, her neat curls now disorderly and tangled, and tears pooled in her bloodshot eyes that had just now been bright and clear. She looked like she'd been through a raid. Like a girl who'd just found out there were real monsters in this world.

It dawned on her then, that whatever he had done behind those doors, desire or attraction hadn't been a part of it, and that she'd been wrong in her initial interpretation of the situation. She knew that look, had seen it a hundred times before on the faces of her people, and in her own reflection time and time again in the past eighteen years—the look of something that had just been broken beyond repair.

Upon seeing her, Amelia straightened and squared her shoulders. The soft, youthful lines of her face had become harsh and weathered now, as though she'd been gone several years since she disappeared through that door.

"He is expecting you," she said through her gritted teeth, refusing to shed any more of her pride, especially in front of another woman.

Another life changed over the course of one night, or in this case, in less than an hour. Zahara recalled then, how a single event could strip a child so completely of her innocence, how quick the world could be in punishing the naive and the ignorant. Amelia would always remember now, and long after, that there was a hardness to living, that things wouldn't always turn out the way she wanted.

Had she been a different woman with a different past she might have tried to offer some comfort to the girl, but comfort and compassion wasn't something either of them should be relying on to survive, not around this man. In a way, she was glad Amelia seemed to know this, and had refused to show a need for it. She had, after all, been born and raised in Rasharwi.