Chapter One

"Your Highness, I'm so sorry, please forgive me!" The woman dropped to her knees, bowing low and covering the back of her head with her hands.

Aradishir wiped whatever substance had just been accidentally thrown in his face out of his eyes so he could see. Nearby, doing a poor job of smothering his laughter, Heydar handed off a strip of cloth offered by one of the guards. A headwrap. He'd have to make sure it was properly replaced. "Thank you," he said, and cleaned up as best he could.

It was sweet smelling, whatever it was, accidentally tossed from a clay jar as the woman argued with someone else in the pavilion. Such carts were not supposed to be here, but people new to the job always made that mistake.

"Please, it's fine," Aradishir said. "As long as no one has been hurt. What is the problem here?"

The woman didn't stand, but she looked up briefly before dropping her eyes to the ground again, voice shaking as she said, "I am so very sorry, Your Highness. This man here was trying to take my goods, and when I tried to take them back…"

"I see." Aradishir looked to the posted guards, who nodded in confirmation. "Summon further guards, have the cart and all these people escorted to the proper yard, and have the House Mistress sort the matter out."

"Yes, Your Highness."

"Make certain someone brings you a new wrap as well, and I'll return or replace this one." Aradishir sighed. "Would you send someone to let Mother know I'll be a little late to lunch?" When the guards confirmed they would, he headed back inside and through the palace to his chambers, ignoring the looks and snickers from the people he passed.

In his room, he immediately went to bathe. "What is this stuff?" He sniffed it again, but all he got was sweet. Like liquid sugar, thick and sticky. "Why would they have entire jars of liquid sugar?"

"All sorts of cooking applications," Heydar said, cleaning up the small bits that had struck him. "We're lucky it was cooled and not still hot, or you'd have lost skin at the very least."

Aradishir shuddered. "What a delightful image, thank you."

Heydar laughed and went to change his clothes, returning shortly with new clothes for Aradishir.

Dressed again, Aradishir sat at his dressing table so Heydar could fix his hair. He'd known nothing of such things when first joining the harem, and it wasn't a duty he was expected to fill, but he'd proven interested and deft and so most often did it now.

"There," Heydar said after a few minutes. "Like it never happened at all, and your mother will love the tale."

"I can hear her laughing already," Aradishir said with a sigh, even as he smiled. "Shall we, then? I really want to know why she wants to speak with me so suddenly. I've behaved for the past three weeks!"

Heydar chuckled as they walked through the halls. "Maybe she wants to make certain of that, given you and your siblings can't generally go three days without stirring up some sort of mischief."

"You're not funny."

Every now and then Heydar nodded to one of the many guards lining the palace walls, part of the small group he still spoke to now and again, those he'd gotten along with when he'd been a guard.

When they reached the Butterfly Room, his mother was already there with two of her concubines, one on each side, the three of them exchanging sips of wine and brief kisses. As ever, his mother was beautiful and perfect, the Jewel of Tavamara, the very definition of a queen. Aradishir did not envy the woman who would have to follow in her footsteps. He also didn't envy his brother having to follow in their father's.

He was perfectly happy being the youngest child, and no he wasn't spoiled rotten like his siblings insisted. "Good afternoon, Mother. I apologize for being late."

Fahima smiled. "I hear you were doused in sugar syrup."

"That stuff is unreasonably sticky," Aradishir replied as he took his seat opposite her, Heydar sitting on his right.

"What in the world were you doing in the main pavilion anyway?"

Aradishir rolled his eyes. "I was passing by on my way here and heard a ruckus." He took a sip of wine as Heydar offered the cup. "Better me than the poor guards."

Fahima smiled, soft and fond, eyes full of warmth. "Yes, I hear someone threw wine on them last week. That vendor did not enjoy what happened to his contract."

"Good," Aradishir replied. "Now stop torturing me, Mother. Why did you want to see me so abruptly?" He took a bite of spicy meat as Heydar set a full plate in front of him, thanking him in a quiet murmur.

"So impatient," Fahima said, clucking her tongue. "You must learn patience, Ari."

"I sat through all of dinner last night while that oaf droned on about his stupid farms and didn't say one single rude thing."

"Your face said enough," one of her concubines, Matiana, said dryly.

