“I’m so glad. You see, I wasn’t in love with you until ever so long after that. Not until—oh, until—”
“Until when?”
Aryenis buried her face in my shoulder.
“Oh, not—not until we’d gone quite three miles on the camel next morning. At least, I wasn’t sure till then.”
“That was a long time, Shahzadi,” I laughed.
“It was.” She looked up reprovingly. “But I really liked you quite a lot before that, too. But tell me, Harilek, what are we going to do now?”
“We are going to get married the very instant your father’s finished off the Shamans. We’ve wasted a lot of time already.”
Aryenis veiled her eyes again as she answered. “Yes—perhaps we have—only really it was you that wasted it.”
“Mauve-bound eagle feathers,” said I.
My Shahzadi buried her face in my arm once more, and it took a lot of persuasion—of the labial kind—before I could see it again.