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“Yet you protect him. Like a tigress with her cub.” Everything was a casual observation from him, no heat of conviction. No emotion at all.
“There are survival instincts that are born into us,” she said, looking down at Aden’s head, his hair fuzzy and wild, standing on end. “An innate need to propagate the species and ensure its survival.”
“Is that all?” he asked.
She shook her head, her throat tightening. “No.”
“It is good. Good that he has an aunt who loves him.”
Yes. It was completely natural for her to love him. To feel like he was a piece of her. He was, after all. Her nephew. Her only remaining family.
The only remaining family that she acknowledged. Her parents were no longer a part of her life. She never intended on speaking to them, going back and peering into the ugliness that was their marriage. She’d escaped it, and she never intended on going back.
Aden represented her last link with family. Her last chance. It was no wonder the bond was so strong. And he had no one. At least, he’d had no one. It had been just the two of them, holed up in the apartment, surviving.
“I do love him,” she said.
“It pleases me.” She noticed he didn’t return the sentiment, and that none of the pleasure he spoke of was reflected in his tone. She searched his face, looked into those hard, black eyes to see if she could find some hidden depth of emotion. Some tenderness for the tiny baby in her arms.
There was nothing there.
Nothing but an endless sea of darkness, a black hole, that seemed to pull light in, only to extinguish it.
“I went to live with my uncle, Kalid, when I was seven. I don’t know if Rashid ever mentioned that,” he said.
“No.” She’d barely ever spoken to her brother-in-law. He wasn’t usually present during her visits with Tamara.
“It is common, with the warrior children, to go and learn from the one currently holding the position.”
“So young?”
“It is necessary,” he said. “As you mentioned, early childhood experiences play strongly into how you will be as an adult. Something so important could not be left to chance.”
“What… what do you mean?”
“Because to be a perfect soldier, you can’t be a perfect man,” he said. “You have to be broken first, so that it can’t happen later. At the hands of your enemies.”
His tone was perfectly smooth, perfectly conversational. Betraying nothing of the underlying horror. But it was there. In his eyes.
It was easy to imagine getting pulled into that darkness. Easy to imagine getting lost in it. In him. The feeling that created rocked her deeply, gripped her stomach and squeezed tight.
She’d never had a thought like that before, had never felt, even for a moment, the sudden, violent pull to someone like she felt for Sayid.
She turned away, redirecting her focus. This six months was for Aden. A chance to introduce him to his home. To give him the transition they both needed.
It was not a time for her to get drawn in by a man with dark eyes and an even darker soul.
CHAPTER THREE
IF THE PLANE WAS LIKE another world, the Attari palace was something beyond that. On the outskirts of a city that was a collision between the old world and the new, was the seat of the royal family’s power. Gleaming stone, jade, jasper and obsidian, inlaid in intricate patterns over the walls and floors, the edges gilded, catching fire in the dry, harsh sun that painted the air with waves of heat.
The only green was in the palace gardens, the lush plants an extravagant example of wealth. A surplus of water in a dry place. The fountains spoke of the same excess, statues carved of young women, endlessly pouring water into the pools below.
The palace itself was shielded from the heat, the thick stone walls providing cover and insulation.
Her entire apartment could fit in the entryway of the palace, pillars wrapped in gold supporting ceilings inlaid with precious stones.
For the fist time, Chloe was ashamed that she’d asked her sister into her apartment. Tamara had never said anything about the shabby little one bedroom, but… but this was what her sister had been accustomed to. And Chloe hadn’t had a clue. She’d known her sister had lived in a palace, but her mind, so dedicated to number and fact, could never have imagined it was this grand.
The suite of rooms they were installed in had been set up for Aden and the nanny. Her room was expansive, a high ceiling with a star pattern arching over the opulent bed, white pillars, carved with scenes of camels wandering the desert, stationed throughout as support.
Chloe wandered in, placing her hand over one of the camels. Amber, she realized, set into a golden background, representing the Attari sand. One pillar would easily pay for a year of her college tuition, a sobering realization indeed.
