Rashid guides me through corridors that grow progressively more opulent, his hand steady at my elbow. He doesn't speak, doesn't judge—just moves through halls where the tilework becomes art and the air smells of sandalwood and power.
When we reach the massive carved doors, he pauses. "His Highness will arrive shortly. You're safe here."
The words should comfort me. They don't.
He opens the doors and I step into Mehmet's chambers—a space so vast it makes my family home seem provincial. Rich carpets, shelves of books reaching toward painted ceilings, military maps beside gleaming weapons. Everything speaks of wealth, strategy, and absolute power.
I stand frozen in the center, my borrowed silk suddenly feeling like a costume. The servants who came with me arrange themselves along the walls like furniture, eyes carefully averted.
The door opens again. Everyone bows.
Mehmet enters, and the room shrinks around his presence. He's changed into something simpler but no less expensive—dark fabric emphasizing his shoulders, the controlled violence in every movement. His eyes find mine immediately, recognition electric between us.
"Leave us," he commands.
The servants file out with practiced efficiency. Rashid is last, closing the doors with a soft click that sounds like a cell locking.
We're alone. Prince and concubine. Predator and prey.
"Did you know?" His first question cuts straight to bone. "When you offered yourself to me in that tavern—did you know who I was?"
"No." My voice comes out steadier than I feel. "I thought you were nobody. A stranger I'd never see again."
He moves closer, each step deliberate. "Look at me and say that again."
I force myself to meet his eyes—those dark eyes that saw me broken and desperate, that watched me fall apart in his arms. "I didn't know you were the shehzade. I swear it."
Something in his expression shifts, tension releasing incrementally. "I believe you." He circles me slowly, and I feel his gaze like a physical touch. "Do you know what I was doing in that tavern that night?"
"Escaping." The word comes unbidden, but it feels true. "The same thing I was."
"Yes." He stops before me again, close enough that I can smell cedar and something darker. "I go there when the palace becomes suffocating with false faces and calculated words." His hand lifts, fingers tracing my jaw with devastating gentleness. "And then you appeared. Desperate and brave and so painfully honest."
My breath catches.
"I've been searching for you since dawn," he continues, his voice dropping lower. "Sent Rashid through every corner of the lower quarters, trying to find the girl who chose me in her darkest moment. The girl who cried while telling me her family destroyed her. The girl who asked me to hurt her because she thought pain was all she deserved."
"Why?" The question tears out of me. "Why would you search for me? I was nothing—nobody—"
"You were everything that first night." His thumb brushes my lower lip. "Your defiance haunted me. Your pain called to something I thought long dead. I needed to find you."
The intensity in his gaze threatens to consume me.
"I can destroy them." His words shift, becoming darker. "Your father. Your sister. That pathetic excuse for a man who rejected you. One word from me and House Razavi ceases to exist. Your sister's marriage can be annulled. Kemal can be stripped of everything he values. I can make them suffer the way they made you suffer."
The offer hangs between us, terrible and tempting. Part of me—the wounded, angry part—wants to say yes. Wants to watch them burn the way I burned.
But that would mean they still matter. That they still define me.
"No." I force the word out past the thickness in my throat. "I don't want revenge that keeps me tied to them. I don't want to be rescued from their cruelty—I want them to become irrelevant. I want a future that has nothing to do with what they took from me."
Mehmet goes still, studying me with new intensity. "You don't want me to save you."
"I want to stop needing to be saved." My hands clench at my sides. "They've already taken nineteen years of my life. I won't let them take more by making vengeance the center of my existence."
For a long moment, he doesn't speak. Then: "Very well. They become irrelevant. Forgotten. Unless—" His voice hardens to something lethal. "—they threaten you again. If they come near you, if they so much as speak your name with anything but respect, mercy ends. Understood?"
It's possessiveness framed as protection, and I should be frightened by the absoluteness in his tone. Instead, I feel something loosening in my chest—not rescue, but the promise that I won't face them alone again.
"Understood," I whisper.
He cups my face with both hands, tilting it up to meet his gaze. "In that tavern, you gave yourself to me in darkness, not knowing who I was or what I could offer. You chose me when you thought I was nobody."
His thumbs stroke my cheekbones. "Now you know exactly who I am. You know the power I hold, the danger of being mine, the target it paints on your back."
My heart hammers against my ribs.
"You belong to me now," he says, the words both declaration and question. "Publicly. Officially. Everyone in this palace knows I've claimed you. But I need you to understand something, Leyla—I won't touch you again until you ask me to. Until you choose me fully, knowing everything."
"What?" The word comes out confused, breathless.
"You chose a stranger in desperation," he explains, his voice rough with restraint. "I won't have you choosing a prince out of obligation or fear. When you come to me next—if you come—it will be because you want this. Want me."
The boundary he's setting should offer relief. Instead, it feels like torture—knowing he's right here, knowing how his hands feel on my skin, knowing the safety I felt in his arms, and having it held just out of reach.
"That's not fair," I whisper.
His smile is dark, knowing. "No. It's not." He leans down, his lips brushing mine with agonizing softness—not a kiss, just a promise. "But when you do ask, little dove, I'll give you everything you didn't know you needed."
He pulls back, leaving me swaying slightly. "You'll sleep here tonight. In my bed. I'll hold you if you want—just hold you, nothing more. You're safe here. Do you understand?"
I nod, unable to form words.
"Then come." He extends his hand, steady and sure. "Let me show you that safety doesn't have to hurt."
I take his hand because I have nowhere else to go, because part of me doesn't want to be anywhere else. He leads me to the massive bed, helps me out of the formal silks with careful hands that don't linger, doesn't push, doesn't take.
When we lie down, he pulls me against his chest, my back to his front, his arms wrapped around me like armor. His face presses against my neck, and I feel his breath steady and warm against my skin.
"Sleep," he murmurs. "I have you."
And impossibly, surrounded by his warmth and strength, with the most dangerous man in the Empire holding me like I'm something precious—I do.
I sleep.