I said nothing, which he took as my acceptance. He bent his head over my hand and I waited, heart in my throat. Something had changed in the air in the heartbeat between taking my hand and now. His eyes were fixed on the palm of my hand, and his index finger hovered just a breadth above skin, tracing the lines in my palm. I found myself leaning closer, leaning my head forward so that my hair joined his in forming a curtain around my hand.

“The fortune-teller looks for four lines: happiness, fortune, passion, and love,” he said softly. “For some passion and love are separate, but for you they run parallel along your heart line.”

His finger swept from the upper left corner of my palm, over the curve, and to the upper right. I shivered and my hand twitched at the barely there touch.

“What does that mean?” I asked before I could think better of it.

His finger swept from the tip of my middle finger, skimmed across my palm, and stopped at my wrist.

His eyes met mine as he spoke. “I think for you, it is impossible to have one without the other.”

It was not a unique insight, but one born out of knowledge. For who else had I loved but Idris, and how passionately did I love him. I curled my hand so that my palm was hidden from him. Heat unfurled in my belly as my chest tightened around my lungs and thinned my breath.

For a moment, I allowed myself to wish that my lines for love and happiness were linked. Because what good was a passionate love without the ability to be with the object of that love and passion? It was a thought I had had many a time when it came to Idris, but a fruitless one.

“We should go back,” I said, pulling away. “The sun is gone. They will come looking.”

He watched me silently for a moment, then nodded and helped me to my feet.

“Amani,” he said softly. I paused as he leaned his forehead against mine and wound his fingers in my hair.

I wrapped my fingers around his wrists, as if to pull him away, but could not bring myself to it. Friends. I’d known what an impossible thing it would be, to smother my heart. I remembered being in a carriage with Idris and his low laugh. Just friends, he’d asked. No. Never just. Never for two hearts made one. And yet, despite that, here we were.

“I just wanted to say your name,” he sighed. “Before we went back.”

02. Maram

02. Maram

STARDATE 4393, FORTY DAYS UNTIL THE IMPERIAL WEDDING