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The words she heard chilled her blood and made her dizzy with shock and disbelief. ‘But, Papa, I do not understand.’ And this time he said the words slower, so there could be no mistake, so she could not misunderstand.
‘Aisha, you are not going home. Why has no-one told you yet? You must marry Zoltan.’
She made the mistake of looking up, caught the suddenly smug look on Zoltan’s face, as if he had caught the gist of her conversation and knew it was not in her favour. Then again, he had probably read her reaction on her face. She spun around, turning her back on him, hating his air of casual boredom, hating the sudden curve she’d witnessed on his lips.
Hating everything about him.
‘But, Papa …’ she pleaded into the receiver, curving her free hand around the mouthpiece, shielding the panic in her voice and cursing her impulse to let Zoltan stay in the room while she took the call. But she was not done yet. ‘I don’t want to marry him!’
He wanted to choke. Did she for one moment actually imagine that he actually wanted to marry her? Laughable. But it wasn’t laughable. It was painful, really, having to listen to one half of a conversation when that half was clearly going so wrong.
There were plenty more ‘but, Papa’s, a fair sprinkling of ‘but why?’s and a lot of time where she said nothing but listened to what her father was telling her before she tried to get a word in. He had to admit the one that almost plucked at his heart strings was the ‘Please, Papa, please!’
Said in her Poor Little Princess voice, it was quite touching, really. If you cared.
Even if you did, what could anyone do? Hadn’t he explored every option himself?
But then the final cruncher—the ‘Yes, Papa,’ in a voice that sounded like a child’s who had just been rebuked and told to be good—before she turned back to the desk and put the receiver down.
It was awkward witnessing someone else’s humiliation, especially after they’d insisted you stayed and had acted as if it was going to be some kind of victory for them.
Awkward and yet, at the same time, supremely satisfying.
She didn’t look up at him, but she didn’t have to for him to realise she’d been crying. Her long lashes were clumped into thick black spikes, moisture glazed her eyes and he had to wonder why she insisted on making it so difficult for herself.
He’d learned early in life that some things were worth fighting for and some things were a lost cause from day one. ‘Choose your battles,’ his uncle, the King, had told him when he was just a young boy and still steaming after his father had, as usual, accepted Mustafa’s side in a dispute. ‘Don’t waste your time on the things you can’t change. Save your energy for the battles that count.’
He hadn’t really understood the message back then; it had all just seemed so unfair that his father had never taken his word, no matter the truth of the matter. But bit by bit he’d learned that nothing would ever change and that arguing only made things worse.
Gradually he’d learned to accept the inevitable and save his energies for the battles he could win.
Someone should have told this woman the same thing.
Didn’t she see there was no changing this? She was stuck. As stuck as he was in this centuries-old time warp. There was no getting out of it. There was no escape.
‘So you managed to sort it all out?’ he asked when she had stood there, her hands on the replaced receiver, for way too long.
She drew in a long breath then, blinked, straightened and made the tiniest concession she could to her tears by flicking them from the corners of her eye while making out as though she was pushing the weight of her long, dark hair back behind her ears.
‘My father will be here tomorrow, as you said.’ Her voice was low and flat, as if all the stuffing had been knocked out of it, all the life.
He waited longer still, struck by how much this admission of defeat cost her in her too-stiff spine and forced control, almost—if he had to admit it—admiring her. Maybe she wasn’t as fragile as he had supposed or she would have been wailing on the end of the phone, dissolved into shrieks and fits of tears by now. Facing him after the instruction to stay, only for it to mean he had witnessed her humiliation, would be no easy task. Not for anyone, let alone some brittle, spoilt princess.
She blinked then as she looked up at him. ‘My father—Sheikh Ashar—says I have no choice. Apparently neither of us do. It seems it is more complicated than a mere alliance. He says our countries are inexorably linked and that if this marriage doesn’t happen both of our families forfeit their right to their respective thrones. So, if I say no, it will not only be Al-Jirad without a king.’
He waited. He had known this to be the truth, but she would never have believed him if he had told her. It was better coming from her father.
‘So then, it is settled. There is no escaping this marriage, for either of us.’
She blinked up at him, her eyes as empty as her voice. ‘Not unless I wish my father to lose the crown and my brothers to lose their birthright.’
She drew in breath and seemed to grow taller then, her chin raised, her eyes resigned but still, he noted, with a glimmer of defiance, even if still glassy. ‘I would not do that to my family, of course.’
‘Of course.’
‘In which case, it seems there is no choice. Apparently I am stuck with this marriage.’ Her chin grew higher then, her eyes grew colder, with an icy surface you could skate over. ‘And so, it would seem, stuck with you.’
He watched her leave, her head held high, her posture impossibly straight and regal.
