She sat down, her legs too weak to support her. Her heart wrestled with anger and love. Why hadn’t she told him? Why had she let him believe she was discarded like trash? Yusha knelt beside her again. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I came to the village in disguise because I was tired of suitors who loved the throne but not the man. I heard about a blind girl rejected by her father. I watched you from afar for weeks before proposing through your father, disguised as a beggar. I knew you would accept because you wanted to be rid of me.”
Tears streamed down Zainab’s cheeks. The pain of her father’s rejection mingled with disbelief that someone could have gone so far only to find a heart like his. She didn’t know what to say, so she simply asked, “And now? What happens now?”
Yusha gently took her hand. “Now you’re coming with me, to my world, to the palace.”
Her heart leapt. “But I’m blind. How can I be a princess?”
He smiled. “You already are, my princess.”
