His heart was beating strongly.
He took a deep breath.“I am not a beggar. I am the son of the Emir.”
Zainab’s world began to spin as she processed Yusha’s words. “I am the Emir’s son.” She tried to control her breathing, to understand what she had just heard. Her mind replayed every moment they had shared, his kindness, his quiet strength, his stories that felt too vivid for a mere beggar, and now she understood why. He had never been a beggar. Her father had married her off not to a beggar, but to royalty disguised in rags.
She withdrew her hands from his, stepped back, and asked him, her voice trembling, “Why? Why did you let me believe you were a beggar?”
Yusha stood up, her voice calm but thick with emotion. “Because I wanted someone who would see me, not my wealth, not my title, just me. Someone pure. Someone whose love couldn’t be bought or forced. You were everything I asked for, Zainab.”
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.”
