The Sheikh's Reluctant Queen: The Sheikh's Destiny

Against all expectations, Amjad had married again. Maram Aal Waaked, the daughter of the ruling prince of a neighboring emirate, Ossaylan. Amjad had tried to use Maram to force her father to return the Pride of Zohayd jewels, which, according to Zohaydan law and legend, conferred the right to rule the kingdom. It had turned out Maram’s hapless father had been blackmailed by the ex-queen of Zohayd, Sondoss, Laylah’s aunt, into helping her steal the jewels. Reportedly, Amjad had fallen flat on his face in love with Maram. Now after he’d been dubbed the Mad Prince, he’d become the Crazy King—crazy in love with his new wife.

That Rashid had to see to believe.

All he saw now was Amjad’s provocation as he met those startlingly emerald eyes on the same level. Not that he needed more than Amjad’s rude interruption of his tender moment with Laylah to guarantee his hackles wouldn’t subside for the foreseeable future.

“King Amjad,” he gritted between clenched teeth in lieu of a punch in the nose.

“Sheikh Rashid.” Devilry danced in Amjad’s eyes as he inclined his head. “Rumor has it you’re here on a bid to cure my cousin’s chronic spinsterhood.”

Before he could respond to that insolence, Laylah squeezed his arm, no doubt to stop him from putting his fist through her cousin’s and king’s smirking face. He’d been insane if he thought he could ally himself with this incorrigible creature.

“It’s so good to see being a harassed king and a henpecked husband hasn’t defanged you, Amjad,” Laylah said merrily.

Amjad continued talking about her as if she wasn’t there. “But then she’s been trying to catch your eye since she could toddle. Oh, yes, we all noticed. And cringed. It was excruciating watching her pant after you. Made me hyperventilate. So how did she suddenly succeed in curing your blindness to her splendor?”

The wily wolf was skeptical. Rashid had known he would be. Amjad had suspicion for blood. It was why he’d originally hatched this whole plan. To pass Amjad’s maximum-distrust inspection.

Amjad continued, “It was weird, how determined you were in not noticing her. It got so fishy, I asked Haidar and Jalal if they knew which team you played for.”

Against his better judgment, Rashid said, “There were years when speculation about your team loyalties ran rampant, too.”

Amjad’s grin grew more goading, delighted that he’d gotten a rise from him. “I didn’t have a smitten angel hero-worshipping me for years.”

“I hear Queen Maram did just that before you rethought your… predilections.”

Amjad’s eyes blazed greener. The bastard loved this. “Those were only put on hold after my monster bride slathered me in arsenic. That’s a good enough reason to swear off women for a few years, don’t you think? What was your excuse?”

It was no use. This would develop into a full-scale war.

So be it. And to hell with his alliance. “While you were getting over your self-pitying and preserving neurosis, I was serving my country and putting my life on the line for the region’s safety. I didn’t think it fair to involve a woman in a life that could end prematurely.”

Laylah’s convulsive dig into his arm transmitted how horrifying she found the what-if scenario.

He squeezed her hand, warding off the imaginary dread, reassuring her that he was here, would always be here, with her.

Amjad, not missing a thing, continued his inflammatory interrogation. “But that heroic existence came to an end a few years ago. What reminded you of my worshipping cousin all of a sudden? And made you not only look her way this time, but decide to take her off the shelf, and in record time, too?”

He decided to tell both of them the truth about this at least. “The reason I never looked at you—” he turned his eyes to Laylah, whose eyes filled with tears and wonder as she heard his confession for the first time “—wasn’t because I didn’t notice you, or wasn’t interested. I was, painfully so. But I wasn’t worthy of looking in your direction then.”

Amjad let out a deriding guffaw. “And you think you are now?”

Laylah stepped between them. “Are you two gigantic boys done chest-thumping, or do you need to release some more testosterone? Why don’t you just beat each other black and blue and get this ‘who’s the bigger, badder alpha’ thing out of your systems?”

Rashid watched as Amjad looked down with extreme amusement at Laylah, who cared not a bit that he was one of the most powerful men in the world, smacking him in chastisement, as if he was only her exasperating—and younger—relative and not her king.

Jealousy radiated up Rashid’s spine. Cousin or not, he wanted her to smack no other male, wanted no other male to revel in being smacked by her.

