The Sheikh's Claim (Desert Nights 2)

She shrugged. “I admit, looking at you is unsettling, but you do have parts of me, and you’re my son. You’re one of two people I love in this world. But I do feel more intensely about Haidar.”

Bitterness almost overwhelmed him, when he’d thought he’d long come to terms with this fact. “Aih, the true part of you.”

“All parents have preferences. I’m only honest about mine.”

He looked at the mother he loved in spite of everything and wondered. Where did this endless well of emotion come from when it should have dried up decades ago?

He shook his head. “I long believed that Haidar is the loser between us, being your favorite. But I should have realized your lethal focus on him is a multiedged weapon, since you’d destroy anyone for him, even your other son.”

His mother sighed, nothing on her flawless face courting his approval or forgiveness, just his understanding. “It’s a matter of simple pragmatism, ya helwi. I love you and you will make a fantastic second in command, but he, the one with an Azmaharian face and a Zohaydan name, will make a better king for Azmahar.”

“You thought he’d make a better king with that face for Zohayd and Ossaylan. You just want him on a throne so why even try to justify it? You want what you want, and you plot to get it, regardless of any devastation you may cause. This is exactly why I tried to keep my relationship with Lujayn a secret, fearing your ingenious manipulation, what you will always rationalize as necessary for the eventual greater good, and collateral damage be damned. In this instance, years lost when I could have been with Lujayn, with my son. You almost cost me and them our happiness together.”

His mother tutted. “So you in one breath admit to my ingenuity yet still persist in thinking you had anything with her that I didn’t manipulate you into? Why don’t you just admit it and move forward? Tongues will wag for a while, and you won’t become king, but you will be crown prince....”

“You talk as if Haidar and I are the only candidates.”

His interjection had her eyes widening as if he’d said something too ridiculous to answer. She decided to humor him, it seemed. “You are the only valid ones. Rashid Aal Munsoori is damaged goods. Nobody in his right mind wants that unstable creature in control of anything, let alone a kingdom. Please, Jalal. He has as much chance as an iceberg in Azmahar’s summer desert.”

He had to laugh. “You have it all worked out, don’t you?”

She nodded graciously. “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. You will all thank me later.”

He shook his head again, unable to wrap it around the scope of his mother’s capacity for deviousness. Ya Ullah, what a crushing shame she used all that insight and intelligence in such evil, world-scrambling pursuits. Was there any way to defang her, reroute her capacities to doing good, or should he just give up?

Give up, everything inside him said. He listened this time.

He circumvented her, walked to the frozen Lujayn. She didn’t look up even when his legs touched her spastic ones.

“My mother’s account provides a neater explanation for everything we had than anything I believe happened.”

Her stiffness increased, her breathing stifled. Her face remained turned, eyes downcast.

He went down on his knees before her.

A gasp escaped her as his hands caught hers, keeping her in place when she tried to bolt away. She still wouldn’t look at him.

“But what she didn’t count on was one thing. That even if my version of what happened fits nowhere as perfectly as hers, even if she brings me evidence that it had all been another of her long-term plots, I know what’s real. You—” he dragged her shaking hands to his lips then tugged her into a convulsive embrace “—are my only reality, ya rohi. You and Adam.”

She looked at him then, and the force of her desperation detonated in his heart. Tears poured from her eyes as if under pressure, her voice a choked tremolo. “I can’t be your reality. But she might let Adam remain in your life, if I am not.”

“You will both be my life, for the rest of it.”

She escaped his embrace, shaking all over, tears splashing his chest. “She won’t stop at anything to drive me away from you. She believes she’s doing you, and even Adam, a favor.”

“She won’t be able to do anything. I’ll protect you and your family. I will never let her hurt you again.”

“You think…I’d care if she threatened…to hurt me or my family?” Lujayn’s sobs rose, chopping her words, as if each tore something inside her. “What worse…injury could she inflict on me than…losing you? As for my family…she’s done the worst she could do to them already…knows she can’t do worse…ever again.”

“Then what is she holding over your head? Who is she threatening to hurt?” The ugliest suspicion that had ever assailed him tore into his mind. “Adam?”

And she cried out, “You!”

He staggered back on his heels, rocked to his core.

Too much. This was just too much. The blows his mother kept hitting him with. Was there no end?

Lujayn wept openly now. “She told me…she’d…destroy you. She said if I defied her and carried on with the ceremony, if I even told you, that she would, no second chances. And it wasn’t…a threat. It was…a promise. I believed her. I—I still do. I came…to try to reason with her…but it’s no use.”

He turned a gaze numb with shock to his mother.

Exasperation tinged her exhalation. “You believe her?”

“I would believe Lujayn over my own eyes,” he said, the words spontaneous, certain, his voice disembodied.

His mother’s gaze hardened. “That only proves I was even more right than I thought. Now that I know how deeply she has you in her thrall, I will do anything to stop you from surrendering your name and honor to her. And to her family, who’ll make you theirs, no longer your own person or your family’s. Or mine. If you were in your right mind you’d know that no one in Azmahar will ever accept her family, reinstatement or not. If you think prejudices ever go away, then you know nothing about the people you want to rule.

“But the worst of it remains on her. No one will accept an unnatural union between a man descended from pure royal lines on both sides with a mongrel slut who exposed her body for the highest bidder. A black widow who you claim married you during her husband’s mourning period, but who everybody knows is guilty of worse, of having illicit sex with you during that forbidden time, to trap you with her illegitimate child.” Steel blazed in her eyes. “But the absolute worst of it is you. You’re even worse than Haidar when it comes to giving your heart. I won’t wait until she pulverizes it. I’ll destroy you first, before I see you destroy yourself. My destruction will be surgical, can be reconstructed once I’m certain you’re safe from her, not like the infected mess she’d cause and that might necessitate an amputation.”