She followed the flow of the room into Aden’s, which was connected to hers. The bed that had been prepared for him the focal point of the room. Blue with swaths of fabric draped from the ceiling that covered the little crib, making it look like a throne fit for a very tiny prince.
Which he was really.
“An improvement, isn’t it?” She placed him gently into the bed, her fingertips lingering on his round belly.
The sight of him, so small, in the plush bed made her throat tighten. This room had been prepared by Tamara. Prepared for a son she had never gotten the chance to hold. Hadn’t even been able to carry in her womb.
Chloe had done that, and she had hated it. Had been miserable through the whole pregnancy while her sister, who would never even know her child, had longed to carry the baby and hadn’t been able to.
Tears stung her eyes. She wanted to rail at the world. At the injustice of it. Nothing made sense in the world. Nothing. There was no reason. And she, she most especially, seemed to have no way of controlling it. She’d tried. She’d planned. And everything had fallen apart.
Anguish threatened to overwhelm her, to wrap bony fingers around her throat and squeeze her tight, cutting off her air.
“Is everything to your liking?”
She turned and saw Sayid standing in the opening to Aden’s room, his shoulders military straight, his hands clasped behind his back, his expression hard. In that moment, she envied him. He saw things clearly, in black and white. There was no confusion for him. No anger. No grief. He was simply doing what had to be done, and for him, that seemed to be enough.
Nothing she did felt like enough. Nothing felt right.
Not even this, and it was the only thing she could think to do.
“It’s beautiful, but I imagine you know that.”
His shoulders broke rank long enough to shrug. “The palace is done in the traditional Attari style. It is not so unusual here.”
“Ah yes, well, I can see how a castle made of semiprecious stones would get tiresome after a while,” she said drily.
“I find most anything preferable to an enemy prison, in that regard the palace does nicely. It is nicer to look at than a prison cell at the very least.”
“Is that all that makes it better?” she asked, laughing, a nervous shaky sound.
“In some ways,” he said slowly, “it is shockingly similar to prison.” His statement begged a question but he pressed on too quickly. “Your schooling has been worked out. The classes will be broadcasted onto a website you can log in to. That way you can view the lectures in addition to having your reading material on hand.”
“Labs? I mainly work in the realm of the theoretical, which means more mathematics than actual physical experiments, but there is some lab work to be done.”
“It will likely have to be deferred, but that’s fine, as well. You’re a well-liked student.”
“Most everyone at this level is. If you’re pursuing physics this far, it’s a passion.”
“And you are… passionate about it?”
The way he said “passionate” made her stomach curl in slightly, and she wasn’t sure why. “Yes.”
“What about it do you find so fascinating?”
She looked down at Aden. “I like to know why. The why of everything.” She looked back at Sayid. “Though, I’ve discovered there are things in life that simply aren’t explainable. I know about the building blocks of life, but I haven’t exactly figured out how to make everything make sense yet.”
“Not everything can be explained,” he said.
“But it’s my great quest to see if it can be.”
He shook his head. “I can tell you right now, there is too much in this world that does not make sense and never will. Greed makes men do terrible things, desire for power. The desire for control.”
“Survival of the fittest,” she said.
“Sure. But I’ve seen it. I’ve seen what people are willing to do. It does not make sense, trust me.”
She did. His voice rang with a depth of understanding that echoed inside of her. Images of violence flashed behind her eyes.
Sometimes there really was no reason.
“To the best of my ability,” she said, trying to shake off the memories, “I try to make sense of it all. To find the absolutes, the things that can’t be argued or denied. Theoretically, it should make my life feel more ordered. More in control.”
“How is that working out?”
“Like hell, actually.”
He nodded slowly. “Yes, that has been my experience, as well. In particular, in regards to recent events.”
“Common ground,” she said. “Unexpected.”
“Perhaps not quite so unexpected,” he said. “I see things in much the same way you do. Black or white. Yes or no.”
She looked at Aden, love, pain, filling her. “I used to see things that way. More than I do now.”
