In Defiance of Duty

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As it turned out, she couldn’t.

Azrin had spent the rest of the afternoon trying to convince her to join him for dinner at his hotel, and the rest of his time in Melbourne trying to persuade her to go to bed with him. He’d managed only the dinner that night and then a week of the same, and he was not a man who had before then had even a passing acquaintance with failure of any sort.

He hadn’t known how to process it. He’d told himself that had been why he’d been so unreasonably obsessed with this woman who had treated him so cavalierly, who had laughed at him when he’d tried to seduce her, and yet whose kisses had nearly taken off the back of his head when she’d condescended to bestow them upon him.

“You want the chase, not me,” she’d informed him primly on his last night in Melbourne.

She had just stopped another kiss from going too far, and had even removed herself from Azrin’s grasp, stepping back against the wall outside the door to her flat, into which she’d steadfastly refused to invite him. Again.

He’d had the frustrating suspicion that she was about to leave him standing there.

Again.

“What if I want you?” he’d asked, that wholly unfamiliar frustration bleeding into his voice and tangling in the air between them. “What if the chase is nothing but an impediment?”

“What a delightful fantasy,” she’d replied—though he already knew that was not quite true, that careless tone she adopted. “But I’m afraid that your great, romantic pursuit of me will have to take a backseat to my graduate studies. I’m sure you understand. Dark and brooding princes tend to turn out to be little more than fairy-tale interludes, in my experience—”

“You have vast experience with princes, do you?” His tone had been sardonic, but she’d ignored him anyway.

“—while I really do require my Masters in Wine Technology and Viticulture to get on with my real life.” She’d smiled at him, even as he’d registered the way she’d emphasized the word real. “I’ll understand if you want to throw a little bit of a strop and sulk all the way back to your throne. No one will think any the less of you.”

“Kiara,” he’d said then, unable to keep his hands off her, and wanting more than just the simple pleasure of his palm over the curve of her upper arm, which was what he’d had to settle for. She was not for him—he’d known that—but he’d been completely incapable of accepting it as he should. “Prepare yourself for the fairy-tale interlude. I may have to go to Khatan tomorrow morning, but I’ll be back.”

“Of course you will,” she’d said, smiling as if she’d known better.

But he’d come back, as promised. Again and again. Until she’d finally started to believe him.

He watched her now, his unexpected princess, as she climbed from the shower and wrapped herself in one of the soft towels. She smiled at him, and he felt something clench inside of him. She had never wanted to be a queen. She hadn’t even wanted to be a princess. She’d wanted him, that was all, just as he’d wanted her. Perhaps it had been foolish to imagine that that kind of connection, that impossible need, could be enough.

But foolish or not, this was the bed they’d made.

And now it was time to lie in it, whether he liked it or not. Whether she liked it or not.

Whether he wanted to be the King of Khatan or not— which had never mattered before, he reminded himself sharply, and certainly didn’t matter now. It simply was.

“My father’s cancer is back,” he said abruptly.

“Azrin, no,” Kiara breathed, as she tried to process his words.

He did not move from his position in the doorway. He leaned against the doorjamb with seeming nonchalance, beautiful and yet somehow remote, in nothing but dark trousers he hadn’t bothered to fully button. But she could see the grim lines around his mouth, and the tension gripping his long frame. And the dark gray of his eyes, focused on her in a way that she could not quite understand.

“He plans to fight it, of course,” he said in that same, oddly detached way, as if he was forcing himself to get through this by rote. As if this was the preview to something much bigger. Something worse. What that might be, Kiara did not want to imagine. “He is nothing if not ornery.”

“I’m so sorry,” Kiara said, her head spinning. It was difficult to imagine the old king, Azrin’s belligerent and autocratic father, anything but his demanding and robust self. It was impossible to imagine that even cancer would dare try to beat King Zayed, when nothing and no one else had ever come close to loosening the iron grip he held on his country, his throne. His only son.

“He does not seem particularly concerned that it will kill him this time,” Azrin continued. He shifted then, thrusting his hands into the pockets of his trousers. His mouth twisted. “But then, he has always had an exalted sense of himself. It is what led to the worst excesses of his reign. He leaves the wailing and gnashing of teeth to my mother.”

Queen Madihah was the first of the old king’s three wives. That and her production of the Crown Prince rendered her a national treasure. She was the very model of serene, gracious, modestly restrained Khatanian femininity, and as such, had always made Kiara feel distinctly brash and unpolished by comparison. It was impossible to imagine her changing expression, much less wailing.

