The last time Ashi had asked for something, Shobi hadn’t been able to give it to her. Another situation her daughter’s father had put them in. A last devastating act.

“I want my daughter back.”

Then go and get her.

I don’t know where to start, Shobi wanted to say. There were just so many lies, so much Ashi didn’t know. Shobi had always kept things from her, afraid of not knowing which straw of truth would break her. Or maybe she’d kept things to herself because she hadn’t known how to share them with someone who had always borne the greatest brunt of her decisions.

It was time to fix this mess once and for all. It was time to stop tiptoeing around all the lies. Ashi deserved to be happy. Maybe it wasn’t too late for her to learn how. Maybe there was still time for Shobi to show her that it was possible. No matter how hard the world tried to take happiness away from you, it was possible to fight back.

Who knew this better than Shobi? Because, good Lord, how hard they had tried.

Chapter Twelve

Shoban had spent the entire day sitting on the cliffs of the Sripore palace, staring at the ocean and daydreaming about Omar. Usually it was her favorite pastime. But since he had left for Oxford, even daydreaming about him hurt. It didn’t help that it was her eighteenth birthday and not a soul here was aware of the fact, or cared.

For the hundredth time that day, Shoban opened Omar’s birthday letter.

On your eighteenth birthday, eighteen reasons why you own my heart . . .

Pressing the letter to her own heart, she stood. If she didn’t find some way to distract herself, she was going to explode.

She ran all the way to the stables looking for Bram, but he seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth.

“Where’s Prince Bram?” she asked the liveried chauffeur standing by Bram’s family’s Bentley.

The man straightened, saluted her, and informed her that he had no idea.

Bram never told anyone where he was going. It was the most infuriating thing about him, these princely airs of his. He also only ate foods cooked a certain way, with annoyingly fancy colonial names like “braised this” and “sautéed that.” Needlessly complicating something as natural as food with snobbery was an abomination, if you asked Shoban.

His older brothers were nothing like that. But Bram was always trying to play at being this person who was too important to be answerable to anyone.

“I like it when you worry about me,” he had said to her yesterday.

“But what about Ma-saheb?” His mother worried about him. Everyone worried about him. “Why does having people worry about you prove that you’re special?” she had demanded.

Bram, being Bram, just yanked her braid anytime she questioned him.