Haughtiness becomes you, he thought as she swept from the room, back to her princessly best, if you didn’t count the riotous freefall of her hair tumbling down her back, hair that had felt like a silk curtain in his hands. He remembered the feel of her in his arms, the heat from her mouth, the softness and suppleness of her body against his, and he growled low and deep in his throat.
For all her protests, for all her pretence, there was a live woman under that haughty exterior, hot and wanting, and he would take great pleasure in peeling that harsh shell away piece by inevitable piece.
‘What happened to you?’ There was laughter in Rashid’s words as he led the other two friends into the library and caught sight of Zoltan’s cheek.
‘Let me guess,’ Bahir said with a knowing grin. ‘The princess happened to him.’
Kadar perched himself on the edge of the desk where Zoltan sat and studied the three lines down his friend’s cheek. ‘No wonder she wasn’t impressed by my fire-works. Looks like she’s packing her own.’
Zoltan leaned back in his chair, pinching the bridge of his nose with his fingers, his head full of ancient verse after hours of study. No surprise that his friends would find this intensely amusing. They would no doubt find it doubly so if they knew exactly what he had been doing right before she had raked her claws down his cheek.
‘I’m glad you all find this so entertaining. What are you doing here anyway? I thought you were falconing today.’
‘We thought you might be lonely,’ Rashid said, picking up a paperweight from the table and tossing it from one hand to the other. ‘Didn’t realise you were otherwise occupied.’
‘Don’t drop that,’ Zoltan warned, thankful for the opportunity to change the subject. ‘It’s Murano glass, three-hundred years old. A present from the then-king to his sheikha. Worth a fortune, apparently.’
Bahir stopped tossing the paperweight for a moment, peering into the colours of its mysterious depths. ‘Oh well,’ he said, tossing it in Rashid’s direction. ‘Easy come, easy go.’
Kadar spun around the heavy tome sitting in front of Zoltan and peered down. ‘What’s this?’
‘The Sacred Book of Al-Jirad. I have to know it by the coronation.’
‘What? All of it?’
‘The entire thing, chapter and verse. Ready to be quoted from at the appropriate moment, to spout the wisdom of the ages.’
Rashid whistled. ‘Then, brother, you really do need rescuing.’
Kadar slammed the book shut before Zoltan could stop him. ‘Come on, then,’ he said, jumping to his feet.
‘I don’t have time,’ he growled. ‘I’ll see you at dinner.’
‘What, you’re too busy to spend a few minutes with your best friends when we’ve all come so far to help you? Nice one.’
‘Lame,’ Rashid agreed, tossing the paperweight casually in one hand. ‘Besides, you have to exercise some time. We’re heading for the pool.’ And he threw the paperweight at Zoltan so fast he almost fumbled the catch and dropped it to the marble floor.
‘Reflexes a bit slow today?’ he teased, looking at his cheek. Zoltan knew he wasn’t talking about the paperweight. ‘I reckon I might actually beat you over twenty laps today. What do you say?’
Zoltan was already on his feet. ‘Not a chance.’
Aisha could not believe it had come to this. She lay on the big, soft bed, her pillows drenched with tears. But now, hours after she had returned from that fateful meeting in the library, her tears were spent, her eyes sore and scratchy, and she was left with just the aching chasm in her gut where hope had once resided.
There was no hope now. There was nothing but a yawning pit of despair from which she could see no way out.
For tomorrow she was required to marry Zoltan, an arrogant, selfish, impossible man who clearly thought her no more than a spoilt princess and who had made it plain he considered she was getting the better end of the deal in having to marry a barbarian like him, and that there was not a thing she could do to avoid it. To renege on the deal would result in bringing down the royal families of two countries and smashing apart the alliance that had kept their countries strong for centuries.
And, for all the power that knowledge should bestow upon her—that she was the king-maker of two countries—she had never felt more powerless in her life.
She had never felt more alone.
She rolled over on the bed, caught a glimpse in the corner of her eye of the magnificent golden wedding-robe sitting ready and waiting on a mannequin in the corner of her room and squeezed her eyes shut again.
Such a beautiful gown. Such a work of art. Such a waste. A gown like that deserved to be worn to a fairytale wedding, whereas she was to be married to a monster. Expected to bear his sons, destined to be some kind of brood mare. Doomed to never find the love for which she had once hoped.
Such foolish dreams and hopes.
After all, she was a princess. She swiped at her cheeks. What right had she had to wish for any kind of normal life, even if her two brothers had the future crown of Jemeya well and truly covered?
Yet still, other princes and princesses around the world seemed to marry for love these days. Why shouldn’t she have dared hope for the same?
She shook her head. It was pointless feeling sorry for herself. She forced herself to move, found herself a wash cloth in the bathroom to run cold water over and held it to her swollen, salt-crusted eyes. She could mope for ever and it would not change things. Nothing she could do, it seemed, could change things.
