I sat down beside him, feeling too shy to speak. Luckily, he was quiet too. It was as though we both understood that something had shifted between us. Perhaps it was the knowledge of my departure bringing things to a head, and yet, despite the jumble of thoughts and emotions churning within me, I still wasn’t sure how to act or what to say.
I opened my mouth, and as I did, I knew that I was somehow squandering this moment, killing the magic in the air.
“I can’t believe my mother’s still alive,” I said. “I can’t believe Papa never bothered to tell me. I feel like my mind has been caught in some sort of storm, like I’m in the eye of it, and if I don’t find her, or at least find out what happened to her, I know the storm will ravage me.”
“You’ll find out. I’ll help you,” he said, laying a hand on my arm. His fingers felt electric as they slipped between mine, taking my breath away. I tried to appear nonchalant to hide my fear, my excitement, the whirl of a million feelings roiling within me.
“I want this to be over,” I said to him.
“If only so we don’t have to dress like characters from a Persian fairy tale,” he whispered, making me laugh out loud.
“Shhhh . . .” Arjun squeezed next to me, his arm against mine. “We don’t want to wake anyone.”
“My father says Sikander’s trying to create a wedge between me and him.”
Arjun nodded, his eyes on me the entire time. He tucked a stray strand of hair behind my ear, his thumb trailing my neck, leaving behind a line of goose bumps. “I think he’s right.” He paused for a moment before he added, “You know I’d do anything for you, right?” he said.
“Anything?” I teased. I wanted to ease this tension between us. It felt so dangerous that it couldn’t possibly be good for either of us, like attempting to light a fire stick near a field of hay. But then again, it was Arjun, whom I had known my entire life. My best friend.
“Anything,” Arjun insisted.
There had never been any space between us, any hierarchy. That’s how my father and Bandaka were too. Bandaka had grown up within the compound of the palace, and his father had been my grandfather’s advisor. My father and Bandaka had played together as children.
It was just the same, I told myself. We were just like them.
Until Arjun’s fingers slipped into my hair. Gently, he tilted my face back until my eyes met his. The only thing I could hear was my own heartbeat, startlingly loud in my ears.
There was no decision, no reflection, only impulse. An impulse so clear that it was as though it had been there all along, all these years, waiting for us to uncover it.
And we did.
I lifted my face to meet his, noticing everything about him as if for the first time, the curve of his lips, the plane of his jaw, his warm, dark eyes. His hands clasped my thigh, pulling me closer and closer until our bodies were entwined.
And when we kissed, I was stunned by how soft and yielding his lips were, eventually giving way to a ferocious urgency, a desperate need to hold me and never let me go.
Five
“EVERY KINGDOM has its traditions,” Sikander announced.
It was morning, and we were convened in the gallery once again—Papa, Sikander, their advisors, and of course Arjun and me. I wondered if anyone could tell from the dark circles under my eyes that I had been up all night with Arjun in the mango grove, talking, laughing, kissing, until the first rays of dawn chased us back into the palace to get dressed for another day.
A day that I could face only because I knew I would see Arjun again. And yet I also lamented this fact. How many days did we have together, now that we had discovered this magnetic alchemy between us?
He had held me tightly against him outside my chamber, his face meeting mine.
“It’s not over,” he whispered to me. “This is just the beginning.”
“But how?”
“We’ll figure it out. You and I . . . we can do anything together,” he said, kissing me one last time before returning to his quarters.
But what we could do was still up in the air, unclear, at least to me.
I turned back to Sikander, who was loudly pontificating to us.
“In Bactria, negotiations begin after everyone observes a circus show. In Anatolia, there is the sacrifice of an animal. Considering the union that will bring our two kingdoms together,” he said, nodding at me with a patronizing smile that showed off the mouthful of gold, “I’d like to bring a Macedonian tradition to Shalingar.”
“So it starts,” mumbled Arjun under his breath.
It took everything in me not to look at him when he said this. I leveled my gaze at my father, whose face was stern and unmoving. “Please go on,” he said.
Sikander’s mouth twisted into a mischievous grin. “As you know, Chandradev, I love to surprise.”
I wondered what he meant by this, but my father’s face gave nothing away.
“I come bearing gifts,” Sikander continued as he nodded to some members of his retinue who disappeared for an instant, only to return with hundreds of large golden chests. One by one, they were placed before my father and me.
“There was no need, Sikander.”
“Come now, old friend. You wouldn’t refuse a gift for your daughter, would you?”
And then, at a mere inclination of Sikander’s head, his footmen opened the chests to reveal troves of jewels—cut emeralds, sea-blue sapphires, rubies the color of blood. Gold coins, shimmering in the light of a thousand diyas, illuminated the Durbar Hall. Reams and reams of buttery silks spilled forth across the marble floor.
More footmen arrived, carrying pots that contained unusual varieties of flowers—horn-shaped and bell-shaped poufs of purple and magenta, others that looked like flames. “The first gift.” Sikander nodded. “The gift of beauty. For your daughter,” he said, smiling at me. “The greatest treasures the world has to offer.”
He smiled again, and I tried not to stare at his teeth.
“Sikander, you’ve outdone yourself—” my father began, but Sikander interrupted him.
“It’s the first time I’m meeting this little one in sixteen years,” he said, smiling at me.
I bristled at being called that. My mind flashed to the night before, Arjun kissing me, undoing my blouse, his hands on my stomach, his fingers dipping into the waistband of my petticoat.
Stop, I told myself. I could tell that my face was reddening, and I wondered again if everyone in the room could tell what had happened between Arjun and me.
But Sikander merely turned back to his footmen. “The second—a gift of power. A cavalry of trained horses—for your army. Just outside the palace,” he said, waving his arm toward the grounds.