Amjad gave her a mock bow. “For knock-down, drag-out fights, and any other physically expressed stupidity, I’ll refer you to Harres. Or Jalal. Me, my wit is my lash, my tongue my sword.”

Fighting the need to shove him away from Laylah, Rashid said, “You imagine you wield such weapons, when it’s your status that stops people from showing you their real worth in a fair fight.”

Amjad pretended shock. “You mean you’re holding back in respect for my status?” He wiggled his eyebrows at him. “I hereby decree you’re free to do your best. Or is it only your worst?”

Again Laylah came between them, this time one palm flat on each of their chests, keeping them apart. “Down boys. In your corners.”

Amjad sighed. “Okay. Just because Rashid is an endangered species and we need him alive and able to breed. I don’t think we’d find you another mate if he expires.”

Laylah dug her elbow in Amjad’s gut, her smile so radiant as she looked up, asking Rashid to share the joke. He only wanted to poke Amjad’s green eyes out.

Turning to Amjad, she asked, “Is my father here?”

“You expected him to be?” Amjad scoffed. “That deadbeat? And I thought you were above such sentimental tripe. If you haven’t yet, it’s time to face it already, Laylah. In that generation only one apple didn’t turn out rotten. My father is all we got in the way of a parent around this place.”

An incensed step brought Rashid slamming into Amjad chest-first. “Even if she knows the truth about her father, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t still hurt her. You don’t have to be cruel.”

“Oh, I assure you, I have to.” Amjad’s eyes suddenly smoldered with something besides mockery. Fury. “It’s called tough love, and she’s better off considering both her parents as dead as my mother or your parents. Just remembering my uncle makes me want to kick his useless ass, or anyone’s who mentions him.”

Before he could punch Amjad’s lights out, Laylah growled, “I swear, one more word out of either of you, and I’m putting each of you in a corner at the ends of this palace. Ya Ullah—now I remember why I left. I was drowning in male posturing and hormones. Are there any buffering women around here?”

“All the women who’ve invaded the Aal Shalaan male maze will be here tomorrow,” Amjad said. “For today you can seek the feminine amelioration of my Maram, of course, and Johara.”

She whooped. “I can’t wait to meet the phenomenon who’s put a collar around your neck. And see Johara again. And the children. You know, some sensible, age-appropriate-behaving individuals.”

Amjad pulled another of those inciting expressions in his arsenal and shooed her away. “Skip along, then. Rashid and I have more juvenile silliness scheduled before we’re through. I have to drive him to within an inch of his sanity before I even look into his application to acquire our last remaining—if long-stored and fraying around the edges—Aal Shalaan treasure.”

Laylah grinned up at Rashid. “Guess you were right about my code name here.” She turned her best demolishing glance on Amjad. “Not that anyone can accuse you of knowing how to hang on to your treasures, as evidenced by what happened to the Pride of Zohayd, your foremost one. So hang on to your sanity, Amjad. Rashid is a world-renowned authority in sanity extraction, among other… extractable things. I leave you to his not-so-tender mercies, taal omrak.”

Amjad let out a spectacular snort at her tagging the king’s hail of “may you live long” to her irreverence. Then she stood on tiptoe and pressed a clinging kiss to Rashid’s lips.

Before he forgot Amjad and the watchful eyes of the palace dwellers and crushed her to him, she drew away with a smile that lit his existence before almost dancing away.

Feeling bereft already without her, his gaze clung to her as she receded. And he registered where they were for the first time.

The royal palace of Zohayd was right up there with the Taj Mahal in splendor and intricacy of design, and even more extensive. The mid-seventeenth-century palace that had taken more than three decades and thousands of artisans and craftsmen to build had once been his playground and domain along with Haidar and Jalal from age eight to twenty. He’d taken as much pride and pleasure in it as they had before his stays here had declined until they’d stopped altogether, around ten years ago.

It felt so strange to be back after everything that had happened since to pollute his memory. Nostalgia was like a wave that crashed down on him as he walked through this place again, felt its history and the grandeur saturating its walls, permeating his senses with bittersweet memories. On account of its being Laylah’s home, not the stage where chunks of his life had been played. It had been mostly here where he’d seen her and dared not dream of her. Now she was here with him. It made being here again so… poignant.