Aradishir rolled his eyes. Heydar snickered and offered him more wine.

"Your father and I need a favor from you. Well, your brother needs the favor, and we're asking on his behalf," Fahima said.

"Where is Bakhtiar?"

"He was injured, badly, while at the Temple of Petyana. Broke his leg, and it's advised he move as little as possible for the next couple of weeks."

Aradishir laughed. "What did he do? Did he fall in another fountain?"

Fahima gave him a stern look.

"What? He's clearly fine, broken leg aside, or you wouldn't be sitting here so calmly. Tell me, tell me."

"You are twenty-five, not twelve," Fahima said, then relented with a sigh. "He was climbing a wall and fell, landed badly on his leg."

Aradishir laughed again, loudly and obnoxiously. "What a dumbass."

"Enough," Fahima chided. "The problem is that his betrothed is arriving tomorrow, and he will not be here to greet her. Your sister is in no state to be playing hostess, and your father and I cannot ignore our duties to do so."

"No, don't make me," Aradishir said with a groan. "I have enough work of my own! Why do I have to dance attendance upon his bride. He shouldn't have been climbing walls!"

"Ari."

He sighed in defeat. "Yes, Mother. You know I would never actually defy you—"

"Except all the times you'd done precisely that to sneak into the city," Fahima retorted.

"Except for those. Which I'm not sorry about because I got Javed and Heydar out of it."

"He doesn't sneak out anymore, Your Majesty, I promise you that," Heydar said.

Fahima smiled. "I appreciate your efforts, Lord Heydar. Here is everything you need to know about Princess Relanya, Ari. Read up, be ready to greet her tomorrow, treat her like the queen she is going to be."

"Of course, Mother."

"Thank you. I'll have my office coordinate with yours and have your duties reassigned, so your schedule is clear."

"Yes, Mother." Aradishir kissed and hugged her, then scooped up the folder she'd given him and headed off back to his rooms, so he could read the dossier without interruption.

When he returned, it was to find that Javed and Merza had returned from their respective lessons in dancing and court decorum. How to be a proper gold, as Merza would say. "My mother is making me babysit my brother's betrothed because he went and broke his leg climbing a wall."

"Why in the world was he climbing a wall?" Javed asked. "It's no wonder they don't like to let the royal family leave the premises. All you do is get hurt and bring back strange men."

Aradishir snickered as he sat at his table, spreading out the papers from the dossier. "Let's learn about our future queen, shall we? Princess Relanya of Penna. Thirty years old, which means two years younger than my stupid brother, one…" Aradishir's eyes widened.

"What?" his concubines asked in chorus.

"She… she has a child . A five-year-old son. That… that…"

"What!" the other three said again.

Aradishir couldn't focus on the rest of the dossier. He'd never heard of a single monarch or future monarch marrying someone who already had a child. Depending on the marriage contract, that could make someone a foreign-born heir to the throne. If the contract terms stated they wouldn't be eligible, that could create all sorts of tension and resentment in the future. This wasn't going to cause a scandal; this was going to cause an upset that could—would—tear the court apart. Not to mention the country.

It was a bold move, even for his trouble-causing parents. No wonder they wanted him to babysit her—they wanted her protected. Why in the world had they chosen such a scandalous spouse for Bakhtiar? That she was from Penna, a remote kingdom as covered in snow as Tavamara was in sand, was unusual enough.

He frowned pensively as he continued reading. Initially married at twenty-four, had a child at twenty-five, then… Well, fuck, the scandal grew and grew. Her husband and his inner circle had all been arrested and executed as traitors, colluding with Havarin. That was why his parents were doing this. Penna was remote, but they had crucial resources, and they'd prove a vital ally against the Havarin Empire.

"How have I never heard of this? Five people executed for colluding with Havarin against their own kingdom? That should have been all over court."

"You were twenty at the time, my prince," Heydar said, "and still quite focused on other matters. I don't think you began paying attention to politics until a little later."

Aradishir cast him an amused look. "How do you know that?"

"Gossip," Heydar replied blandly. "Everyone remarked how the rest of your family was deeply immersed, but you seemed utterly oblivious."

