Shaheen exhaled in resignation. “Don’t ask more of me, Father. A pretense that this isn’t torture is foremost among the things I don’t have to give.”
“You’re being unreasonable. You’re not the first or last royal to enter a marriage of state for his kingdom’s sake.”
“And you did it twice, so why not me, eh?” Shaheen knew he was stepping over the line talking to his father, and king, this harshly. But he didn’t care. He had no more stamina for observing protocol. “And I am here to do it, Father. So why should I even attend this farce at all? Why not spare me this added torment? I’d rather not choose the method of my own execution. I’ll leave it up to you to pick the most humane one.”
King Atef winced at his analogy. “That’s the problem. Many candidates have pros and cons that weigh each other out. It has to be your personal preference that tips the balance in one’s favor.”
“You think I care if I’m shot or electrocuted or cut to pieces? They’re all equal and interchangeable to me. Just pick one.”
“You’re exaggerating now. All your bridal candidates are fine young women. Beautiful, well-bred, highly educated, pleasant. You’ll get to like your bride, and maybe in time love her.”
“Like you love Queen Sondoss? And loved my mother?”
His father’s scowl deepened at Shaheen’s ready counter. The best he’d reached with Shaheen’s mother was peaceful coexistence. As for Queen Sondoss, leashed hostility was all he could hope for on a good day.
“There are Aliyah and Kamal. I believe no one can be any happier than they are.”
“Don’t bring them up, Father. They were already crazy in love when they married. Circumstances just forced them apart, and thankfully, forced them back together.”
His father’s gaze wavered. Then he let go of his kingly veneer.
Nothing remained but the loving father who looked and sounded pained at what he couldn’t save his son from. “I can’t tell you how much I regret that you’ll have to walk in my footsteps. But there’s no way around it. And that is why I’m asking you to pay attention to the candidates. At least you have more than one to choose from. I had no say in choosing either your mother or Sondoss. You may have better luck finding someone who’s compatible with you among the dozen possible brides.”
Shaheen’s teeth ground together. He’d already found someone who was compatible with him in every way.
Gemma had clearly not thought the same. She hadn’t even thought him worthy of a goodbye.
That didn’t change anything for him. He knew now that everything he’d ever dreamed of existed, even if she didn’t want him, even if he could never have her. What were the chances that fate would gift him with another woman who was even close?
He not only believed it wouldn’t, he didn’t want it to.
He refrained from saying anything. His father would have to roll the dice and decide Shaheen’s fate himself.
Finally his father gave up, brushed past him and walked out with heavy steps.
Shaheen watched him, compassion flickering through the deadness inside him.
His father hadn’t had an easy life. Certainly not a contented one. Shaheen had grown up believing that his father had never known happiness or love outside of what he felt for his job and children. It had been only a couple of years ago that they’d found out he’d once tasted that happiness and love, with a woman. Anna Beaumont.
He’d had an affair with her during his separation from Queen Sondoss two years after Haidar and Jalal were born. Then Anna had fallen pregnant, and his efforts to end his marriage to Sondoss had failed. And though it had nearly destroyed him, he’d left Anna, telling her he could never be with her again, due to the threat of war with Sondoss’s home kingdom of Azmahar, and that it was imperative to abort their child.
Instead, Anna had put her baby up for adoption. Shaheen’s aunt Bahiyah, secretly knowing about her brother’s affair, had adopted Aliyah and passed her off as hers.
It was only many years later, while his father was recovering from a heart attack, that he’d searched for Anna again and discovered the truth. It was a timely discovery, as another flare of unrest in the region could only be resolved if a daughter of King Atef’s married the king of Judar. Now Aliyah was King Kamal’s worshipped wife and Judar’s beloved queen, and Anna Beaumont had become a constant presence in Aliyah’s and, by association, his father’s lives.
Shaheen believed that had only deepened his father’s unhappiness. For he could never have the only woman he’d ever wanted, and as Shaheen sensed, still did.
He and his father had that in common, too.
Shaheen kept his eyes fixed on his father’s slumped shoulders as they reached their destination, braced himself as they stepped into the ceremony hall.
Brightness and buzzing seemed to rise at their entry, but he couldn’t register the magnificent surroundings beyond the darkness and ugliness inside him. It was reflected on every surface, on every face that turned to look at him.
Suddenly every hair on his body stood on end.
What now?
His eyes panned the room, seeking the source of the disturbance that had drenched him. It now felt as if a laser beam was drilling through his gut.
Then everything came to a grinding halt.
His heart almost ruptured with one startled detonation.
There, at the farthest end of the hall …
Gemma.
Five
Shaheen’s mind had snapped. It must have.
He was seeing things.
He swallowed the lump of shock that had lodged into his throat, shuddered as it landed like a brick in his stomach.
He was seeing Gemma.
But he couldn’t be. His mind must be projecting the one thing it wanted most, the woman whose memory and taste and touch had been driving him insane and whom he’d despaired of seeing again.
He closed his eyes.
He opened them. She was still there.
“Shaheen, why did you stop?”
He heard his father’s concern as if it were coming from a mile away. Gemma, who was at the far end of the two-hundred-foot space, felt mere inches away.
Her gaze snared his across the distance, just like that first time, was roiling with the same intensity, the same awareness. One thing was missing. Shock.
Of course. She was expecting to see him. There was no element of surprise for her this time. But there was more in her expression. Apprehension. Aversion even.
She was that loath to see him? Then why was she here?
The relevant question hit him harder than the shock of her being here.
How was she here? In Zohayd, in the palace, at this function?
He felt himself moving again, his body activated and steered by his father’s hand on his forearm as he led him deeper into the throngs of people gathered to watch his sacrifice.
Moving forced him to relinquish his eye lock with Gemma. He rushed ahead to gain another direct path to her. But she evaded his eyes now, hid from him.
Frustration seethed through him, questions. The urge to cleave through the crowd, push everyone out of the way till he got to her overwhelmed him.