Jaya looked up at him, to see his eyes shining blue in the dark. “I don’t know,” she said, and then she heard herself laugh softly. “I don’t know. How could I ever explain this to my father?” It was ridiculous! An Emerson and a Rao? Her parents would never understand. No one would. It was a terrible, terrible idea for so many reasons. And yet… yet somehow all she wanted to do right now was call everyone she knew and tell them how she felt about Grey.

“I guess we don’t have to make any decisions right now,” Grey said, but he was smiling a smile made of hope and excitement, one that mirrored hers.

“I guess for now we could just walk together,” Jaya said, taking his hand and leading him onto a fresh path through the trees.

“Just walk together,” Grey said in wonderment. “That sounds good.”

Jaya lay in bed, smiling. She’d have to be up in an hour, and she’d only just gotten in from her walk with Grey, but she didn’t even care how tired she’d be for the rest of the day. That kiss, her first-ever kiss (and then her second and her third), kept replaying in her head. The way Grey had looked at her, his eyes so hungry, so languid. The way he’d pressed his hands against her lower back, pushing her against him, his mouth warm and perfect.

It was ridiculous and bizarre and made as much sense as that leopard that had adopted an orphaned fawn as its own. Grey Emerson and Jaya Rao didn’t belong together. Not on paper, anyway. But somehow, over the last two months, she’d begun to see that in many ways, she and Grey had more in common than she had with most other people. In many ways, they were cut from the same odd cloth.

But how on earth would she begin to tell people they wanted to date, not least of all her parents? What would the people of Mysuru think of their heiress running around with an Emerson? What about the alliance the Raos and the Hegdes had been counting on all these years? How could she ever be a revered ruler, one who appeared respectful of tradition, if she did something so outlandish? She couldn’t; it was madness.