"No wonder everyone calls me the spoiled brat of the family." Aradishir sighed. "My parents have held nothing back with this marriage. I think half the court will collapse from their hearts giving out. I'm going to kill Bakhtiar myself for being so careless now when we need him most. What sort of impression will this make on Prince Relanya?"

"I think a woman who was married to a traitor and bore his child is not going to complain much about anything when she's betrothed to the crown prince of Tavamara," Merza said in his ruthlessly matter-of-fact way. "Don't know much about the ways of golds and diamonds, but I know that if she was told she had to run naked through the streets for the marriage to go through, she'd be off running before anyone could ask if she agreed."

Aradishir snorted a laugh. "What an image. Thankfully she won't have to do anything that drastic, though it might be easier than gaining the court's approval. This explains the journey Mother went on a few years ago; no wonder Father was so especially stressed about it." She'd been gone for most of a year, a huge breach in protocol that the court still talked about whenever she offended their sensibilities yet again. This must have been what she'd gone to take care of, though at the time even he and his siblings had known only it was a 'diplomatic matter of great importance.' No wonder his parents had been so cagey.

Leave it to Bakhtiar to have a broken leg that removed him from dealing with the first and greatest wave of outrage and scandal. Aradishir was going to break his other leg. He might be the so-called spoiled brat, but Bakhtiar was a selfish ass.

On the opposite side of the table, Heydar was reading a different section of the dossier. "Says she's studied Tavamara extensively all her life, initially for pleasure and more recently to purpose. Fluent, familiar with our customs… Sounds like she's very much in earnest about coming here and making Tavamara her home. Bet Her Majesty assisted in that a great deal. If she already has Queen Fahima's approval…"

"Then woe betide any courtier stupid enough to disagree with my mother, and I look forward to watching them suffer," Aradishir said with another snorting laugh. "Who has her interests?"

"Music," Merza said. "She's bringing three handmaidens with her. I wouldn't be surprised if they're her intended harem, given how thorough she's been with everything else. Though she might have thought to restrict it to two, and have… Oh, nevermind, one of them is Tavamaran, the daughter of the ambassador to Pelenna. This really does seem important to her."

"To save face, I'd imagine, after the scandal of her late husband," Aradishir replied, drumming his fingers as he kept reading, heart going out to a woman who at only thirty had already endured so much misery and strife. Even if the marriage had been purely political, with no deeper affection between the couple, that would have been a blow. If she had loved him… and no doubt everyone continued to suspect she'd been party to the plot and her parents had kept that fact buried…

Despite the fact this visit would drastically upset his already busy schedule, he couldn't deny he was now deeply intrigued by the mysterious Prince Relanya. "What else does she like, Merza?"

"Tapestry work, especially traditional style, whatever that means," Merza replied. "Other appropriate feminine pursuits. What in the world does that mean?"

"Penna is a bit more rigid than Tavamara in what is suitable for men to do and what is suitable for women." Aradishir waved a hand in the air. "The way my sister is the one who largely contends with the military would never be tolerated in Penna. Military is a man's sphere. Women do 'delicate' things, like embroider and weave tapestries and the like."

Merza snorted. "If having hands deft enough to stitch a fine seam makes me a woman, then slap my ass and call me milady, 'cause I'll take that over stabbing people any day."

That sent the rest of the room into gales. Picking up the papers he'd scattered on the floor, Aradishir then crooked a finger. "Come here, little thief."

Grinning in that sharp, wicked way of his, Merza rounded the table and straddled Aradishir's lap, twining arms around his neck. "You summoned, my prince?"

Aradishir replied by kissing him, wrapping his own arms around Merza's trim waist, savoring the heat of him, the scent of jasmine clinging to his skin, the eagerness of his kiss as he took control of it, a control Aradishir was always happy to concede.

It took only moments for them to spread him out on the floor, stripped naked and more than ready to take him after their thorough ministrations the night before. Aradishir groaned as Merza slid inside him, his wrists pinned above his head by Heydar's easy strength, and Javed toying with his cock while Merza fucked him.

Once Merza was finished with him, the other two had him, Heydar sliding into his well-used hole while Javed fucked his mouth.

Aradishir sprawled on the floor when they'd finished, wrung out and exhausted. "I don't think that's helping me prepare for Her Highness's visit, but I'm not terribly sorry about the distraction either. One of you miscreants help me to the bath."

