His authority arrived as space.
But the women at the spring began to talk.
“Has he come to you yet?”
“A marriage that is not made real is not a marriage,” another warned. “The elders will say so. Your father will say so first.”
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Fear returned.
That evening, Zainab told Yusha, “My father will come.”
“Then he will come,” he replied.
“They will talk.”
“They will talk whether we give them a story or not.”
He looked at her.
“I will not turn their talk into a reason to enter a room you have not opened.”
She slept that night with the bolt drawn.
Not because she feared him.
Because she needed one place in the world whose lock answered only to her hand.
Malik came on the twelfth day.
He entered the courtyard without waiting to be invited.