Sayid looked away from her, his dark eyes scanning the room. The moment of connection was broken. “There will be two other nannies in my employ while you are here. One to work in the night, the other to help handle him while you study.”
“And I’m the… wet nurse. Part of the prince’s team?”
He looked back at her and for a moment, she thought she saw a teasing light in his eyes. “A prince needs a team. Calling you another nanny would do, though, no need to be dramatic. Or medieval.”
She looked back down at Aden and the enormity of what he would face filled her, overwhelmed her. It was unfair, she knew, because even if his parents had lived, his future would be the same. He was, as Sayid had pointed out, born to rule.
But right then it didn’t seem fair. Didn’t seem fair that the expectations of a nation should rest on the shoulders of this tiny baby.
“Why can’t you just do it?” she whispered. “You were going to rule. Can’t you take it from him?”
She chanced a glance at him. His eyes were trained on the wall, distance. Dark. “I would do what had to be done, but I am not the man to lead this country.”
“But you’re doing it until Aden is old enough to—”
“I will do what must be done.”
“Nothing more?” she asked, not bothering to keep the bitterness from her tone.
He looked at her then, and she studied the hard lines of his face, the light that filtered through the windows deepening the grooves by his mouth, making the line between his brows appear deeper. It revealed his cares, his pain, the marks, the age, the world had left on him.
“Attar needs hope. A future filled with endless possibilities. With me, they will not get that. Death follows me, Chloe James. I will not bring that on my people, but on their enemies.”
He turned and walked back out of the room, and Chloe just watched, tension releasing from her slowly with each step he took away from her, until she was left feeling like wrung-out jelly. She hadn’t been conscious of just how tense she’d been until it had started to ease.
She let out a breath and clenched her hands into fists, trying to stop her fingers from shaking. His words echoed in her head, so dark, so certain.
She shook her head, focusing her mind back on Aden. There was too much going on for her to adopt Sayid’s issues, as well. And anyway, she imagined he would say he didn’t have any. She wandered back into her room, sitting down at the laptop that had already been set up at a corner desk for her. She could at least do some course work, study for her tests. She pushed the on button and waited for it to boot up, scanning the room, the view of the gardens from the double doors.
Today, everything had changed. Again.
“Sheikh Sayid,” Sayid’s advisor, Malik, walked into the dining room, his eyes fixed on the ground in front of him. It was not the person he’d been expecting. He’d been expecting Chloe, spitting hellfire and brimstone about him taking over her schedule and demanding she have dinner with him. He was not so lucky. “We need to discuss the matter of the press conference that is planned for tomorrow.”
“What is there to discuss?” Sayid asked, annoyance coursing through him. He didn’t want to talk about the press conference. Didn’t want to do anything but eat dinner and treat himself to a punishing workout. Something that would numb him and leave him utterly exhausted. After a day locked inside of an office, trapped behind a desk, he felt it was deserved. Necessary.
It was like prison. Even if it was a more comfortable cell. It was also too opulent, too busy. He longed for the simplicity of a desert tent, or at the very least, the whitewashed walls of the seaside palace he had spent time in as a child.
His aide kept on avoiding his eyes. “You know that the people are… they are restless.”
“They do not like me,” Sayid said. “That is the crux of the issue.”
“You are not… personable.”
Sayid laughed, the sound void of humor, his body void of humor. “Am I not?”
“It has been said, Sheikh.”
“Not by you, certainly,” he said, eyeing the man who had served Rashid so faithfully.
He did meet his eyes this time. “Certainly not.”
“It is of no consequence. I am not the permanent ruler of this country. Soon enough, my nephew shall take over and I will go back to my more palatable position outside of the public eye.”
“In sixteen years. That is a reality you cannot ignore.”
It was the truth. It wasn’t like submitting to physical torture. As a ruler he had to lay open pieces of himself, show personality. Be nice. At least when his hands were bound, when he was being whipped, burned, he could shut down the pain, allow it to rest on his skin like armor, recede inside of himself and simply endure. Survive.
But that was not what was required of a ruler. And he knew nothing else.
