He wasn’t a stalker, lurking in shadows, spying on pretty maidens. He was a king, one with questions he had never been able to answer. Besides, he wanted to see her up close. Discover the secret of her allure.
He’d called her out of the pool—which was when he’d realized she was drunk.
Disappointing. He abstained, never wanting to be so far into his cups that he thought a leap off a balcony would solve his problems.
When he’d told her drinking was unwise, he’d thought for a moment that despair clouded her eyes, but she’d quickly switched to using her stunning looks to distract and mesmerize.
“What’s stupid about enjoying myself?” she challenged lightly. She lifted her hair off her neck and let it flow carelessly off her forearm, watching to see if he followed the movement.
There was a man inside this royal casing. He felt desire the same as any other, but he knew when he was being invited to lose focus by ogling a breast. Much as he longed to eye the weight of her curves, he kept his gaze locked with hers.
“Exhibit A. You’re on a tear of self-destruction.” Locking horns with him was a grave mistake, he silently warned.
She was disconcerted by his unaffected response. She might even have been burned by it. Her brow flinched. She quickly lifted her chin in a rally of spirit, though.
“Perhaps I have reason. Did you think of that?” Her long lashes blinked in big, innocent sweeps.
“I’m sure your life is very fraught,” he said drily.
“I lost my mother three months ago,” she threw back at him with quiet anguish. “I’m entitled to grieve.”
“You are.” He dipped his head, but that was as much condolence as he was willing to offer. He hadn’t been allowed any self-pity after his father’s death. The circumstances had been far more disturbing and he’d been a child of six. “Drinking yourself blind will only make things worse.”
“How is that possible?” she cried softly. “My father is so grief-stricken, he’s like a shell. I can’t reach him. No one can.” She looked to the huge window where her own reflection had stood. “He misses my mother terribly.”
Karim understood that affliction, too. No matter what he did, he had never been able to ease his mother’s heartbreak over her loss, either. Protecting her from the fact that his father’s death had been a suicide was the best he’d ever been able to do.
“She had an affair,” Galila whispered. “He loved her anyway, but now we all know about it, which seems to have tripled his agony.”
Karim’s heart stopped. Even the breath in his lungs stilled.
As if she noted his jolt of alarm, she nodded to confirm her shocking statement, eyes wide and tortured.
“Your father knew but kept it from you?” Karim’s mind raced. He had never confided in a single soul, no matter how long and heavily the truth had weighed on him—and it had. Endlessly. With the death of Queen Namani, he had thought that at least the secret of the affair would die when he did.
“He’s known for years!” Her tone rang with outraged astonishment. “He helped her cover it up when she became pregnant. They sent away our half brother the day he was born.”
Karim had to concentrate on keeping his face expressionless, his feet rooted to the marble tiles so he didn’t fall over. His ears rang as though the soft words had been a cannon next to his head.
Galila gave a choking half laugh of near hysteria. “Explain to me how one processes that sort of news except to get roaring drunk?”
“You have a third brother? A half brother?” He had a half brother? His carefully balanced world wasn’t just tilting on its axis. It was reaching such a sharp angle everything was sliding into a jumbled mess at his feet.
“Yes!” She didn’t seem to notice his deep shock, too caught up in layers of emotional turmoil within herself. “My brothers and I should have been supporting each other, comforting our father, but he showed up at the funeral. Told us how our mother had been writing to him for years. How she regretted sending him away because she loved him best.” Her eyes gleamed with a thick sheen of tears. “Because he was her only link to the man she truly loved.”
Her fist went to the spot over her breast where she seemed to stem the cracks in a bleeding heart.
“Our father had a complete breakdown. Who wouldn’t? We nearly all did! Zufar had to step in and take over... And now that’s where Zufar’s intended bride is, with our half brother.” She spoke with livid bewilderment, arm flinging out to some unknown location. “Zufar wasn’t supposed to marry Niesha. Amira’s been promised to him since she was born, but Adir came back this morning and talked Amira into running away with him. I watched her go through the window. Adir said it was his revenge for being denied his birthright.”
“Adir,” Karim repeated faintly. That was the name of his brother? He barely heard the rest of what poured out of her.
“Zufar is so single-minded, he married our maid rather than admit there was anything wrong. Malak has quit the palace entirely, gone gambling or to work his way through a harem, I imagine. Where does that leave me? With no one. So excuse me if I take some comfort in a bottle of brandy.”
When she started to drink, he stole it and tipped the alcohol onto the tiles. He had to. This news was utterly explosive.
“Who else have you told?” he demanded.
“No one,” she muttered, giving a tsk of annoyance at the brandy puddle. “Now I have to walk all the way back for a fresh one.”
“Who is Adir’s father?” He kept his voice level but held the empty glass in such a tight grip he expected it to shatter in his hand, leaving him dripping blood onto the evaporating alcohol.
“No one knows.” She gave her hair a flip. “Mother took one secret to her grave, it seems. Although, I have half a mind to ask around that crowd.” She jerked her chin toward the balcony across the darkened expanse of the garden, where light poured out the open doors to the palace ballroom. “He must be there.”
The elite from all the neighboring kingdoms mingled in a kaleidoscope of colored gowns and robes. Voices competed with the music in a din that suddenly grated on him more than he could bear.
“Why do you think that?” he asked, forcing a tone of mild curiosity while his blood prickled in his veins.
“My mother wouldn’t take up with a servant. It had to have been someone of her stature, very likely one of those men congratulating my brother on his mismatched marriage.”
She was right, of course. His father had been exactly at her mother’s level, not that Karim would confirm it. Maybe the affair had started at an event like this, he imagined. His father and her mother would have been about his and Galila’s age when they met, in their prime and bursting with biological readiness. Perhaps they had slipped away into the shadows to indulge their passion, as other couples were doing even now.
He was far too practical to wish, but he had an uncharacteristic longing to be one of those carefree couples with Galila. If only he could enjoy a simple dalliance, like other people, rather than listening to her sing his personal scandal to the night sky while racking his brain on how to most quickly prevent it going further than his own ears.
She was inordinately desirable, he noted with determined detachment. He almost understood his father’s desolation at being rejected by such a woman. Of course, his father had been married and never should have started the affair in the first place, but Karim had no such restrictions.
In fact, remaining close to this pretty bird was exactly what he ought to do. He had devoted his life to ensuring his mother never learned