I could not track our movements between standing and reclining on the divan. I knew only that my heart seemed to beat so hard it would rend itself in two. That my skin felt hot and tight, and that wherever I touched him the fire spread. I had seen such a fire once when I was a child in the mountains. A small ember, barely the size of my littlest finger’s nail, blown up by the wind, touched one tree—it took seconds for it to be engulfed in flame. And so too I felt with Idris’s shirt first in my hands and then on the floor, and my jacket and gold belt beside it. His lips were on my jaw, beneath my ear, on my throat.

The world narrowed to the two of us, and the expanse of skin spread out over me, and his hands on my calves and then my thighs. The soft murmur of his voice in my ear and his mouth against mine, my fingers wound in his hair. Every moment we’d been together and every moment we’d been apart came to bear on me, and I don’t know where we might have gone if not for the bells signaling the end of the Mawlid.

“Wait,” I gasped. “Wait!” He froze, forehead pressed against my collarbone, shoulders heaving.

“Wait?” he asked, looking down at me.

I felt a new, deeper flush work itself over my still too-warm body. He looked wild, flushed, his hair mussed by my hands. And then he grinned, as if he understood the tenuous grip I had on my control.

“Wait?” he repeated, and pressed a kiss against my shoulder.

“Idris—”

Another kiss where my shoulder met my throat. The curve of my jaw. The corner of my mouth. I struggled to sit up and felt my gown slip from my shoulders. He’d undone the ties on the back.

“Dihya.”

“Indeed,” he said, still grinning. He sat back, reclined on his hands, easy and beautiful and all too aware of his effect.

“Put on your shirt,” I said, coming to my feet. He didn’t. Instead he drew me back onto the divan and did up the laces on the back of my dress slowly, as if he relished every time his knuckles brushed against my spine. When he was done he put his arms around me and pressed a kiss into my hair.

“I missed you, Amani,” he murmured.

He would have to leave soon. As a concession to the Vathek courtiers there was a ball later in the evening. He would have to be present beside Maram—a united, married front. For just a moment I let myself close my eyes and lean back against his chest.

“What are we going to do?” I whispered.

“I didn’t want to marry her,” he said. “And I don’t think she wanted to marry me.”

I sighed. “I know. But—”