Chapter 23 · Untitled Chapter

The heavy door of the private wing swung shut behind me with a muted click that echoed like an iron bolt in the quiet dawn. By the time the first pale light broke across the northern estates of Riyadh, the household had begun to stir in its unhurried cadence. I stood behind the carved cedar screens of the upper gallery, fully draped in my dark abaya, the tarha pinned securely beneath my chin, observing the carpeted expanse below.

Down in the great majlis, the brass mabkhara was already breathing thin plumes of burning oud into the chilled air. The house staff moved without a sound across the wool carpets, laying out shallow silver bowls of polished Sukkari dates beside stacks of delicate porcelain finajeen. The silence was brittle, polished to a faultless sheen that denied everything that had transpired within the locked wing between midnight and sunrise.

Two men entered from the arched outer foyer. Bandar, the elder of the two, smoothed the stiff, pristine collar of his white thobe, his posture rigid with an elaborate casualness designed to erase the strain of the night before.