“He’s in excellent health otherwise,” she said, thinking of the last time she’d seen her father-in-law, sometime the previous spring. He had insisted she join him for a long walk in the palace gardens, and despite the fact that Kiara regularly put in time on treadmills in gyms all over the world, the pace the older man had set had left her close to winded. That and the way he’d interrogated her, as if he was still suspicious of her relationship with his son and heir, as if he expected her to reveal her true motives at any moment, whatever those might be. “You would never know he was in his seventies …”

Something moved across Azrin’s face then, and she let the words trail away.

“He has announced that he is an old man, and has only the weapons to fight one battle left in him,” he said. Kiara felt frozen in place, and she didn’t understand it. It was something to do with the way he was looking at her, the set to his jaw, that made her … nervous. Much too nervous. “He doesn’t think he can care for the kingdom and for himself, not now. Not the way he did the last time.”

“Whatever he needs to do to beat it,” Kiara said immediately. Staunchly. “And whatever we need to do to help him.”

The silence seemed to stretch taut between them.

“He is stepping aside, Kiara,” Azrin said. Almost gently, yet with that steel beneath that made a kind of panic curl into something thick and hot in her belly. “Retiring.”

For a moment, she didn’t know what he meant.

“Of course,” she said, when his meaning penetrated. “It will be good practice for you to take the throne while he recovers, won’t it?”

“No.” Again, that voice. His eyes so hard on hers. As if she was letting him down—had already done so—and she didn’t know how that could have happened without her knowing it. Without her meaning to do it. She locked her knees beneath her, afraid, suddenly, that they might tremble and betray the full scope of her agitation.

“No?” she echoed. “It won’t be good practice?”

“It won’t be temporary. He is stepping aside for good.”

She blinked. He waited. Something inside her seemed to go terribly still. As if she could not comprehend what he was telling her. But she did.

“That means—” She stopped herself. She had the urge to laugh then, but knew, somehow, that she did not dare. That he would not forgive her if she did, not now. She shook her head.

“It means I will be the new king of Khatan in six short weeks,” Azrin said in that strong, sure voice, as if that hardness was a part of him now, as if it was part of who he was becoming. As if it was a necessary precursor to the throne.

“Six weeks?” Kiara did laugh then, slightly. Her voice seemed too high, too uncertain. “I’d hardly got used to you being a prince over five years of marriage. I can’t get my head around you being king in a little more than a month!”

She thought he might smile at that, but his mouth remained that flat, stern line. His eyes were the coldest she’d ever seen them. She felt, again, as if she’d been thrown neck deep into something that she ought to understand, but didn’t.

“You don’t have to get your head around it,” he said with a kind of distant formality that made her tense up in response. “I’ve been getting my head around becoming king my whole life. This was always going to happen—it’s just happening a bit more quickly than I’d originally anticipated.”

Pull yourself together, Kiara ordered herself then, suddenly aware that she was standing stock still in the middle of the bathroom floor, staring at him as if he’d transformed into some kind of monster before her very eyes. Hardly the way a good, supportive spouse should behave at such a time.

She imagined there was no one in the world who wouldn’t feel out of their depth at a moment like this. Thrones! Kings! But this was her husband. This was real. She could sort out her own feelings later. In private. She walked over to him, rising on her toes to press a kiss against his hard jaw.

“This can’t be easy,” she said softly. “But I love you. We’ll figure it out.”

“I suspect he must be sicker than he wishes to let on,” Azrin said, his voice gruff. “He always promised he would die before he abdicated.” He let out a sound that was not quite a laugh. “But then, he took the throne when he was all of nineteen. There was only one way to hold it. He came by his ruthlessness honestly.”

She kissed him again, determined to ignore that tension simmering in him and all around them. She knew that Azrin’s relationship with his father had never been easy. That the king had never been pleased with the way the kingdom viewed Azrin as some kind of savior-in-waiting. Azrin had always said that if his father had only managed to have another son, Azrin would never have remained his heir. But he hadn’t.

This is real, she told herself again.

“You can do this,” she said. “You’ve been preparing for years. You’re ready.”

“Yes, Kiara. I’m ready,” he said quietly, his eyes again too dark, his mouth too grim.

