Chapter 13 · Untitled Chapter

Dawn came into the private wing not as color, but as a slow graying of the high plaster walls. The morning cold of the Najd seeped past the sill, thin and dry, catching the scent of spent oud from the night before.

I sat on the low divan with my black abaya already gathered firmly around me, the shaila draped over my hair and pinned beneath my chin. I had not slept long. In the quiet, every settling timber of the estate sounded like boots on marble, coming to demand the paper again.

Bandar moved in the dimness without haste. His white thobe was already straightened, the stiff collar fastened, his cufflinks clicking faintly as he smoothed his sleeves. In the gray wash of first light, his face was carved from the same hard stillness that had silenced the majlis hours earlier. He did not look at me with hesitation, nor did he look at me as a man who regretted the weight he had taken onto his name.