Shackled to the Sheikh

* * *

Coronation day dawned pink and clear and just about perfect, he supposed, if you didn’t have a spiked cannonball rolling around in your gut.

Rashid rose early, knowing there was no putting it off, watching the layers of the early-morning sky peel away from where he took coffee on his terrace, pink giving way to blue, just as peace would give way to madness.

The day would be long—interminable at times, no doubt—a breakfast with foreign dignitaries and officials and then a long tortuous motorcade through the city to show off their new Emir before a public feast in Qajaran City’s biggest square. Then while the official party headed to the formal coronation ceremony, the gates of the Fun Palace would be thrown open to the public, the ceremony relayed on big screens, before a state dinner for six hundred, all topped off with cannon fire and fireworks.

He was exhausted already.

Exhausted and still more than a little daunted.

His cup rattled against his saucer when he went to pick it up and he lifted his trembling hand to inspect it.

God, what was wrong with him? He had studied the books. He had read the histories and pored over enough economic papers and reports to sink a ship, he had listened to the advice of Kareem and Zoltan and the Council of Elders, and still he wondered what he was doing here.

Duty.

There came a knock at the door and Kareem entered with two assistants bearing the robes he would wear today. ‘Excellency, it is time to prepare.’

* * *

He was dressed and taking his last few breaths as a free man when he heard the soft knock, but it wasn’t Kareem this time. It came from the connecting door to Tora’s apartments, the door he had never opened although temptation in the shape of a seductress lay just the other side. The door opened and a soft voice called his name, a voice that, to his fevered mind, sounded as cool as a waterfall. And then she entered, and for a moment he forgot the pain and the fever and the damnable tremble in his hands, because he had never seen anyone more beautiful.

She was dressed in a golden robe, exquisitely embroidered, with gold trim similar to his own, and with long sweeping cuffs on the sleeves and a gossamer-thin silk shawl over her hair that framed her face and floated like a cloud as she moved. She looked like something out of a medieval fantasy.

His next fantasy.

‘Rashid,’ she said, and her eyes opened wide as they took in the sight of him dressed in his unfamiliar robes, the first time she had seen him dressed this way. She blinked and seemed to gather herself. ‘I just wanted to wish you well today,’ she said, ‘before it all gets crazy.’

As they both knew it would.

He nodded, because his jaw set too tight to talk and the spiked cannonball in his gut rolled and stuck its spikes in his innards, and he had to take himself to the window to ease the pressure.

For her gesture, her simple act of kindness, had almost brought him undone.

She understood a lot for a woman who wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t needed to adopt Atiyah and coerced her into a convenient marriage. Because she had become so much more than simply a convenient wife. Her suggestion of opening the Fun Palace to the public had led to its inclusion in the proceedings today, an inclusion he had been informed had been met by the people with huge anticipation and great excitement. He was sharing some of the riches of the state and it was he who was being lauded for it.

She understood a lot more than he had given her credit for.

She would be gone soon.

And his breath caught, as the pointed barbs of that cannonball stuck their points into his raw and wounded flesh anew.

* * *

Tora had never seen Rashid in robes—had never imagined that a man who was so at home and looked so good in western clothes could own a look so traditional and yet he did. His snowy white robes and the tunic beneath were lined with gold trim, his headpiece bound with a band of black that would be replaced with a band of gold, in the final step of the ceremony that would make him Emir.

Tall and broad-shouldered, his skin looking as if it had been burnished by the sun against so much white, he looked magnificent, as if he had been born of the desert sands—born to rule—and yet Tora could see the battle going on behind his features, could see the slight tremble in his hands that he was at pains to disguise, and she ached for him.

‘You have no need to be afraid,’ she said softly.

‘What?’ He turned sharply.

‘You have no reason to fear.’

‘Is that what you think? That I’m afraid?’ But his voice lacked the conviction of his words and he knew it by the way he dropped his head and turned away again.