‘Silence!’ Zakari roared, and willingly she agreed.
‘Silence is all you will get from now on from Aristo and its Queen!’ Effie shouted. Fleeing from his room, fleeing from the man she loved, because if she stayed a second more Effie knew she’d give in, knew that she might accept his lies, rather than live a life without him.
‘Sheikha Stefania…’ Hassan scuttled towards her as she raced down the stairs ‘…I trust everything is okay.’
‘Everything is not okay,’ Effie started, her mouth opening to demand the royal plane, to alert the Aristo palace of her arrival, then closing again.
Braver with Zakari than without him.
‘I need to think…’
‘Of course.’ Hassan bowed, his voice supremely calm, but it only exacerbated her more. Oh, she knew she looked a sight, her face no doubt streaked with tears and make-up, her body shivering as her world collapsed, but if she could just have five minutes alone she would regain control, could work out what to do!
‘Alone!’ she insisted, being led like a deranged patient to a study as a maid opened the door, eyes duly lowered as Hassan guided her in. ‘You will not discuss my whereabouts with the King.’
Alone, she tried to gather her thoughts, but it was impossible to do that here.
Here in the very room they had been married—where he had made her sign over the diamond.
Here, where she had trusted him.
The French windows in the study opened to the now dark palace gardens; she could hear the fountains gently rolling, smell the fragrant air, and she stepped out, dragging the cool night air in, but it didn’t soothe. Still she felt stifled, closed in…
The huge stone fences, the vast metal gates at the garden’s edge, even the vast garden only closeted her further, yet behind them, beyond them was the desert…
That was where Zakari went, Effie thought, to clear his head, when he needed guidance, and she actually understood his reasoning now, could see the desert’s appeal.
And it was a palace, not a prison, Effie realised as she turned a heavy handle and the gate opened. It was designed to keep people out, not in. Effie breathed as she took her first tentative step towards freedom. Hearing the gate close behind her, Effie tried the handle once, knowing exactly what she would find, knowing it would be locked, and relieved that it was.
And then she ran.
The cobbled path at the palace’s rear perimeter gave way in a matter of moments to the soft sands of the desert, only she was too angry to be frightened.
Angry with Zakari and his lies, Effie thought, taking off one shoe and hurling it into the night. She screamed in anguish, hurling abuse as if she were deranged.
But she was just angry!
Angry with her mother too, Effie let out a long-suppressed keening wail as she hurled off her other shoe. She was so angry with her mother for leaving her without ever revealing the truth, for denying her all those years to the right to her personal history, for making her hear it unarmed and unaware.
Just angry, so very angry at the world as she ran.
With her father for cheating, for lying, for his bigamy and the damage it would now wreak.
And she was angry with herself…
The desert didn’t scare her… She just ran into it, ran through it, slicing it with her rage. It could claim her if it wished; they could find her in fifty years for all she cared, and grab their precious jewel from her skeleton’s neck, but for now she ran, just ran as far away as she could, because Effie knew if she didn’t run, then she might go back.
Might still go back.
Spent, she sank to the sandy floor and wept.
Anger fading to bemusement that she could ever think of going back to him after the way he had treated her.
That after all the shame, all the pain that had been inflicted, still she wanted to return.
Surely closing her eyes and make-believing that he loved her was better than being without him.
How, she begged to the darkness, could she be better off without him, when she loved him to her very core?
How was it better to sleep alone than with the man she loved?
She could see the lights of the palace blinking in the distance and she wanted to go back, wanted every tiny part of Zakari he was prepared to give. She wanted his feigned kisses, his body pressed to hers and she wanted to believe that smile he occasionally gave was truly for her, and she was bitterly ashamed of her want.
Turning her back, she hugged her knees and willed dignity to return.
She begged for the craving to pass. She knew from experience that it would—just as it had when the handle had turned on her locked bedroom door that night, just as it had so many nights when her body had thrummed for her to join him, just as it had when he had kissed her at the polo match, Effie reminded herself, rocking through the craving—just as it had when he’d been inside her on their wedding night…
It would pass, Effie told herself, for the millionth time.
