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Nevertheless, had he dropped the ball somewhere?
He frowned.
The burden of governing his kingdom was his first and only priority. It had needed to be, considering the chaos it had been left in by his father’s sudden abdication.
Tight anger knotted inside him as he strode faster towards the suite of luxury rooms that were reserved for the Queen and other female members of the royal family.
He wouldn’t think of his father today, or the fact that the ex-King had banished himself to the summer palace since his wife’s death and hadn’t spoken to his children in months. Zufar wouldn’t think of the sleepless nights and backbreaking work it had taken for him to keep the kingdom that had already been woefully neglected by his father from falling apart.
Today, this hour, demanded his complete attention. His people yearned for a royal wedding. That was exactly what he was going to give them.
The footmen stationed outside the Sapphire Suite spotted him and immediately threw open the doors.
Zufar entered, then drew to a stop at the sight of the visibly distressed women in the living room. Two were babbling hysterically, and an older female servant was busy comforting another.
‘Which one is she?’ he demanded tersely. Eyes swivelled to him, followed predictably by shocked gasps and hurried comportment before the bows and scrapes and averted gazes commenced.
Marwan hushed them, and then uttered a sharp query to the junior aide behind him. The younger man shook his head, throwing a furtive glance at Zufar. Marwan approached the older attendant and questioned her. Clearly nervous, she pointed to the inner chamber.
Zufar strode towards smaller double doors, his temper frothing furiously in his chest. This time he pulled the doors open himself, bitter memories tossing themselves onto the pyre he was trying to contain as he walked into the huge, lavish chamber that had once been his mother’s domain.
His gaze didn’t linger on the priceless keepsakes, furniture or decoration. He didn’t know which items in this room his mother had treasured and which gifts from his father and her secret admirers had been less favoured. He didn’t know her favourite book or the preferred flower arrangement for her private sitting room because he had never been allowed in here.
On the rare occasions his mother had tolerated him, they had been in public where her pretended adoration could be captured for the world to see and praise and to provide moments of smugness as she perused the gossip rags. Beyond that, she’d never had a kind word for him or his siblings.
But he wasn’t here to dwell on the subject of his mother.
He trained his focus on the figure hunched over near the headboard of the vast bed. She was so slight he almost missed her.
Had it not been for the drab, body-shrouding beige clothes that painfully and distastefully stood out against the gold and cream bed linen, he would’ve mistaken her for one of the pillows or part of the rich drapery that decorated the four-poster bed.
As he advanced towards her he noticed that her slim shoulders were shaking. Another few steps and the small sniffles of her quiet sobs reached his ears.
Zufar stifled his curse before it ripped free.
He didn’t care for weak women. He cared even less for weak, crying women.
Behind him, Marwan clicked his tongue sharply.
The figure jumped up, stumbled over her long, shapeless skirt, and immediately tumbled to the floor in a graceless heap at Zufar’s feet.
He waited, impatient breath slowly spilling through clenched teeth, for her to rise. But she didn’t seem interested in regaining her feet. Instead, she was developing an almost mesmerised interest in his shoes.
He took a step forwards, hoping to dislodge her hypnosis. When that failed to work, he cleared his throat.
‘If that is a shoe fetish you’re exhibiting, may I suggest you indulge in it another time? When the reputation of my kingdom isn’t at stake, perhaps?’ Zufar drawled.
A sharp intake of breath, then, finally, she raised her head.
Large, tear-soaked dark eyes rose from his feet, and plotted an excruciatingly slow journey up his body. By the time they reached his face, her expression was creased into abject horror.
Coupled with a face blotched and bloated with tears and a mouth frozen in an unattractive O, she was the most unsightly girl Zufar had ever seen.
‘What is your name?’ he bit out, praying she could actually string enough words together to answer.
She didn’t respond. She simply stared up at him, her horror intensifying by the second.
‘Do you not hear your King addressing you, girl?’ Marwan demanded sharply.
Her mouth closed. She swallowed noisily, but still uttered no word.
Zufar’s fists started to curl. Almost a year’s worth of meticulous planning hung in the balance because of one tear-streaked, dumbstruck girl.
About to move, he paused as her gaze darted to his fists and she recoiled.
The sight of her naked fear struck an uncomfortable chord in him. He breathed out and slowly unfurled his fingers. There would be no coherent conversation with her unless he found a way to defuse some of her fear, he realised.
He sensed Marwan moving towards her and held up his hand. ‘Leave us,’ he instructed.
Marwan made a small sound of surprise. ‘Are you sure, Your Highness?’
Zufar’s lips tightened. ‘Leave. Now.’
The room emptied immediately. He kept his gaze fixed on the girl crouched before him, and slowly extended his hand towards her. Again, her gaze darted between his face and his hand, as if terrified he would do something unpredictable. Like bite. Or strike.
He frowned.
She reminded him of the skittish colts in his stable. The ones that demanded substantial time and patience to respond to his commands.
Except he was in gross negative supply of either today. His marriage ceremony was scheduled to commence in less than two hours.
Zufar leaned down and extended his hand further. ‘Stand up,’ he instructed, firming his voice.
She placed her hand in his, scrambled upright, and immediately gasped and dropped his hand as if she’d been scalded.
He ignored her reaction, his gaze moving over her, confirming that the drabness indeed extended from the top of the dishevelled tufts of dark hair peeking out of her beige scarf to the soles of her feet.
Except, she wasn’t a girl as he’d initially surmised.
She was long past adolescence, if the pronounced swell of her chest and the hint of curves beneath the clothes were any indication. She came up to his chin in her flat, tasteless shoes, her covered arms slender and her jaw holding a delicate strength.
His eyes were drawn to her chest again. It was just her agitated breathing that was snagging his attention. Nothing else. He stepped back, folded his hands behind his back and assumed a gesture of ease that never failed to work on his horses.