Amjad, the self-appointed poignancy disperser, flicked a hand at Laylah as she disappeared around a bend. “Are you as viciously intelligent as you look? Did you latch onto Laylah when you thought you were ‘worthy’ of her for the right reasons? Do you realize what a miracle she is? The product of Medusa and Narcissus should have been a man-eating gorgon, not the most sensitive, selfless being to walk the earth. That she’s female, too, makes her a veritable impossibility.”

Now that Amjad was singing Laylah’s praises, Rashid no longer felt like wiping the palace floor with him face-first.

Still looking where Laylah had disappeared, as if to bask in her echoes, he sighed. “Just what I was thinking. Before your insufferable, inflammatory intrusion on our privacy.”

“Insufferable, inflammatory intrusion? Can you say that five times in quick succession?” Amjad suddenly slapped him on the back. “So how did you do it?”

Struggling not to rearrange the king’s well put-together face, Rashid gritted, “Not choke you for all the insensitivities you poured on Laylah’s head? You’re only still breathing because I need you to do some talking on my behalf.”

Amjad’s guffaw was all enjoyment now. “I may like you yet.” Another back slap. “And by do it, I mean Laylah.” At Rashid’s growl, Amjad held up his hands. “To quote Laylah, ‘down boy.’ I mean—apart from her sharper-than-I-remember tongue—that was a woman fathoms deep in love. I know the symptoms well. My Maram looks and sounds like that around me.”

“It must be the era of impossibilities.”

Amjad laughed again. “Yeah, I still can’t figure out why Maram loves me. But I always figured Laylah’s obsession with you stemmed from your unavailability. Now you’re all over her, not to mention a far deteriorated version of your younger self. What’s keeping someone like her interested in someone like you?”

“If you mean my scar…”

“Please. That’s your one interesting feature. Provides you with character. Also proves you’re human, since there have been major doubts about that. Nah, it has nothing to do with what you look like, and everything to do with what you are like. You’re one dour, ruthless, unstable son of a bitch. Don’t get me wrong, it makes you my kind of guy, but how can Laylah, that perpetual ray of sunshine, stand you?”

He forced out a breath. “How does your Maram stand you?”

“She does because we’re alike. When you take away all the human traits I lack, she’s got a razor for a mind and a scythe for a tongue, too. I don’t believe in this opposites attract thing.”

“Laylah and I are not opposites. We’re very much alike, too.”

Amjad snorted again. “Now I’ve heard it all.”

“Think about it. As you pointed out, she is practically as parentless as I am. She has felt alone and out of place all her life, as I have. She’s felt responsible for other people’s crimes and punished herself for them.”

“Her mother’s crimes and your guardian’s, huh? Now that you point it out, yeah, I can see the resemblance in all the major stuff.” Amjad gave him an assessing glance. “So what’s your real plan?”

Ten

Rashid’s heart slammed against his ribs.

Amjad still suspected him? How, when he no longer had a plan?

He only had the truth to contribute. “I plan to dedicate my life to honoring her, to serving and championing her.”

“Not to loving her?” Amjad tsked. “Women are fond of this part almost to the exclusion of all else.”

And he did something he’d never thought he would: appealed to that maddening man. “You’re a man in love, Amjad. Look at me and tell me you don’t see your symptoms all over me.”

After another protracted glance, Amjad let out a laugh. “And how. The trappings of eshg—extreme and unremitting love, though they clash on you like a pink dress on a grizzly bear—are all over you. But you have something against saying the words, right?”

“The words don’t do justice to what I feel for her.”

Amjad huffed again. “Been there, done that. And you’ll invent new ways and words to transmit the enormity of your feelings. But those simple words, with the truth of your emotions behind them, have a way of transmitting exactly how you feel to your loved one. So word of advice—don’t leave it too long without saying them, or she might have trouble getting comfortable hearing or believing them when you finally do.”

It was Rashid’s turn to scoff. “Now I’ve heard everything. You, giving me romantic advice?”

“That’s for the cousin and sister who was the only beacon of brightness in this gloomy place for over two decades.” Amjad suddenly made a hurrying gesture. “C’mon. Grovel already.”

Giving Amjad a look that said he would make him grovel someday, Rashid said, “I ask that you gather the Aal Shalaan family tribunal to sanction giving me Laylah’s hand in marriage.”

