Traded to the Desert Sheikh

“Are you all right?” Rihad asked, the beginnings of a frown between his brows. “Amaya?”

She would never know how she managed to smile at her brother then, when inside her, everything was a great storm. There were no foundations left. She loved Kavian and she couldn’t have him and all was ash. Ash and grief and a terrible darkness that scarred her even as it burrowed deep. Because he’d showed her who he was. How he was made. He’d showed her how much he could bend already—and it was so little. Too little.

What would happen when he no longer bothered to try?

“Don’t be silly,” she said to her brother, the king of Bakri like their father before him. The ruler who had traded her to this man she’d never escape, not really, not intact. She was already in pieces. She understood she would never really be anything else.

When she betrayed Rihad, Rihad and Kavian and two kingdoms between them, she imagined she would shatter even more. Turn to dust out there somewhere on that same lonely circuit, making history repeat itself in her mother’s bitter wake.

And that was still better than staying with Kavian and loving him until it killed something in her. Better to love a brick wall, she thought miserably. It was far more likely to love her back.

But here, now, she widened her smile and tried to look as if she meant it. She thought from Rihad’s expression that she almost pulled it off. Almost. “I’ve never been better in my life.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

AMAYA FELT HIM behind her, as though he was a part of the shadows out on the terrace not long before dawn. Darker and more electric.

But she didn’t look over her shoulder at him. She kept her eyes trained on the soft lights that spread out in the valley below her, making the old city sparkle in the lingering dark. The great immensity of the mountains rose on the other side of the ancient valley and beyond it, the great desert stretched out in all directions and had taken up some kind of residence in her soul without her knowing it until now.

Up above, the stars waited. A bright smear across what was left of the night, fading away by the moment.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” she said when she thought she could speak. When she thought she could push the words out around the heaviness that was turning her to concrete inside.

“Because you think I am bound by tradition or because you hoped to be halfway to Istanbul by now?”

Kavian’s voice was soft. But so lethal there was no chance whatsoever that she might have missed it.

Still, Amaya took her time facing him. When she did, she had to catch her breath against that instant surge of sensation that almost took her from her feet. She had to reach back behind her and hold on to the railing that kept her from plummeting over the side of the high palace walls.

He was dressed all in black. Again. He looked like some kind of assassin, in the same way he had that day back in Canada that felt like lifetimes ago now. His strong arms were folded over his black T-shirt and he was barefoot beneath his black trousers, and her body shivered into that instant, near-painful awareness that she thought would never leave her. He was as much a part of her as the heart that knocked much too hard against her ribs. More.

“You told me at the party that I could have this one last night alone to—”

“Spare me the lies, Amaya.”

She jolted at that. At that harshness in his voice, stamped all over his face.

“I haven’t said anything,” she heard herself say, as if from afar. “How could I have lied?”

“Did you pack a bag?”

Her throat went dry then. How long had he been watching her tonight? “No.”

“You did. Not a suitcase, merely a rucksack, but I think you will agree that is splitting hairs at best.”

Her heart was a riot in her chest. “Have you been spying on me, Kavian? The night before our wedding?”

“Our wedding.” He let out a little laugh, entirely devoid of humor. “What I cannot figure out is why you are still here. Your mother was so explicit in her instructions to my men, who I believe she thinks she managed to turn against me. You were to sneak out through the palace kitchens. She would have transport ready to take you through the tunnels and spirit you out of my evil clutches at last, the better to humiliate me further in the eyes of the world.”

Amaya wanted to die, right where she stood. She felt that dizziness return and with it, all that wet heat behind her eyes she tried desperately to keep at bay.