Page 39 of Do Not Awaken Love (The Moroccan Empire #3)

Yusuf does not hold back. The King of Granada is taken and bound in chains, then sent across the sea to Zaynab, who decrees that he will henceforth live in Aghmat, now only a humble outpost. He is followed in less than a month by the King of Malaga, then the King of Seville.

Zaynab must be enjoying her power over these foreign rulers, who must kneel to a woman and show gratitude for having their life spared.

Valencia holds out the longest, but Rodrigo Del Diaz, known as El Cid, does not last long once his own son falls in battle.

He dies shortly afterwards, broken by his son’s demise and Yusuf’s strength.

And with this hero gone, the Christian armies lose their spirit.

They huddle in the North; Al-Andalus is now wholly in Yusuf’s hands. His kingdom has become an empire.

I hear from Aisha that Yusuf is due to return from Al-Andalus and my heart leaps.

I try to pretend that I want the house cleaned from top to bottom out of the desire for cleanliness and order, but I know it is not true.

I make Ali recite to me from his studies; I stand over him to see how smooth his handwriting is.

I find myself stitching new robes for all of our household, in fine new wools and bright colours.

I look down at what I’m stitching for myself, a golden yellow, so much unlike how I used to dress that I wonder for a moment if I should wear my customary grey or brown.

But the colour mirrors what is in my heart, a lightening, a gladdening. I keep stitching.

The day that Yusuf returns to Murakush I feel giddy, I can settle to nothing.

At last Rebecca says that she will take Ali out, that she needs to buy fruits in the marketplace.

I agree that they may go, reminding myself that Yusuf will not visit us today, he has barely returned and will have much to do.

He will not think of us for many days, I am certain of it.

It is a quiet day, Fatima tends to one or two patients upstairs, but most of the house is silent.

I sit by the fountain in the empty courtyard and look into the water below, see my rippled reflection.

Slowly I untie my hair wrap and look at how long and dark my hair has grown in these years.

I should shave it of course, should return to the pale scalp that earned me the cruel name of moon, but I have not done so and I know, running my hands through its thickness, that I will not do so in the future.

I see many strands of grey, and wonder whether, if I were to wash it with rosemary and walnut shells, whether I might reverse the greying, return my hair to the darkness of my youth.

I reach out to rub a nearby sprig of rosemary between my fingertips, pluck it and hold it close to my nose, the smell overwhelming. Such vanity.

“There you are. With your plants, of course, as always.”

I leap to my feet and take several steps towards Yusuf before I come to a sudden halt, holding myself back from throwing myself into his arms. I cannot do such a thing, but for one moment it was all I thought of.

“Have you changed your mind about greeting me?” he asks, closing the gap between us and coming to a halt so close in front of me that I take a step backwards.

I breathe in to answer and smell his scent, the rough smell of camel and sweat, but beneath that the smell of his own body, which I know too well. I breathe out again, unable to answer.

“You need not step away from me,” he says, and his voice has grown deeper and quieter. He lifts his arm and to my astonishment runs his fingers through my hair. “I have never seen your hair unbound,” he says.

“It is supposed to be veiled, like your face,” I say, my voice shaking.

He takes his hand away from my head and instead pulls at his face veil, dropping it to the floor beside him, so that we stand face to face, the paleness of the skin beneath his eyes still startling to me.

He has aged; these past years of fighting have been hard on a man already advanced in years.

I feel myself trembling, think to kneel and collect my own head wrap, to pin it fiercely about myself and turn away from this intimacy.

But I do not. I stand and gaze into his eyes in silence, until his hand reaches out again and this time touches my cheek.

“I have found a name for you,” he says.

I jerk out a laugh. “After all these years without one that pleased you?”

“It is a name that suits you,” he says.

I can think of nothing but his fingers on my skin. I have to blink; must focus on what he has said. “And what is this name?”

“Fadl al-Hasan,” he says.

I frown, then give a forced laugh. “Perfection of Beauty? I am hardly perfect.”

He does not smile. His finger slips over the skin of my cheek, over my scars at the side of my face, usually hidden under my headwrap.

“I think a better meaning is ‘More than Perfection,’” he says softly, and I feel my skin turn to goose flesh, my cheeks grow flushed beneath his touch. “You are more than perfect.”

I do not know how to respond to this intimacy from Yusuf. “You have changed,” I say, my voice still shaking. “You have not spoken like this to me before.”

“I missed you,” he says simply.

“How did you have time to miss me?”

“I told you before. I miss speaking to someone of the small things.”

“You have achieved great things while you were away,” I say.

“Perhaps it is time to achieve something else,” he says.

I should step away. I should make some light-hearted jest, to break the moment.

“It seems I must rule two lands now,” he says. “But I have only one queen. Perhaps I should have another.”

I say nothing.

“If each queen had her own land to rule over,” he continues, his voice very low, “there could surely be no rivalry.”

“Jealousy does not arise over lands,” I say, my own voice barely above a whisper. “It arises when it is a heart that must be shared.”

“You could rule as my queen over Al-Andalus,” he says. “I will divide my time between there and here.”

“I have no desire to rule over a kingdom,” I say.

“Do you desire anything else that is in my power to give?” he asks.

I breathe in. The scent of him, standing so close to me, is almost too much to bear. “Do not ask that question,” I say finally. “I cannot bring myself to answer it.”

“And if I continue to ask?”

“I beg you not to,” I say, and the effort it is costing me, to stand so close to him yet not touch him, to speak without accepting what he is offering, grows too much.

I turn and run away from him, make my way up the staircase and into my own bedchamber. I kneel by the window and look up at the bright sky above me, breathe deeply, wipe tears from my eyes.

Near to my hand is the small carved box in which I keep my most precious items, such few things as I have. I take it and turn around so that I am sitting on the floor, knees pulled up, the casket in my hands.