Something gripped her then, some kind of terror, but she shoved it aside, annoyed with herself. Again. Was she really so self-involved? She could only stare up at him as he ran a hand over the back of her head, smoothing down her wet hair, gently tipping her head back to gaze at him more fully.

Azrin’s mouth curved slightly then, though it was in no way a smile, the way she wanted it to be. His gaze seared into hers, and she was afraid, suddenly, of the things he might see there.

“But are you?” he asked.

CHAPTER THREE

IT WAS a question her own mother echoed a week later when Kiara was back at the winery, trying to handle her responsibilities in one part of her life so she could go to Khatan and do her duty in the other part.

She’d assured Azrin she was ready and willing to do it. Eager, even. She’d been so earnest she’d nearly convinced herself.

Nearly.

“Are you honestly prepared to be a queen, Kiara?” her mother asked coolly, as if she’d looked inside and managed to articulate all the dark and unpleasant things Kiara was pretending she didn’t feel. “This isn’t a game, you know. Khatan’s monarchy is not ornamental.”

Kiara forced herself to silently count to ten, sitting there in her mother’s pretty office with the breathtaking view out across the Frederick vineyards, green and healthy-looking in the afternoon light—not that she could concentrate on that now, though the view usually calmed her down. She had to keep herself from succumbing to the temper she knew her mother would view as a weakness. And, worse, as a confirmation.

Besides, she was all too aware that the temper was just a camouflage for the guilt that lay beneath. A lifetime of guilt, because she knew she was the reason her mother had dedicated her life to this place, these vineyards, after Kiara’s father had died. Without Kiara, who knew what Diana might have done with her life?

Was it any wonder that Kiara was in no rush to have any babies herself?

One, two, three …

She eyed her mother across the wide expanse of Diana’s always-neat desk, seeing far too much of herself in the older woman. As ever. It was like looking into some version of her future, much as she preferred to deny it to herself. The same narrow shoulders and long-legged frame. The same way of holding themselves, though Kiara knew she would never have her mother’s innate elegance. That was all Diana.

Kiara was the only one who had seen beneath her mother’s polished exterior. She was the only one who knew what it had cost Diana to give up so much for this place. For Kiara. For the legacy she thought Kiara’s father would have wanted to give her himself, if he could have done.

Five, six, seven …

Diana had taken over the Frederick wine business with more determination than skill after her husband’s early death, and had ushered it into its current state of prominence by the force of her will alone. She’d hardly been around at all during Kiara’s formative years, leaving the day to day raising of her daughter to Kiara’s late grandmother, Diana’s mother-in-law. And yet none of that prevented Diana from being far too opinionated about the choices she thought Kiara should have made. And judgmental about the ones Kiara actually had made.

Meaning, her mother did not approve of Azrin. At all. Of what he represented, as she liked to put it. She thought that Kiara should have married that nice Harry Thompson who’d been her first boyfriend, whose family was also deeply entrenched in the Barossa Valley—and who could, she had always maintained, understand Kiara in a way Azrin never would.

And somewhere deep inside, where guilt and obligation mixed into something sharp-edged and prickly, a part of Kiara had always wondered if Diana was right. She wondered it even more today, as she prepared for a role she and Azrin had never discussed in any detail, both assuming it was too far off in the future to bother worrying about.

Was she prepared to be his queen?

She couldn’t forgive Diana for asking the question she didn’t dare ask herself.

Eight, nine …

“Why wouldn’t I be prepared, Mother?” she asked, aware that her voice was more strained than it should have been, clearly indicating that the question had got under her skin. She felt as if she’d lost points before she’d started—an all-too familiar feeling where her mother was concerned. She willed herself to exude the kind of cool poise that she was known for everywhere else but here. “I knew who Azrin was when I married him.”

She’d known who he was the moment she’d laid eyes on him. Too powerful. Too dangerous. Too overwhelming and much too ruthless. She might have fallen in love with him, but that didn’t change the basic facts about who he was. She’d never lost sight of that. Had she?

“When you married him he was a financier who happened to be a prince, and he was perfectly happy to traipse about the globe with you,” Diana said in that seemingly nonchalant way of hers that immediately put Kiara’s back up. Nothing about Diana was nonchalant. Not ever. “Now he will be a king, which is not the same thing at all, is it?”

“He was always going to be a king.” Kiara’s voice was much too cross, and she had to work to produce some approximation of a serene smile to counterbalance it. “A good one, I think. I hope.”

