They would never accept him in court. Running would be the only option. She would be free from all the rules, free as she had been when she was a child, growing in the valley, unadulterated and pure.

They would be together.

On the other hand, she could let him die. This man who she hadn’t even known a few months ago. The man she now loved. But what was love? If he was eaten by the lion, all of Durkhanai’s problems would flutter away.

It would hurt, of course, but all pain passed, eventually. If he was dead, she would come to terms with not having him, but if he lived, she wasn’t sure she could say the same.

They could never be together.

Durkhanai was struck by how much she missed him, already. She hadn’t seen him, not since he had been taken away. Just a few hours, and already her heart was aching without him by her side. Only a day, and already her lips yearned for his.

She recalled everything that had happened in the hours before his arrest, everything Asfandyar had wanted to tell her, while she hadn’t given him the chance. And everything he had told her—the knowledge of her father being alive, the betrayal of her grandparents, the mistrust in the crown.

The decision weighed heavily on Durkhanai’s shoulders, heavy as the crown on her head. The fatal decision. Was it even a choice, when there was nothing more sacred than blood?

Love or blood?

But were they not the same?

Durkhanai wished she had run with him when she had the chance.

Now, she stood alone, facing an impossible choice.

She closed her eyes, remembered who she was. She was Durkhanai Miangul, the future Badshah of Marghazar. She was birthed by the mountains and River S’vat.

There was nothing she could not do.

So she stitched her bleeding heart together again. She put her heart in a velvet pouch and tied it tight. Then she put the pouch in a wooden box, and the wooden box in a stone crate, and the stone crate in a marble house. And around the marble house, she molded a mountain. And over the mountain, she poured the ocean.

Thus her heart was protected, never to be broken again.

She took a breath.

Asfandyar turned and looked at her.

When their eyes met, the haze of faces around them faded away. There was nobody but them, and he saw, by that power of quick perception which is given to those whose souls are one, that she knew behind which door crouched the lion, and behind which stood the lady.

He had expected her to know it.

He understood her nature, the determination and stubbornness within her. Even if Zarmina hadn’t told her, Durkhanai would have uncovered the truth one way or another.

Asfandyar had complete faith in her.