A “gotcha” smile split Amjad’s face. “You really are stuck in some desert knight folktale, aren’t you? ‘Tribunal’, indeed.”

Rashid counted to ten. “It’s your family tradition.”

“Tradition bladition. I’m King of Zohayd, pal. I play chess with those tribunal members. Just wait until I’m making them jump three diagonal moves ahead then back.”

“So it’s your decision that counts. Zain. Make your demands.”

Amjad poked a finger at Rashid’s temple, rapped it three times. “Any rudimentary sense of humor in there?”

Rashid swatted his hand away. “I’ll snark your head off, Ya Maolai, as soon as Your Majesty approves my proposal. Or knock it off if you refuse it.”

Amjad raised his arms up theatrically. “He lives!” One of his arms suddenly came around Rashid’s shoulder, leading him toward the main palace hall. “Just because I now have hope that you won’t bore Laylah to the point where she’d plot to be rid of you, I’ll consider your proposal. But first, about those seven tasks…”

He knocked Amjad’s arm off his shoulder. “No wonder your ex-wife tried to off you.”

Amjad’s grin was as unrepentant as ever. “She did when I had some propriety. Imagine what she would have done now.”

“Shoot you, most probably.”

“Is that what you feel like doing?”

“I would gladly kill anyone who would stand between me and Laylah. Or at least make him wish he was dead. Care to try?”

Amjad pretended horror. “You’ll add me to your inventory of revenge? Will I tail the list after Haidar and Jalal?”

“Come between Laylah and I, and you’ll reserve your spot at the top.”

Amjad stuck his face into his. “You think you can take me?”

“I don’t think. I know. And there wouldn’t be much left of you once I’m done. And you know it.”

Amjad’s guffaw boomed again. “And he wins himself a doll.”

“I swear, Amjad, if you don’t stop yanking my chain, taal omrak won’t be a concept that will apply to you anymore.”

“You know, Rashid, I would have kicked you out on your ear with the first sign of kissing up. But you threatened to kill me instead, so I think I’m in love. Yep, rejoice. You passed.” His arm was over Rashid’s shoulder once more. “How about we go pretend that family ‘tribunal’ of mine actually matters?”

Still afraid to rejoice, Rashid hissed, “Didn’t you say your word is everything, O king of all you survey?”

“It is. But you’ll be king of the headache-inducing but inevitably inseparable Azmahar soon. You will be the one constant partner in my political bed. I’m doing myself a favor showing you the ropes of kingship. Yeah, I’m into training allies to my preferences. I’m charitable like that.”

Rashid stilled. That was totally unexpected. That Amjad would bring up the idea of Rashid becoming king of Azmahar. And in this way. What was his game?

He probed, hoping to gain more insight. “It’s strange that you’d assume I would be king with your two brothers running against me.”

Amjad gave a dismissing wave. “Haidar and Jalal would make decent kings, I guess, but their hearts aren’t really in it. Yours is. You have more at stake in Azmahar and that is why you’ll reap the votes.”

Digesting this unforeseen development, Rashid put all his cards on the table, even if it was for a game he no longer cared about in the least. “I wouldn’t without your alliance. Which they have in full.”

Amjad gave a masterful imitation of affront. “Because they’re my brothers? Nepotism? Moi? Tut-tut, shame on you. Have you forgotten they’re only my half brothers? With Sondoss’s blood running in their veins, actually half demon. Considering you’re only half oaf, you win in that context, too.”

Rashid looked heavenward. “Do you ever stop?”

“No. Maram won’t let me.”

Rashid tried one last time. “Are you ever serious?”

Those impossibly green eyes smoldered with a complex intelligence that had Rashid realizing this man saw and understood everything. “I’m always serious. I say what others are too shy or cowardly or merciful to say. Think back and you’ll find I said nothing but the whole truth all through this bracing encounter.” He clapped his hand once. “Now, from a full-fledged king to an embryonic one, let me give you an introductory course in dealing with pompous asses.”

Rashid let Amjad put an arm around his shoulder this time. “You must be an authority on your own species.”

Amjad chuckled. “I can still give you a hard time, you know.”

“Knock yourself out. Name whatever price or mission. I’ll surpass any so there won’t be any shadow of owing you a thing.”