Heydar scooped him up easily and carried him across the room, while Merza tidied up the mess of papers scattered across the table and floor and Javed called for wine.

Once he was scrubbed clean, Aradishir slid with a groan into the soothing hot water of his bath, resting his head against a cushion someone had placed for him. "What else does Princess Relanya enjoy? I need to start arranging things for us to do."

"Birds," Merza said as they joined him in the bath. "She has a collection of songbirds she's bringing with her."

"She'll love the temple, then, but likely she and Mother have already talked avidly about that."

"Charity work is important to her, along with other ways of helping people. To be honest, my prince, she seems to serve the same role back home that you do here. So I think you two will get along quite well. Perhaps she'll take an interest in some of your causes; that would be a wonderful way for her to settle in and make good impressions."

"Maybe," Aradishir said. "She's to be queen, though, which will leave her little time for such things." That's why he managed all of it. He wouldn't gain significant assistance until he married himself, but he had no idea when that would be. Like with so many other traditions, his parents had chosen not to see their children married off while they were still quite young. The older Aradishir got, the more grateful he was. He was only twenty-five and even he could appreciate he'd been in no fit state for marriage at twenty, let alone eighteen.

Heaving out of the bath, he shrugged into a robe and returned to the table right as a servant arrived with wine. Taking his seat, he pulled pen and paper close to start listing out ideas and to dos. "How in the world am I going to entertain her for two weeks? Possibly longer, knowing my useless brother." He drummed his fingers on the table. "A proper tour of the palace and grounds will occupy a couple of days. Mother and Father would have already handled the banquets and such… Where is my schedule?"

"Here," Javed said, sliding it across the table. "There's also notes here in the dossier about what has already been planned."

"Oh, good," Aradishir said. "So arriving tomorrow morning or afternoon. I'm sure she'll just want to rest, so that's one day taken care of, the day after we can do the tour…Mother will likely take her to temple, so that's most of another day covered…" He frowned. "Wait. There's nothing here about what gifts Bakhtiar has purchased. I'll need to have those ready for her arrival. Why aren't there any notes on that?" There should be at least a full page listing out various welcome and betrothal gifts, for Princess Relanya, her son, and her handmaidens, since it was the height of rudeness to ignore anyone accompanying her. There should be additional pages of gifts for her handmaidens.

Aradishir had a horrible suspicion his mother had trusted the matter to Bakhtiar, and he had either forgotten entirely or assumed Mother was handling it. Fuck. "Heydar, go speak with Bakhtiar's staff and figure out where in the Divine the gifts are."

"Yes, my prince." Heydar strode quickly from the room via the secret passages.

"I'm going to kill him," Aradishir said. "If Bakhtiar let gifts for his future wife fall by the wayside, I am going to ride out to that temple, break his other leg and both his arms, and dump him in the Great Desert." He was used to his brother being careless, but this was beyond all comprehension. This woman was going to be his queen, the mother of his children. How could he forget to buy her gifts?

Hopefully he was panicking for nothing. He had to be. Even Bakhtiar wouldn't be this stupid. If nothing else, his concubines and staff would have reminded him.

He continued jotting notes and ideas, until the door to the secret passage swung open and Heydar returned—and the knot in his stomach tightened at the look on Heydar's face. "No."

"Yes," Heydar said. "Her Majesty told him to attend the matter, but for whatever reason he never did, and no one realized it until now. Her Majesty is… Well, your brother should be grateful he's too far away for her to maim him."

"Somebody go ready my horse, so I can commit fratricide," Aradishir said, raking his hands through his damp hair. "Damn it, Bakhti!" He slammed his hands on the table and pushed to his feet. "Come on, then. I need to get dressed, then we're going to the vaults, and then we're going into the city to do some shopping. Somebody inform my parents, so they know not to expect me at dinner. Damn it, my lists."

He turned around, and nearly crashed into Javed, who held the lists in one hand, and steadied Aradishir with the other. "Get dressed, my prince, and I have the lists to take with us."

"Thank you," Aradishir said, and kissed him before hastening off to get dressed, mind spinning frantically with all that his brother had been given months to do and which Aradishir must now do in half a day.