‘What is your name?’ he asked again in a lower voice.
Her gaze dropped to the ground and she mumbled.
‘Speak up,’ he said.
Her chin jerked up a little, but her gaze remained, once again, on the tips of his shoes.
‘Niesha Zalwani, Your Highness,’ she repeated.
Her voice was soft, smoky and lyrical, if a little too timid for his dwindling patience. But at least he was getting somewhere. He had a name.
‘What is your role here?’
‘I—I’m... I was a chambermaid until last week, when I was added to Miss Amira’s personal staff.’
‘Look at me when I’m addressing you,’ Zufar drawled. It took an interminable age for her head to rise once more. But eventually, her gaze met his, then promptly flitted down to rest on his nose. Zufar prayed for strength and continued, ‘Where’s your mistress?’
Immediately her lower lip wobbled, her wide eyes grew haunted and her breathing turned agitated again. Zufar forced himself not to stare at the soft globes of her breasts or the pale creaminess of her throat as she trembled before him.
‘She...she’s gone, Your Highness.’
Zufar’s fist threatened to ball again. Resisting the urge was difficult. ‘Gone where?’ he managed through clenched teeth.
‘I don’t know, Your Highness.’
‘Very well. Let us try another way. Did she leave alone?’
Another frenzied twisting of her fingers, and then she cleared her throat. ‘No, Your Highness. She...she left with a man.’
A detached, icy sensation stroked his nape. ‘A man? What man?’ he asked softly.
‘He did not tell me his name, Your Highness.’
‘But you are certain she has been taken against her will by an unknown male?’ he pressed.
The woman before him bit her lip, drawing his attention to the plump, reddened curve of her mouth as she nodded. ‘Yes...well...’ Her distress grew.
‘Tell me what you know,’ he insisted.
‘I may be wrong, Your Highness, but she didn’t seem...unwilling.’
The possibility that he’d been jilted arrived with ice-cold anger. Except, curiously, Zufar wasn’t enraged on his own behalf. Rather, the impending disappointment for his people, the chaos for his kingdom, was what caused his fists to clench behind his back.
‘Did she say anything? Did he say anything to make you think this?’
‘It—it all happened very quickly, Your Highness. But...’ Her hand disappeared into the folds of her skirt and emerged with a folded piece of paper. ‘He...he instructed me to give this to Princess Galila to hand to you.’ She held out the piece of paper, her slender fingers trembling.
Zufar took it from her, his insides frozen as he unfolded the sheet he recognised as a torn piece of his own royal stationery.
He read the message once. Then again.
With a thick curse, he crumpled the heavy, embossed paper between his fingers, his fist clenched tight until it shook with the force of his emotions. The red haze of fury returned, deeper, steeping his lethal mood as he crossed to the window and pressed his fist against the wide pane.
Before him, the palace grounds sprawled in sun-dappled splendour. Beyond the windows, the muted buzzing of an expectant crowd rolled over the horizon. Excited citizens and eager tourists who’d flown in especially for this occasion were anticipating a fairy-tale royal wedding of their King to his chosen Queen. The whole kingdom had been gripped in wedding fever for months.
Only to have his heathen bastard of a half-brother claim in writing that he’d seduced and stolen his betrothed!
In another life, perhaps, that tiny sliver of emotion piercing through his fury could’ve been called relief from yet another responsibility. But Zufar gave it absolutely no room whatsoever, because he now faced a monumental problem. Aside from the humiliation of announcing that he was no longer in possession of his fiancée, this arrangement had held great economic advantages for Khalia.
He needed to find Amira. Confirm for himself that his half-brother’s claim was the truth.
But how could he, when he had no idea where he’d gone? The dossier he’d collated on Adir when he’d first made his unforgettable appearance at his mother’s funeral had revealed he had no fixed abode, or, if he did, he’d kept it very well hidden.
Even if Zufar knew his whereabouts, he had no time to go chasing after him. He acknowledged with a bitter laugh how well timed Adir’s revenge had been. His half-brother knew that doing this now would cause the most humiliation. The most uproar.
Zufar wasn’t about to hand him that victory. Not in this lifetime.
He whirled to face the young chambermaid. ‘When did they leave?’
Her throat worked again. But this time she wasn’t silent for very long. ‘I brought her tea, and left her alone for just ten minutes.’ Her voice was wracked with nerves and anguish. She began to wring her hands again. ‘I had gone to get the royal jewellery when I heard the commotion.’
‘So you saw them leave together?’
Her head moved in a shaky nod. ‘Yes.’
‘And you’re sure he didn’t harm her?’ Zufar demanded.
‘She—she didn’t appear in distress, Your Highness. She seemed...willing.’
The tightness in his chest eased a tiny fraction. ‘How did they leave?’
She pointed to the very window where he stood.
Zufar’s jaw clenched tight. They were on the second floor, with nothing outside the windows but climbing vines. Granted, they were over a century old and sturdy enough to hold a horse, but had his barbarian brother really whisked his betrothed out of a second-floor window?
‘Did anyone else see them?’
‘Only Her Highness, the Princess, but they were almost on the ground when she came in.’
Zufar frowned. Why hadn’t Galila informed him?
Had she tried to stop them and been unsuccessful? Most likely Galila was keeping well out of Zufar’s way because she knew how he would take the news.
‘How soon after did you raise the alarm?’
Guilt flickered across her face and her lower lip trembled once more.
‘Seconds? Minutes?’ he snapped.
She paled. ‘I—I’m sorry... I thought... I thought it was a prank.’
‘It wasn’t. And your failure to raise the alarm in time may have aided his getaway.’ Zufar was sure of it.
She shrank further into the wall. He whirled away, tension threatening to break his spine.