“You can never repay what you’ll owe me. Your eternal happiness with Laylah. Face it, Rashid. I own you.”

He shrugged Amjad’s arm off again. “Tell you what. Save it. I’ll take Laylah up on her offer and elope.”

Amjad’s considering glance lengthened this time. “She’s your Achilles’ heel, isn’t she?”

“You’re all Greek mythology today, aren’t you?”

Amjad gave a mock serious nod. “I’ve expended the Indian and Middle Eastern myths on Haidar and Jalal in the past two days.”

After that, Amjad remained miraculously silent as they passed through the majestic marble corridors adorned in the most intricate and magnificently designed colored mosaics toward the palace’s great hall.

As they approached the hall’s twenty-foot gilded double doors, Amjad suddenly spoke again, continuing his previous point seamlessly. “It balances you, grounds you, being so totally vulnerable to her.” He winked. “It makes you a man at last.” At Rashid’s exasperated exhalation, Amjad added, “It’s not a slur on your manhood. This time. I think a man can’t call himself that until a woman has him totally whipped.”

Unbelievable as it was, this Amjad was turning out to be one insightful and romantic fellow. “Like Maram has you?”

The smile that wreathed Amjad’s face was the very essence of longing and indulgence, as if he was transmitting it to his wife. Rashid somehow believed Maram would feel it. “And then some. I gave up everything I had and was for her. I would give up far more if she’d let me. You’d do the same for Laylah, wouldn’t you?”

“I would.”

At his nonnegotiable answer, Amjad patted Rashid on the back as they entered the grand hall. “Then there’s no rush with those seven tasks, Hercules. You’ll be spreading them out throughout your lives together.” He suddenly shuddered. “Just seeing her in labor is going to teach you the meaning of terror and take you to the limit of your endurance and beyond.” They’d stopped in the middle of the expansive hall, below the hundred-foot central dome where Laylah’s male kin were gathered in rows like a Roman senate, when Amjad gave him a playful punch. “You lucky bastard.”

It was a marvel watching Amjad in action.

As he informed the Aal Shalaan elders that Rashid was going to marry Laylah, Amjad did the opposite of what kings, or anyone sane, should and had been known to do. In the past twenty minutes Rashid had watched him put down, make fun of and alienate everyone in the hall, including his father, in lieu of courting their favor. It was staggering how fluently and inventively he did it. But what was truly flabbergasting was that everyone loved him for it. They not only obeyed him, they practically invited him to walk all over them some more.

Maybe he should take private lessons in Amjad’s School of Kingship, after all.

Suddenly, every thought in his mind dispersed as they walked out of the hall, only to be filled with one thing. Laylah.

She was striding toward him from the other end of the grand corridor, her dress’s looseness only emphasizing her lethal curves, its cream color accentuating her sunlit hair, skin and eyes.

She had a taller woman with her. Maram, Amjad’s wife and Queen of Zohayd. But though Maram’s flawless complexion and silky hair approximated Laylah’s hues, they didn’t strike anything inside him like the burn of appreciation Laylah’s did.

The moment it took to register Maram dissolved, everything gravitating to the center of his universe again. It struck him again how pleasurable it was to behold Laylah, how beautiful he found her. How terrified he was that this miracle wouldn’t come to pass.

Suppressing the need to run to meet her halfway, he watched her and Maram approach, weighed down by the worry that kept ambushing him—that it would be impossible for everything to keep going so smoothly, incapacitating him further with each attack.

Maram flowed into Amjad’s arms as if slotting into her other half. Then Laylah, flaunting tradition and inciting kingdom-wide wagging tongues, did the same with him. It was frowned upon for married couples to indulge in physical affection in public. It was unheard of between the unmarried.

Most likely presuming his stiffness was caused by his sense of propriety, Laylah grinned up at him. “Did those fossils agree to let you take me off the shelf or do I have to go in there and show them what the last remaining, if fraying around the edges, Zohaydan treasure will do if they snap her last decaying nerve?”

Maram groaned. “Those expressions reek of Amjad.”

Laylah giggled. “Discipline him for me, will you?”

“It’ll be my pleasure.” Maram chuckled. “Though I suspect it will be his, too. I think he misbehaves on purpose.”

Amjad pulled his wife deeper into his embrace. “Like any love-slave worth his salt, I live to provoke my next punishment.”