If I told them their ways were foreign to me, foreign and alarming and perhaps even abhorrent (in the case of torture and execution) and harmful (in the case of open infidelity in marriage), it would be insulting.

These people and these ways were of what was now my land, my people.

And I had to find it in me to live with it.

“You stayed too long,” Kyril muttered two hours later (all right, perhaps two and three quarters of an hour later), as we made our way back to the royal tent.

I did not think we stayed too long.

I had a rather lively, and shockingly interesting, discussion with my father during those two hours.

We disagreed over our liking of a book.

I liked it.

He did not.

However, in the end, I believed I swayed his thinking for he’d told me he would reread it with what I’d said in mind and we’d discuss it again.

I had never, not in my life, had a lively or interesting tête-à-tête with my father.

I had never, not in my life, swayed my father’s thinking.

And thus, I thought it’d been a rather pleasant night.

But regardless, no matter how petulant it might sound, my husband knew precisely where we were in those hours.

Therefore, if he wished my company, he could have had it.

“I’m most tired, Kyril,” I replied. “Can we not have another disagreement?”

“I will grant you that, my queen,” he returned. “For you’re fatigued, so what energy you have, you’ll need for my king.”

I twisted my neck to look up at him to see his eyes aimed in the direction of the royal tent.

I aimed my eyes there as well, in time to see my husband disappearing around the corner toward the entry flaps that were hidden from my current vantage point.

Had he been coming to get me?

My heart jumped.

When we arrived at the tent, Kyril preceded me, pulled open the flap, peered inside but a scant second, then turned to me.

He made a small bow and instead of wishing me a good eve, he murmured, “Good luck.”

I did not think that boded well.

I moved through the flap Kyril still held open.

I was correct.

That did not bode well.

I stopped several feet in and heard the tent flap swish closed behind me.

“Husband,” I said tremulously to the large, dark man standing in the middle of our enormous tent.

A tent where the inside fabric was patterned in golds and greens against the reds, the ground covered in silk rugs and scattered with cushions, the soft mattress on which we slept placed on a platform and ensconced in red and gold sheers hanging from poles. Said bed was also strewn with silks, velvets, hides and patterned pillows.

There were even potted plants.

This was set up every night.