Much like his own, long-dead mother.
“Breathe,” Kavian ordered Amaya in a dark undertone.
He felt more than saw her stiffen beside him, then he heard her exhale.
He kept his attention on the snake.
Elizaveta made a beautiful, studied obeisance when she came before the throne, sweeping deep into a curtsey and then rising in a single, elegant motion that called attention to her lovely figure. But then, most snakes were mesmerizingly sinuous. That didn’t make them any less venomous.
“Your Majesty,” Elizaveta murmured, her voice threaded through with the faintest hint of an accent that Kavian suspected she maintained simply to appear slightly exotic wherever she went. Then she shifted her attention to her daughter. “Amaya. Darling. It’s been too long.”
“You may go to her,” Kavian said in an indulgent tone. It was over-the-top even for him and Amaya glanced at him, startled—but he trusted that the look in his eyes was savage enough to keep her from saying anything. Hers widened in response.
Challenge me, he suggested with his gaze alone. I dare you.
But Amaya merely moved toward Elizaveta, and Kavian was aware of too many things at once as she went. It was the same overly focused attention to detail that he experienced before an attack, whether while practicing the martial arts he’d trained in all his life or in an actual physical skirmish. The vastness of the great room as it echoed around his betrothed. The rustle of her long skirts as she descended the wide stairs. And the way this woman who was meant to be her mother looked at her as she waited, her expression still something like serene yet with nothing but calculation in her chilly gaze as far as he could tell.
The hug was perfunctory, the highly European double-cheek kiss a performance, and Kavian wanted to throw the older woman across the room. He wanted her hands off Amaya, that surge of protectiveness coming from deep, deep inside him, and it took all of his considerable self-control to keep himself from heeding it.
“I’m so glad you came,” Amaya said to her, quietly.
And Kavian reminded himself that this was still her mother. Amaya actually meant that. It was the only reason he did not throw this creature from his palace.
“Of course I came,” Elizaveta replied, bright and smooth and still. It wedged beneath Kavian’s skin like a blade. “Where else would I be but by your side on your wedding day?”
“Your maternal instincts are legendary indeed,” Kavian interjected, like a dark fury from above, his gaze the only thing harder than his voice. “The world is a large place, is it not, and you have explored so many different corners of it with Amaya in tow. An unconventional education for a princess, I am sure.”
Elizaveta inclined her head in a show of respect that Kavian was quite certain was entirely feigned. Amaya stared back at him, stricken. And he could not hurt her. He could not.
“But I welcome you to Daar Talaas,” he said then, for the woman who would be his wife. His perfect queen. He waited for the older woman to raise her head, and then he nearly smiled. “I do so hope you will enjoy your stay in my palace. What a shame it will be so brief.”
* * *
“He is rather Sturm und Drang, isn’t he?” Elizaveta asked Amaya when they were alone hours later, after a long day of formal greetings and diplomatic speeches. She sounded arch and amused and faintly condemning besides. As if this were all a terrific joke but only she knew the punch line. “Even for a sheikh. I’d heard rumors. Is he always quite so...commanding?”
Amaya was certain commanding was not the word her mother had been about to use just then. They sat in the charming little garden that adjoined Elizaveta’s guest suite with hot tea and a selection of sweets laid out before them. Amaya shoved an entire almond pastry into her mouth with a complete lack of decorum, because it was far safer to eat her feelings than share a single one of them with her mother.
“He is the king of Daar Talaas,” Amaya replied once she’d swallowed, aware that her mother had probably counted every calorie she’d just consumed and was mentally adding them to Amaya’s hips. With prejudice. She can’t help who she became, she reminded herself sharply. This isn’t her fault. It probably took her more to come here than you can imagine. “Commanding is simply how he is.”
Elizaveta leaned back. She held her tea—black, no sugar, of course—to her lips and sipped, never shifting her cold gaze from Amaya.
“Tell me what you’ve been up to,” Amaya said quickly, because she could practically see the way her mother was coiling up, readying herself to strike the way she always did when she felt anything, and Amaya didn’t think she could take it. “We haven’t talked in a long time.”