The Desert Lord's Bride (Throne of Judar 2)

Now the name of the woman he had to marry had changed.

As long as he fulfilled his duty, would he even care which woman he took to his bed? Would it matter whose body cried out for his, who lived to love him?

She lurched again, and his arms fell away, the only things that had been keeping her together during the maelstrom that had uprooted her existence, left her without identity, origin or direction. And she got her answer.

No, he wouldn’t care. He’d never cared. None of it had ever been for her. She’d been King Atef’s daughter to him. Now that she wasn’t, Farah no longer mattered.

He’d already let her go. She’d already ceased to exist.

Had she ever existed at all?

She swayed, sinking into the mercy of numbness, her eyes focused on the king. The man who wasn’t her father. Neither was Francois Beaumont. She had no father…

“You have nothing to apologize for,” she whispered. “I should be the one apologizing for the misconception. My mother should be, my mother who…who isn’t even my mother…”

The king was the one who surged toward her, his hand around her mother’s arm, bringing her nearer with him. “No, my daughter…” She jerked, stumbled back. He stopped, his eyes gentling, realizing the pain the word daughter had inflicted on her. “You must not blame your mother. You have to understand how it all happened. I loved your mother deeply, but I had to give her up, could never be with her, even after she discovered her pregnancy. I was unable to acknowledge the child, and with so many demands tearing me apart at the time, I told her to get rid of it. I regretted it even as I said it, and never stopped regretting it, but I did think she’d terminated her pregnancy. I forced myself not to seek news of her for long years.

“Then I had a heart attack, and, faced with my mortality, what really mattered became clear. I acted on a gut instinct that always told me I had another child, searched for your mother, found out she had a daughter the exact age my child would have been, and didn’t doubt for a second you might not be mine. It was only when the final steps of admitting you into the royal family necessitated proof of your parentage that I sought it. After the negative results, investigations ensued, uncovering your adoption. It seemed we were back to square one, where the crisis is concerned, until my sister Bahiyah confessed the truth and I had your mother flown here to get the complete story.”

Her wavering gaze turned from him to her mother.

Lies. It had all been lies. From the beginning. Everything she’d ever believed about her life. With her mother and father. With Shehab. Even now, what she was being told-all the so-called facts turning everything that she’d believed about her identity, her history, her very life upside down all over again-could turn out to be more lies.

Her mother’s face, open for the first time with blatant emotion, streaming with tears, begged her leniency.

She had none to give as the dam of deadness shattered, swamping her with agony and disillusionment.

“How could you do this to me? Why did you let me, and him, believe I was his daughter? You regretted adopting me, wanted to foist me on someone else, didn’t you? Why? I was never a burden to you, I only wanted you to love me, or at least not to resent me. I never understood why you did. I thought I’d found the answer, thought I reminded you of the man you loved and lost. But you only resented me because I wasn’t yours all along…”

The king tried to intervene again, but her mother clamped a hand on his forearm, stopping him, staggered to Farah, clutched her shoulders in rabidly strong hands. “No, Farah. I never resented you. It was always the opposite. I wanted to adopt you from the first day I saw you, only you, out of a hundred children. But they refused me, a single woman who’d just a year earlier given up her own daughter for adoption. Then God sent me Francois, and he moved heaven and earth so we could adopt you. He agreed that you were ours, should never be told otherwise. You know how he loved you. You were his world. But I was sick, Farah. And he stood by me, hid the fact that I was in therapy or you would have been taken away from us.”

“Therapy? You were in therapy? And you never told me?”

“I couldn’t tell you. It was about you, and I didn’t want you to feel responsible or guilty. But I had these overpowering emotions for you, unreasonable fears of losing you, and Francois soon made me see I was stifling you. You wouldn’t remember, since I’ve been in therapy since you were six. Ever since then I’ve been constantly struggling to pull back.”

Farah let out a laugh full of bitterness. “You succeeded too well. I always thought I was such a disappointment, that you could barely stand me, especially after Dad died.”

Anna shook her head, her hair sticking to her wet face. “No, no, darling, no. I was going crazy after Francois died, wanted to cling to you with all my strength. And I knew you’d let me, would bear all my need and weight and never complain. I knew you’d let me rule your life and time and drain you. And I couldn’t do that to you. I wanted you to live your life.”

“So you let me live it alone. Is that what you thought best for me?”

“Don’t, darling, please. Please try to understand how hard it was, the anxiety attacks, the need to hound your every step. There was no middle ground for me. It was either suffocate you or let you go.”

“So you let me go. And now I don’t have a mother at all…”

“Don’t say that, darling, please. I am your mother.”

And Farah screamed. “No, you’re not. If you cared anything for me you wouldn’t have done this to me. Don’t you know what you did? You let them think I was this vital missing piece in their grand scheme and they sent Shehab after me. I was content with my life, solitary as it was, expecting nothing special to happen to me. Then he came, and I actually dared dream of more, was actually happy-blissfully happy-for a few weeks. And now it’s all over.”

Arms tried to pull her in their embrace, infinitely strong and gentle, shaking, but she was blind, mad, struggled like a cornered animal, tore away until a cold surface stopped her momentum. She found herself slumped against a marble column, heard nothing but the horrible sound of her own weeping.

Anna’s sobbing voice rose into her consciousness. “When I k-kept silent about your identity, I thought I was giving you a new father to love, who w-would love you, and a life of undreamed of privilege. I didn’t know where or who my biological daughter was. I wanted you to have the birthright she should have had, and I thought she’d never have now. I wanted to help Atef and his kingdom. I never thought for a second that I could harm you, and that I have and this much-oh, God, my darling…f-forgive me. For everything…”