He saw her body shake and assumed she strove to generate music. “Sing for us!”

When the silence lingered, he roared, “Were the notes we heard a product of our imagination?” Was it the sign of the changing times that he began to doubt miracles? Why did he question her music when his body craved and ached for the melody that had soared from her the day he had heard her from behind partitions? A music that had lured him out of his weariness and allowed him a glance into an enigmatic world he longed to unravel?

“Be patient,” she whispered. “Once my bones choose to sing, you’ll forget the loneliness that haunts you since your days in the Cage.”

Joy filled him at the discovery that she was familiar with his past. She could not have understood his isolation unless she had experienced one herself. He strove to control the habitual bluntness of his touch as he unraveled her last braid. Might this woman be the one to raise him beyond his lethargy, help him rediscover his true self and abandon the one he was reared to believe was his? Her intense hair tumbled on his lap. Her curls had grown since he had first seen her.

“Tonight,” he said, “we are all yours.”

She rose and gathered her hair at the nape of her neck, adjusted her skirt, and checked her face in the mirror where she saw the Shah’s startled eyes. She whirled to confront him. “My love for you is different from what you are used to. It will not flame, then die away in one night.”

He felt an inexplicable need to weep for a woman who had the conviction to vocalize thoughts that could send her to the House of Tears. Crushing her in his arms, he thrust his hands in her hair and released the coil. “Little one, man needs the company of more than one woman.”

“And a woman?” she asked.

“If a woman has more than one man,” he growled, “she is a whore.”

“Why, my lord, is it man’s nature and not a woman’s?”

He banged his fist onto his palm. “If Allah desired the same freedom for a woman, He would not have afflicted her with a hymen, a sure guardian of her virginity.”

“The concept of virginity is created by men to control, spoil, and violate women.” She reiterated her mother’s belief.

Despite his longing for this woman, her indiscretion was beginning to annoy him. “We shall be yours for longer than one night. But on one condition.”

“You need only order, my lord.”

He rose to his full height, flapping his cape like a whip and towering over her like an enormous god. A scornful smile skipped around his mouth.

“You must promise that the fulfillment of our desire need not be the death of it as it has been with others.”