She returned to her room, passing by the open balcony doors when the curtains shifted on a slight breeze as she still held the cool, soothing flannel to her cheeks. Rani must have opened them, she guessed, before she had left her to her despair, for she was sure the doors had not been open before.
Poor Rani. She had been so excited to show her the gown when she’d returned from her meeting with Zoltan, so delighted to tell her what was planned for her preparations the next day—the fragrant oil-baths, the henna and the hairdresser. Aisha had taken such strides to hold herself together until then, all the way from the library through the convoluted passageways and along the cloistered walk to her suite. It had been so much effort to hold herself together that, in spite of all of the young girl’s enthusiasm—or maybe, in part, because of it—she had taken one look at the dress, collapsed onto the bed in tears and told the girl to go away.
The breeze from the open doors beckoned her, carrying with it the late-afternoon perfume of the garden below, the heady scent of jasmine and the sweet lure of orange blossom. It drew her to the window, to where the soft inner drapes danced and played upon the gentle breeze. She stood there for a moment before venturing out onto the balcony of her suite. The sun was dipping lower now, the evening rays turning the stone and roof of the palace gold, even in the places it was not. The garden was bathed in half-light, the sound of the splashing fountain and birdcalls coming from its green depths like an antidote to stress.
It all looked so restful and beautiful, so perfect, even when she knew things were far from perfect, that she could not resist the lure of the perfumed garden.
A set of stairs led down from the balcony. She looked back into her suite and realised someone had already taken away the jacket she had torn off and discarded en route to her bed, but it didn’t matter, because she probably wouldn’t need it anyway. It was deliciously warm and without the sting of the sun’s rays. It wasn’t as though she was planning on running into anyone.
She wasn’t in the mood for running into anyone. A lifetime of training had told her that she must be presentable at all times, in all situations, prepared for every contingency; given a lifetime of doing exactly that, only to find that your life could take a bizarre turn and force you into marriage with someone just because some crusty old piece of paper said you must, what then did it matter how she looked? She finger-combed her hair back from her face and smoothed her creased trousers with her hands. That would do. Once, she might have cared, but today, after all that had happened, she felt a strange sense of detachment from her former life.
It didn’t matter any more.
If she could be married to someone she hated because the ancient alliance between their two countries dictated it, then nothing mattered any more—not how you looked, how you acted or certainly not what you dreamed and wanted from your life. Only that you were a princess. Only that you came from the right breeding stock. And Zoltan hated her anyway. It wasn’t as though he cared how she looked.
Zoltan was stuck with her, just as she was stuck with him, and somehow that thought was vaguely comforting as she descended the stairs into the garden. After all, why should she be the only one inconvenienced by this arrangement? Why should she be the only one to suffer?
Her legs brushed past lavender bushes intruding onto the path as she walked, releasing their scent onto the air. She breathed deeply, taking it in, wishing herself the soothing balm it promised.
The garden was deserted, as she had hoped it would be, silent but for the rustle of leaves on the breeze, the play of water and the call of birds. She drifted aimlessly along its paths, breathing in the scented air, delighting in the discovery of the ever-changing view and the skillful placement of a bubbling bird-bath or a flowering frangipani to surprise and delight. She stopped by one such frangipani tree laden with richly scented flowers, picked a cluster of bright white-and-yellow flowers to her face and drank in their sweet perfume.
Her mother’s favourite flower, so her father had told her when she had leafed through her parents’ wedding photos. She could see her parents’ wedding photos now, and her mother’s bouquet, all tight white rosebuds amidst the happy brightness of frangipani flowers as she drank in that sweet scent.
She wondered what her mother would tell her now. Would she be as cold and clinical as her father, who had told her today that there was no point thinking or dreaming or wishing for things to be different, because she was what she was and that was how it was to be? Or would she be more understanding, at least empathetic of her situation?
And not for the first time she wondered about her own parents’ marriage, wishing she knew more of the circumstances of how they had met. But her mother had died way too early for her to be interested in any of that, and now it was all so long ago.
She arrived at an opening in a wall, keyhole-shaped, potted palms on either side. A path to another garden? she wondered. But as she looked through it she could see it was not one but a series of archways through which she caught a glimpse of greenery and whispering palms that beckoned to her.
She looked back, trying to get her bearings so she would not get lost, saw what must be her balcony above the tangle of vegetation and realised she was in the far corner of the square, the other side of the palace to where the library lay.
Further from Zoltan, she figured, so maybe it wouldn’t hurt to venture a little further, especially not if this was to be her new home.
She encountered only one other person, a maid, who blinked up at her, bowed and soundlessly and quickly moved on.
