“You’ll have to ask the Aal Shalaan genealogists that. They’re the ones who decreed that King Atef has the purest Aal Shalaan blood in both kingdoms, from both sides of his family for as far back as possible. Since he had no daughter that we knew of back when that was determined, it became clear it was a two-sided ploy. To throw the most powerful Aal Shalaan at us, and to corner him into giving in to their demands to help the Judarian Aal Shalaans in their quest to rise to the throne, something he’d already refused to do point-blank at the risk of having an uprising in Zohayd. Then King Atef discovered he did have a daughter, and you know what happened from then on. Now the Aal Shalaans have cornered everyone, including themselves. They can’t go back in their decree, and King Atef’s daughter—you—is what satisfies their demands. But in case we don’t marry, they’re very clear they’ll seek their so-called rights to the throne through less than peaceful measures, in both kingdoms, plunging both into chaos and dragging the whole region right along. Any solution other than our marriage is a lose/lose proposition. I trust you didn’t forget everything about our region? You do remember how history went? How feuds start at the least provocation only to widen and engulf everything in their path?”
Silence crashed down again, as did the ocean waves as if in response to the enormity of his projections.
Her eyes remained riveted on his, as if begging for a repudiation, even a qualification. As they had seven years ago.
He’d had no idea he was that strong. To remain where he was, not to obey the clamoring instinct to crush her into his arms.
When he remained rock-still and silent, hope seemed to seep out of her. “It is that bad, isn’t it?”
Everything inside him stilled. He’d thrown in her face his assertion that she craved him still. He’d been out to provoke her, to punish her for daring to remain his craving, his addiction. Now that dejection, that desperation in her eyes—could it be that this wasn’t another manipulation?
It didn’t matter. Manipulation or truth, only one thing was relevant. He told her.
“It’s worse. We have a deadline.”
“A deadline?”
Aliyah heard the quavering voice of the punch-drunk entity that seemed to inhabit her body.
Kamal, that forbidding stranger, only nodded. “In five days. The day of my joloos will also be our wedding day.”
She felt as if she were going under, struggled to kick to the surface, to snatch one last breath of air. “There has to be another way, Kamal…We can’t get married…we hate each other….”
He flexed his fists as he closed the gap between them. “And you’d be surprised how many kings have married queens they abhor for their kingdoms. But here comes another decree to ameliorate the horror. After you conceive a male heir, I won’t touch you. After you give birth, I will divorce you.”
She stared at him, too much blaring through her mind in a loop.
And he was going on. “The Aal Shalaans won’t care after that, as you are only the instrument of securing the heir they want. Once that happens, everyone will get something out of this mess. King Atef will get Zohayd’s continued peace, and I will secure Judar’s throne and future. What do you want? State your demands, Aliyah.”
“State my demands?” she panted, hysteria staining her voice, tumbling through her blood. “In return for being used like a breeding mare then discarded like a lame one? How about the royal jewels of Judar? I hear they’re worth billions.”
And if she could think straight, she would have feared him at that moment. His gaze boiled over with rage and aggression.
Suddenly all heat plunged into subzero reaches.
Then he only said a clipped, final, “Done.”
It was then that Aliyah realized what the agony she felt at his every slashing word was.
Somehow, she’d never stopped loving him.
How had that happened? How had her emotions survived the injuries, the bitterness, the changes in her, the passage of time? Was she the depraved slut he believed her to be? Loving him even through the abuse? Or even because of it?
No. She’d fallen for him when he’d been incredible to her. So incredible, even his cruelty hadn’t erased the memories. The image of the man she’d thought was her soul mate kept superimposing itself over everything that had happened afterward. Her mind and soul kept rejecting the proof of his words and actions, still looking for reasons for his change, for ways to exonerate him.
But she believed his words now, that things were as perilous as he’d described. And in a situation that big, what did her emotions and future matter?
He was right. They didn’t. She didn’t.
But no matter how insignificant she was to him, in all this, she mattered to herself. Now that she’d realized the depths of her self-deception and weakness, it was up to her to quell them. So that his disgust and disregard didn’t annihilate her.
But there was one thing she couldn’t quell anymore. Tears.
She let them escape, inside and out. “What if I can’t…c-conceive? What if you can’t father a baby? What then?”
He grimaced. “You’d still keep the jewels, don’t worry. But my fertility isn’t in question. If you turn out to be infertile, that would be grounds for an easy divorce, even with our culture’s constrictive royal matrimonial laws. Then I’d negotiate another marriage with the daughter of the second noblest patriarch of the Aal Shalaans.”
“Just like that, huh?” She hiccuped. “Throw out the defective model and look for a functioning one…”
She stopped, at breaking point. Just get out of here…now.
He let her go this time when she stumbled around, following her silently to the door. Just as she groped it open, he broke his silence, his words lodging into her back again.
“Tomorrow you will be taken to Judar. As is our custom, I won’t see you again until our marriage ceremony, but I will supply you with the list of things to be done, the rules to be followed.” Then his voice dipped into bass reaches on a growl eloquent with everything that splintered her heart. “Don’t disappoint me.”
Four
“I would have given anything if only I could take it back!”
At the blurted-out declaration, Aliyah’s gaze swept again over the woman sitting across from her. Judar’s afternoon August sun was streaming through the western window of Aliyah’s guest wing in the royal palace, turning the woman’s hair into a blazing halo of undulating gold, striking turquoise beams off her eyes and drenching the perfection of elegant, chiseled features in a play of light and shadow.
Anna Beaumont was sure one beautiful lady.
It made Aliyah sheepish to acknowledge that the first thing she’d done when she’d laid eyes on her an hour ago was to marvel at their resemblance.
But there was no denying the fact that this woman could be her in blue contacts and a blond wig, with some aging makeup. Not much aging, though. Anna didn’t look twenty-seven years older than her. Aliyah wouldn’t have thought her a day above forty, a real good forty, if all that DNA evidence hadn’t confirmed that Anna was her biological mother and therefore over fifty.
She wondered how King Atef had never noticed this.
But then, seeing a resemblance between his niece and the ex-lover he’d cast out of his life over a quarter of a century ago, especially with their opposite coloring, would have been a long shot.
When Anna