So it had been deliberate. All of it a ruse.

But why? He risked himself as well, and for what? But men were hardly blamed in such situations. She remembered how quick Rashid had been to assume her requests for help was more of a romantic gesture than a political one. She doubted Asfandyar cared what her people had to think of him.

Heart hammering, Durkhanai kept reading.

All you need now is a public display of affection to ruin the Shehzadi. The people won’t love a whore for a princess.

So that was what this was.

Just then, Asfandyar walked in.

He froze, seeing the letter in her hand. Durkhanai laughed, not looking up.

“And here I thought my love letter to you would have been the first,” she said bitterly. “You didn’t tell me you had a lover already, somebody you were making a fool of me for.”

“Durre—” he began.

“Who is it?” she asked, voice curious. It was an eggshell thin covering of the scrambled mess she really was inside.

“Wakdar,” he replied simply.

She blinked. “Wakdar was my father’s name.”

There was truth in his eyes. “You’re lying,” she said simply. She took a step back. She refused to believe him, but she remembered a worn teddy bear.

No. It could not be.

Very calmly, she gathered the letters back together again, aligning all the papers. She put them back where they belonged, her entire being covered in a thick layer of ice. She would show no emotion.

She would say nothing.

She had to leave. Her heart felt like an emptying blood bag.

“Wait,” Asfandyar said.

And she did. Despite herself, she stopped in her tracks, back to him.

Everyone had warned her, she remembered. They had warned her to stay away, not to fall, not to be fooled.

But she couldn’t have understood, then. She couldn’t have known until after, when the hurricane was through and she was left to deal with the aftermath.

What was so addicting about him? she wondered. What was so intoxicating that she just couldn’t let him go?

Even then, she couldn’t let him go.

“Don’t go,” he pleaded. “Let me explain.”

“You’re lying,” she said simply, turning to face him. “My father died the night I was born. Poisoned. Killed.”

“I’m not,” he replied. He pulled something from his pocket and dropped it into her palm. It was a chandi silver ring, the same ring that sat on her right ring finger, the same that sat on her grandfather’s and her grandmother’s.

The family crest.

It wasn’t possible . . .

“Why are you here?” she asked, voice breaking. He fell to his knees. Her bones felt too heavy in her body, too thick, like instead of liquid her blood had turned to stew.