She passed by a bird-bath with a bubbling fountain where birds splashed happily, oblivious to her passing, and the breeze whispered through the palms, the promise of the archways luring her on. She loved them all. Every one of them was decorated slightly differently, one whose walls were covered with blue-and-white mosaic, another inlaid with mother-of-pearl, the last with a pair of peacocks with bright and colourful plumage, every one of them a work of art.
It was as she passed beneath that last richly decorated arch and wondered what she would find beyond that she heard it, a voice, a shout, and then splashing and laughter. Men’s laughter, coming from some kind of pool. She swallowed as she swung around, pressing her back hard against the cool, tiled wall, grateful she had heard their voices before stumbling unknowingly into their midst. She should not be here. She had come too far.
And then she heard his voice amongst the others, Zoltan’s, and the bitter taste of bile rose in her throat as she remembered how supremely difficult it had been to walk from that library with her back straight and her head held high when all she had felt like doing was collapsing in a heap in despair—how it had taken every shred of her self-control to force herself to wait until she had walked through the door of her suite before she could let her tears go. She could not bear to see him again with those memories so vivid in her mind.
His voice rang out again, issuing some kind of challenge. There were calls and laughter, and the challenge seemed to be accepted by another. The unfairness of it all grated on her raw nerves, rubbed salt into her still-fresh wounds. Clearly Zoltan was not agonising too much over the stress of a forced marriage, for all his protests about not wanting to take a wife. Clearly he was not suffering unduly, if he could take time out to frolic in a pool with his friends without a care in the world. And clearly he had not felt the need to cry his heart out on his bed at the unfairness of it all. The truth of it struck home again. She was nothing in this world but a pawn in a game where she didn’t even merit a move.
There came a splash then, the sound of thrashing water and cheers, and curiosity got the better of her. Who were these men with Zoltan? Could they be the ones who had accompanied him to the desert encampment last night? Maybe she could take one look. It wasn’t as though the pool was private; there was no gate and she was simply out walking.
Making sure she stayed in the shadows under the archway, she peered out past the garden surrounding the pool. There were two men there, neither of them Zoltan, standing cheering at the far end of a broad sapphire pool, partly shaded by twin lines of palms. Though it was nowhere near shady enough to hide the scars that marred one man’s back, the skin twisted and brutal-looking, and she wondered what could have caused such a mess as the water of the pool was torn apart by churning arms, going stroke for stroke as two more men devoured the length of the pool.
Until they reached the end and the water erupted as someone emerged, using powerful arms to springboard out a mere head before his rival.
‘I win,’ the first said, offering his hand to the second.
Zoltan, she realised, disappointed as her eyes drank in the sight of him dripping wet. How typical that he should win the race. How unfortunate. She would have loved to see him lose. She would love to see something or someone wipe that smug look of superiority off his face and the sheer arrogance that infused every part of his body, every glistening muscle, every hard-packed limb.
Of course he would not have an ounce of fat on him, she thought with added resentment, he would not allow such a thing. She had seen enough. And she almost managed to turn away until he flexed his shoulders as her eyes caught the play of muscles under broad shoulders and tracked down the vee of his torso, to where his hips were encased in black lycra above the start of those long, powerful legs.
She sniffed, refusing to be impressed. So maybe she had been wrong before. Maybe he was not exactly like Mustafa, at least not in this one respect, she thought as she remembered the fat man scratching the bulging of his gut through his robe with long, almost feminine fingernails ending fingers adorned with gaudy rings. She shuddered, knowing how close she had come to that repulsive fate.
Still, it made no difference to her how many muscles Zoltan had, and she did not care that his skin glistened a golden-olive in the light. Not when in essence he was exactly the same as his half-brother. Not when there were still so very many reasons to hate him with every fibre of her being.
And she was sure, with time, she would find more.
‘I gave you a head start,’ his vanquished rival claimed as she watched furtively from the shadows. ‘Let’s make it best out of three.’ Zoltan laughed and slapped his friend on the back, turning his face to the sky to shake the water from his dark hair. She had to blink and look again to make sure it was him.
Zoltan actually laughed? Was this the same man as the monster she had met today in the library? Was this the dark barbarian who had snarled and growled and so smugly informed her that she had no choice? For when he smiled, when he laughed so openly, his face was transformed. Not handsome, exactly. He would never be handsome. His face was too dark, his features too strong, like the strongest, bitterest cup of coffee imaginable. But with laughter lighting his dark features he almost looked human.
Almost—good.
Electricity sizzled down her spine and her mouth turned ashen. Tomorrow—tomorrow—this man would be her husband. This hated man would lie next to her in bed, wearing even less than he was wearing now. And expecting her.
She shivered, feeling a growing apprehension that the unknown would soon become known.
She clutched the flowers in her hands to her face, burying herself in their fragrant scent.
This was not how she had imagined it would be.
