here's another cover I did for french editor Bragelonne. It's for the novel The Slave by Carol Berg.
The pitch consisted on showing the interaction between the 2 characters into a Persian location. But I thought I needed a little something extra. I redid the background a couple of time and finally I decided to go to something graphical / ornemental that would give an indication of the persian background, plus it would help keep the focus on the characters.