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“Because he is a deirl’s mouth twisted “He is also my brother”
Cleo sed, hard
He stood there, waiting And now she understood what that proud ruthlessnesswas that e the whole city small and inconsequential beside him
Cleo’s ht of Brian then Weak, lying Brian Brian, who had humiliated her Brian, who had said he loved her but couldn’t possibly have meant it, could he? Brian, who she’d believed so completely when he’d never had even a shred of the intensity or authority the man before her simplyoozed
The sultan jerked his head in a silent yet remarkably eloquent command to exit the vehicle
Immediately
And Cleo forgot about stupid, cheating Brian and the girlfriend he’d kept on the side for alement
This was exactly the kind of thing she’d promised her parents back in Ohio would never happen to her, because she’d iined she was too smart, or too cynical, to fall prey to scenarios like this This was exactly what her mother and her hysterical aunts had predicted would happen if she did so so radical as explore the world by herself She could practically hear the dooloom predictions they’d all shared with her whether she’d wanted the-away present, as if they hispering it in her ear from across the planet
They’d begged her not to do this They’d told her running away froht into new ones And now look what had happened
The sultan waited Less patient by the moment
“Just drive over hiirl beside her demanded “Mow him dohere he stands”
“I can’t,” Cleo said, except she found she hispering “I can’t do that”
And everything seeh the air wasbut him That man The sultan She shifted the car into Park Beside her, the girl let out a frustrated noise, but Cleo’s attention was riveted on the man at the end of her bumper
Still Watchful Ferocious
Her neck prickled with a deep foreboding With anxiety With the sense of immensity, as if what she was about to do was already sealed in stone, as ancient and un and inevitable as the venerable city around her, as the old streets beneath her
As the man before her The sultan of all he surveyed