“But what kind of queen can you expect to be?” Diana asked, her brows arching high as if astonished Kiara had not raised this issue herself. “You were raised to know about oenology and viticulture, not royal intrigue and matters of state.”

“Your faith in me is touching,” Kiara said, her smile growing hard to maintain. She stood up then, desperate, suddenly, to avoid getting any deeper into this with her mother. She was afraid of what she might uncover inside herself that she didn’t want to know.

Diana only shrugged. “It’s not a question of faith,” she said. “I talked quite a bit with Queen Madihah at your wedding, you know. She was very open about having been trained to be the king’s perfect companion since before she could walk.”

Again her dark brows rose. She didn’t have to say anything further—it lay there between them as if she’d shouted it.

You are not queen material.

Kiara gathered up her things with as much control as possible, determined not to show Diana how unerring her aim had been, nor how hard she’d managed to strike her target. How did her mother manage to see straight into the heart of her, where she hid her worst fears?

“I don’t have time for this,” she said as calmly as she could. Which was perhaps not very calm at all. “I have to leave for Khatan early tomorrow. If there’s anything else?” She knew her smile was too brittle. “About the business, Mother. Not about my marriage. Please.”

“I would just like you to be realistic about this, Kiara,” Diana said, her flashing brown gaze showing the first hint of emotion Kiara could remember seeing in years. It made her stomach twist, guilt and obligation and something else.

“No, you wouldn’t,” she replied, temper boiling inside her, rushing in to cover the rest of the things she didn’t want to feel. Temper was easier. Cleaner. “You would like me to see things your way. You would like me to do things your way.”

“Do you imagine that you are the only girl to ever be swept away in some kind of fantasy romance?” Diana retorted. She rose, too, and waved a hand at the window, as if to encompass the vines stretching off toward the hills, the chateau, the whole of their family, their lives, their history. “I was starry-eyed when I met your father, but that hardly prepared me for the reality of running this business, did it? Much less raising a child all on my own when he was gone.”

Kiara didn’t want to hear this. Not again. This story was imprinted on her bones. It was a story of sacrifice and loss, and then a deep and abiding disappointment that Kiara fell so short of living up to all the things her mother had done for her. Was still doing for her.

It had guided her every step until she’d met Azrin.

“What can any of that possibly matter now?” she asked, her voice low, something dark opening wide inside her that she was afraid to look at too closely. That she knew she needed to close down, hide away, lest it rise up and eat her alive. “I am his wife. His queen. This is happening whether you like it or not, Mother.”

Whether you like it or not, too, a small voice whispered inside her—and she immediately hated herself for it. Diana let out a sigh that was loud in the sudden quiet of the office.

“Oh, Kiara,” she said, that familiar mix of bafflement and exasperation in her voice, her gaze. And something else—something that made that hard knot inside Kiara seem to swell in response. “None of this is about what I want.”

Azrin found her out on the private terrace that linked their suites in the family wing of the sprawling palace that sat high on the cliffs above the ancient city of Arjat an-Nahr, where brash skyscrapers now thrust into the skyline along with delicate minarets from centuries past.

She was curled up on one of the deep chaises, her gaze trained out over the dark sea that danced and shimmered far below her. The sun had set but recently, only a line of crimson edged with gold stretched out across the horizon to mark its passing.

Azrin liked that she was here, within reach, mere days since he’d seen her last. The pleasure of it moved through him, so deep and full that the tension of the long day seemed to ease away with every step that brought him closer to her. He liked her here, close by. He’d liked knowing that she had arrived safely and was already in the palace when he finally quit his endless round of meetings and strategy sessions.

She was the single bright spot in a long and complicated day.

She looked over her shoulder toward him as he drew near. There was an expression on her face that he couldn’t quite categorize—that he didn’t think he’d seen before—but then she smiled. He was already smiling back before he realized that her eyes were darker than they ought to have been.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he said.

He moved over to the chaise and dropped to sit at the opposite end. The terrace was alive with blooms, bright blossoms by day and the sweet scent of jasmine now that night had fallen. Up above, the stars began to come out. And for a moment, he thought, they could be anyone. Just a woman and a man and the whole night stretched out before them.

He did not allow himself to examine how much he wished that could be true—that they could fall back into that world of pretend they’d lived in all these years. Hidden in, even.