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Prologue

“Will you forgive, Amjad?”

Aaze to the man whose voice boomed out the question

His father and king looalia, his responsibility-carved face frozen in a ret and wrath, agony and outrage

Aaze panned to his brothers, who flanked his father, then to the sea of tribal representatives who crowded the expansive glory of Dar Al Adl—Zohayd’s Hall of Justice Their faces blurred into a hoenous mass of anticipation as his father’s question reverberated off the arches and do echo

Will you forgive?

But he’d already forgiven what no other man would have

He’d forgiven his bride for not coin He’d soothed her fear, assured her he wouldn’t hold against her what he couldn’t provide himself What mattered were her life choices after she became his wife

Then he’d forgiven her when he’d discovered that she carried a baby From her previous lover

Peoplea life, or even a relationship, over one

He couldn’t feel betrayed She’d been a stranger he’d picked—or rather had had pointed out to hi recommendation—fro As crown prince of a kingdom ruled by tribal pacts, his own considerations hadn’t come into play

But she’d beco to be his one woman And because he couldn’t live the rest of his life for the cold convenience of everyone else, he’d deterive her the best of himself He’d focused on what he appreciated in her, dismissed what he didn’t

And she’d repaid his clemency and compassion with deceit and destruction

“Aruff whisper prodded him to answer

He’d had many answers To his worries when loss of appetite had been followed by pins and needles in his palms and cramps in his calves Overwork, stress, exhaustion

When the burning in his gut, the gnawing in his throat and that terrible taste in his mouth joined in, he’d suspected another cause Soul sickness

His ht have accepted his situation, but his spirit was seared that they were starting the e with a lie to protect his wife’s and her fae had sealed That he ht not love her baby as every innocent child deserved to be loved

It was only when the real sickness began, purging every bite of food and drop of water fro his psyche and crippling headaches his sanity, that he’d sought out the royal physicians in secret

They’d been baffled His sy to ate the him the constant torment

But when delirium followed dizziness and drowsiness, doubts became certainty

Soh his body Because tests could find nothing within, it had to be so from without

He’d doubted everything, and almost everyone But not her

How could he doubt the ho showered hi love?

His focus wavered on the hands lying limply on his knees They bore the ernails, darkof the skin

He shuddered with the blow of recollection When realization had crushed him Of how he’d been poisoned