“What troubles you?” Asfandyar asked. She hesitated, but his face was kind and curious. Besides, she needed him to trust her. Despite their bickering, perhaps they could move forward, reach some sort of common ground, as with Gulalai.

“I wasn’t raised here, you know,” she finally told him. “After my parents died, I was sent away to a village named Mianathob far from this place, to be raised by distant family. My father was the crown prince, and after he died . . .” She swallowed. “I am the crown princess; I needed to be kept safe.”

“How did they die?” he asked. Something sparked in his eyes at the mention of her father, but it was something she could not place. Everyone knew she was an orphan, but few knew the full story.

Unfortunately, she was not one of the few, either. Her grandparents said there was no use in knowing things that would only hurt her, and after some time, she had stopped asking.

She told him all she knew.

“They were assassinated . I barely survived myself . . .”

“I am sorry to hear that.” This time, she knew what was in his eyes: genuine sorrow.

“The valley was the first home I had ever known,” she continued. “So I miss it. Things were so much simpler in the farmlands. Bari Ammi—my grandfather’s sister—raised me for the first part of my life.”

She had grown in a lush, green valley by a cerulean blue lake, surrounded by golden farms and eternal sunshine. There, her grandfather’s sister, who never married again after losing her husband in the wars, raised her. The village had been filled with widows, a sort of safe haven for women with no family and nowhere else to go.

When Durkhanai thought of her childhood, she imagined her head in Bari Ammi’s lap, the older woman’s gentle hands stroking her hair as she told story after story. She imagined a fluffy teddy bear that a maid had told her was a “secret gift from her father,” that became old and worn because she took it with her everywhere.

She hadn’t known any sorrow there, only peace and simplicity. She had been spoiled then, too, but with attention and love, vastly different from the jewels and finery she was spoiled with at court.

Back then, she would visit the marble palace once a year, for a few of the hotter months when the mountains were cooler, and she had always yearned to be home in the valley. The mountains had seemed too cold, back then, unkind and harsh.

She was adored by her grandfather, of course, and her chachay and phuppo, but it hadn’t been home. And while she loved her grandparents, Agha-Jaan would always be busy, and Dhadi would always be reminding her of her duties as princess when all Durkhanai wanted was to play. At the palace, her every choice and her every word were scrutinized.