Soon it would pass.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE same but different.
In a different land, in a different time, Zakari could remember walking into his father’s bedroom, seeing him staring out to distant, unseen sands, on the night his mother, Princess Saffiya Al’Farisi, had died. Zafir’s lusty, newborn cries being hushed by a wet nurse.
Zafir the only one permitted to weep.
‘Stay strong!’ His father, Sheikh Ashraf, had squeezed his son’s shoulder, when Zakari had wanted to be held. ‘It is not for us to demand answers.’
And later, in this very room where he stood now, his father had demanded the same of him as his new wife, Anya, lay weeping on the bed, little Zafir lost and missing.
The same but different.
A flash of something moving in the garden caught his eyes, but Zakari wasn’t concentrating; the guards would sort it out. Later he could hear shouting, perhaps a scuffle would ensue, but he just didn’t care, listened as the mad, demented ranting faded into the distance and stared at the land that had brought him so much comfort, and wished it could bring some now.
Yes, it was the same but different.
Because this king wept.
‘Your Highness…’ Hassan bowed as he entered.
‘I said I was not to be disturbed!’ Zakari snapped, refusing to turn, still too proud to let a servant see him cry.
‘I understand that.’ He was practically prostrate, bowing in deep apology, yet frantic all the same. ‘Sheikha Stefania ordered that I not discuss her whereabouts, but, Your Highness, she has gone—’
‘I know that!’ He should feel shame, should feel anger, but all he felt was sad, hollow and horribly, horribly empty.
‘We cannot just let her!’ Hassan implored.
‘It is her choice.’ Zakari shook his head wearily. ‘It is her right to go.’
‘But anything could happen!’ Hassan pleaded.
‘It probably will.’ Zakari shrugged, not caring in this moment about the chaos that surely lay ahead, for now just consumed with missing Effie.
‘But we cannot just leave her alone in the desert!’ Hassan whimpered as the blood in Zakari’s veins froze.
‘She’s in the desert?’ Zakari’s voice was like a whip cracking.
‘She has run out of the palace gardens and into the desert.’ Hassan’s words hit him in the back as he ran through the palace, propelling him on. ‘There was a disturbance and the guards checked the gates, but found nothing, but she is not in the study or her room—’
‘She has not gone to Aristo?’
‘No! She was distressed. I left her alone in the study and she hasn’t been seen since. She’s been gone for over an hour. We cannot find her!’
Zakari had never feared the desert. He had respected it, but never feared it—yet it terrified him now.
Standing on its edges, staring out into the black sky, the sliver of a new moon did nothing to light it—just a black, endless emptiness. The air was cold that would only grow colder, and the thought of Effie out there had Sheikh King Zakari Al’Farisi, for the first time in his life, tasting fear, an alien panic rising in him at the prospect of the land he loved claiming the woman he loved more.
His helicopter lifted into the sky.
A skilled pilot, Zakari took control as Hassan worked the searchlight, the beam splitting the darkness as they scoured the savage land for her.
Not for the diamond, not for Queen Stefania of Aristo, but for Effie.
His Effie, who had loved him.
Had utterly and completely loved him as he, Zakari fast realised, had always utterly and completely loved her.
She would be terrified.
He shivered at the thought of the dogs the palace guards would be running out into the desert now, barking and snarling as they tracked her scent, and he prayed he would get there first, before the other helicopters that would be lifting into the sky soon. All he could think of was her, little and out there alone.
‘There,’ Hassan shrieked for maybe the twentieth time. ‘Back there.’ Zakari hovered in the sky as Hassan moved the beam, trying to locate the shadow he had thought he had seen, but there had been so many false sightings that Zakari didn’t dare hope—till he saw her. This pale dot beneath him, coming more into focus as the chopper lowered: Effie sitting on the sandy floor, face down and hugging her knees.
Yes, that was why he hated falconry, Zakari thought again as he circled his prey. He didn’t feel powerful, he didn’t want to pounce, he just wanted her to be safe, wanted one more chance to tell her that he loved her and let her know that she was free.